Need Some Help...Bandwidth and other fun stuff

[xDazedx]

Hi all!

I have a few questions for you guys that are running some larger streams.

I run a website for Guitarist/Musicians where everything is 100% original music. I have dabbled with the idea of running a shoutcast for the music on my site. You guys are the experts in this area so I need some guidance!

Let's say I have 200 songs that I want to put in my shoutcast where people could log on and listen to a continuous stream. Is Shoutcast my best option for this? I know I could just create an mpu list but I thought a shoutcast would be more fun.

So some questions....

How much bandwidth would this potential take? Currently I use about 40GB+ a month on my site. I am thinking running a shoutcast has the potential of far exceeding that.

How are you guys running your shoutcasts currently? Using a static ip (or dynamic with forwarding software) from home or hosting it on a server?

Any suggestions you guys could offer I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

[dotme]

If you run shoutcast locally, you only consume bandwidth when someone tunes in. First, you need to decide what quality (bit rate) you want to offer. Then get your upstream speed tested (http://www.testmy.net - Upload Test)

Finally, do some math - upload result divided by quality (bit rate) = max concurrent listeners.

If the numbers look good, host at home. You can load up a looping playlist in Winamp and away you go.

If you get busy, you can lower the bit rate to take on more listeners at a time, or you can outsource hosting at that time.

I wrote an article a while back on starting an internet radio station. If you want to read it, it's here:
http://www.allinternetradio.com/stationguide.asp

Good luck!

[xDazedx]

Thanks for the reply dotme.

Yeah I set this up at home once before and it worked ok but I think my number of users will spike if I do it again. I run 5mb down/512k up on my dsl line. That is not really enough to support that many users at 128k.

I am just not sure if I set this up on my site if I am going to use 20GB or 500GB of bandwidth.

Appreciate the reply.

xDazedx

[airwave]

Hi xDazedx

Streaming can be measured in two ways, concurrent bandwidth used per listener or average of listeners, or by total bandwidth used.

When you talk about data transfer per month, i.e. 40gig, this is total bandwidth used..

For example...

If you have 10 listeners constantly at 128kbps over the period of 30 days, you will use a fair amount of bandwidth, certainly more than a website would use.

www.radiotoolbox.com has a great calculator for this.

The majority of stream hosts however, measure in maximum concurrent listeners for their services, which means you don't have to worry for data usage.

My hosting company for example charges £7.00 ($12.20) per month for 10 streams at 64kbps.

There's my two cents, but it really works out better to use a stream host (esp when streaming costs are so cheap nowadays) and be certain that your stream quality remains the same, doesn't buffer or suffer latency problems etc.

Regards