Streaming host setup?

Tech
#1

How would one go about setting up a cost-effective audio-only Icecast/Shoutcast streaming host for occasional live-streaming of jams and practice between a few people? (to clarify: not jamming together, simply 1 stream to N people)

I’ve looked at various hosting sites out there and their pricing structures all seem to be optimised for 24/7 radio hosting using local media (files and playlists). A “standby” file or playlist, when no source is connected to the server, would only be a “nice to have” for me. The key thing is it would be used occasionally at 2-3 hours per session, 1-2 sessions per week. Going out to fewer than 10 people. Really small scale. But I’d like the ability to embed that on a public webpage that I control, i.e. to have a direct link to stream endpoint.

After searching here I also checked VPS ideas from Linode and Hetzner but am still unclear on their streaming policies. I would do this at home with a RasPi if I wasn’t afraid my ISP would frown upon it.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

#2

At work we use a dedicated server for many duties including live audio streaming 24/7/365.
At one point i also used the cheapest (like 5 € / month) VPS from a “local” provider as an Icecast server for occasional duties and it worked fine. Last time I checked their policy doesn’t state that it’s forbidden, so i guess it’s allowed. (more than a decade ago they were selling specific contracts for streaming duties thus tried to force people into this offer, now long gone).

But. I’m not sure Icecast is a good solution for online jamming. A direct link might be more useful (someone did a simple tool for that).

If the idea is to broadcast to the public then Icecast is perfect and easy to setup. I found darkice to be a reliable client for encoding the stream. liquidsoap also works but is a bit more complicated to get around, i wouldn’t bother with it unless you need the advanced scheduling features.

#3

Twitch, and ninjam are two other options you may want to consider.

#4

if you’re on osx, I used to use https://rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/ for this purpose. Simple and pretty powerful. That said, it appears they’ve deprecated it and moved the feature set into another product of theirs, audio hijack, which I’ve been using for years to capture system audio, amongst other things. A super worthwhile piece of software!

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#5

thanks. hijack is happy to send the audio to a streaming host to redistribute to listeners, but i’m asking about how to organise/setup a host?

#6

It’s not running right now, since I’m in the middle of upgrading the hardware, but I normally am streaming modular output through a Raspberry Pi running icecast2 and ices2. The cable company hasn’t had anything to say about it. Let me know if you want details about the setup.

#7

research bump.

successfully set up an icecast2 + ices2 setup on the home rpi.

listening on vlc via the m3u url works great, but i’m curious if there’s a way to html5 embed a player in a webpage? ie

<audio controls="controls">
  <source src="http://my.url:8000/local.ogg.m3u" type="audio/mpeg" /></source>
</audio>

basically, firefox is saying it doesn’t support m3u :confused:

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#8

Hey @tehn. This is what I have on partytronic.com:

    <div class="audio">
      <audio controls>
        <source src="https://streams.potswift.org/modular.ogg" />
        Your browser does not support the audio tag.
      </audio>
    </div>
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#9

and it works! thank you tons tons tons. amazing that somehow i could not locate that in the docs.

i should write up the half-page version of the how-to-do-this.

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#10

@bens and whoa, what’s going on at partytronic?

#11

That’s the modular, with a patch that’s been sitting there for a while. I can try to express what it is if you’re interested…

#12

got it, that’s what i was wondering. live-ness vs. playlist. you leave it on 24/7?

#13

Yeah, I leave it on all the time, kind of a music machine playing into the void; I turn on the monitor sometimes when I’m down in the basement. I change the patch very occasionally.

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