Oh man I hate to ask this... nobody get mad please :)

[beanbucket]

I'm sure this has been asked plenty of times, but I can't seem to find it in the forums. Sorry if it is redundant.

There's plenty of people that are broadcasting from their homes, but I have a dedicated server through my hosting provider.

Initially, I don't want to use more than 100GB of bandwidth each month for my listening audience. And if my bitrate is at 96k, then what should I set my max listeners to?

Thank you very much for any suggestions!

Mike

[Wavestreaming]

100gb isn't alot of bandwidth in shoutcast terms, but this tool will help you a great deal :)

http://www.radiotoolbox.com/online_tools/bandwidth.php

[beanbucket]

Thanks, Wavestreaming... that helped a lot.

I'm amazed at how much bandwidth really gets consumed! Places like .977 must be spendin' some serious cash!

Of course, I'm assuming that the calculator is basing it's calculations on listeners tuning in 100% of the time, 24/7.

I wonder if anyone has a good rule of thumb on how long people listen to a stream on average? The calculator tells me that even at 64k, I could only handle 20 listeners and still use up 130GB. So would it be safe to say I could max out at 60 listeners, and assume that nobody (on average) will listen for more than 8 hours non-stop? (I'm thinking it probably wouldn't hurt to cap off the max listening time to something more reasonable than the default 10 hours.)

Does the average listener tune in for 3 hours? 6 hours? Who knows. Maybe someone can throw some stats out there for me. :)

[hackerdork]

You need to get on a un-metered or 500-1000gb hosting plan bud.

I got screwed by a co-lo that charged extra for over the month BD big time. After pushing windows updates and shoutcast data I only went over by a few hundred meg and it cost over $300 USD more. Needless to say we are not using that service any more.

Yes places like .977, di.fm etc have phat bandwidth, but they are not metered like you are, and they have clusters of servers on several T1, OC-48, CO-192 etc all over the Nation/world.

You should calcuate worse case, all listeners 24/7 at the highest bit rate you offer.
remember 64k is 64*1024, not 64*1000 , so take 128k*1024 and you the bits per second.

e.g. 64k (65535bps) at 32 users.

65535*32 = 2,097,152 bps. per second, hmm a T1 is only 1.54 Mbit/sec of , but 64k*32 listeners is 2.048Mbit/sec hmm. Hope you have more than a T1 as well.

3600 seconds per hour (60 seconds * 60 mins = 3600)
3600x2097152 = 7,549,747,200bpH (bits per hour)
Devide this by 8 (8 bits = 1 byte)
943,718,400 bytes an hour ok easy 943MB a hour

Take 943,718,400 BYTES * 24 hours = 22,649,241,600 BYTES (22.6 GB a day)

Which is roughly 700.6 GB a month based on 31 days in a month.

~ D

[beanbucket]

Wow! Very informative... yet scary!

Well, it appears that maybe using a stream hosting provider might be the way to go in terms of reliability. Do you think that's a reasonable option?

Also, my goal is to cater to my town, rather than all over the nation/world, and my target audience is no more than 30,000 people. So I really don't expect to have tons of listeners.

Basically, I plan on having a website that caters to the local communtiy... events and information, which would be a great place to bring the talent of our local bands together via online radio. So with 30,000 students, it's tough to say how many would really listen. There's just so many variables involved. I hear that the average listener tunes in for 3 hours per day, but assuming something like that could get real painful, real fast... and I'd hate to learn the hard way that 300 students have been tuning in 24/7... Yikes!

I'd like to start small, then work my way up as my listener base grows... and certainly put ALL radio/banner advertising dollars towards that... and buy more capacity as necessary.

I thought about using 100-200GB on one of my servers at 64k to get started, and start selling ads as quickly as possible. And I could always add more bandwidth for .80/GB if I wanted to keep it on one of my servers.

Maybe starting off with an unmetered bandwidth plan as you mentioned would be the way to start. I just want to at least have some revenue coming in before I start making any larger investments. What do you think?

[dotme]

My advice is get a stream host. The one in my signature, for example. A good host charges enough to offer reliable service, but isn't the most expensive game in town. If I were you, I'd start with 10-15 slots, and then grow if you need to.

[hackerdork]

I have seen plans for 1000GB / month for under $99 USD in the states.

Good thing I learned some math, my teachers 20 years ago said math may some day save my life :-)

~ D