Corrupt listings on Shoutcast-website

[RadioTech01]

@Shoutcast-staff

The listings on https://www.shoutcast.com ... are:

Corrupt , Wrong , Incorrect

Example:

I check a certain station ... on its DNAS status page it says:

Stream Status: Stream is up with 156 of 999 listeners (54 unique)

I then immidiatly also check shoutcast.com website where it says:

156 listeners

Ofcourse i have verified this several times on different moments of the day
over a period of a few weeks ... and also have taken in account any delays and
averaging that obviously takes place.


CONCLUSION :

The shoutcast.com website is corrupt ... since it lists all listeners including
doublures or triple listening from the same ip-adress ... ie: stations that use tricks
such as multiple players on a pc ...etc ... to fraudulently / artificially inflate their
listener-numbers can get away with it ...and shoutcast is helping them.

This puts back honest stations that don't use tricks like this !

How difficult can it be .. if the dnas already shows the real number of UNIQUE listeners
to let the shoutcast.com website listing also use only the UNIQUE number of listeners ?

I don't think that i'm the first one to notice this ..so why in the world don't you repair this ?
Why do you help fraudsters ? ... there cant be no excuses to let this exist ..
If you have a listing like this the first thing one expects is that it is more or less correct & honest.

Listing on the shoutcast.com website should be based on UNIQUE nr of listeners !

It must be sooooo simple to repair this
you are disrespecting honest stations by letting this exist.

.

[RadioTech01]

To sum it up:

1)

As mentioned above ... there are stations that use tricks or bad webplayer design
which cause a inflation of the number of listeners ... they may do this on purpose
or in ignorancy (they don't even know it happens)

From my research usually it comes down to triple-ing the real numbers
ie: theres for example 50 UNIQUE LISTENERS
and they manage to somehow 3-fold this number ... so it shows 150 CURRENT LISTENERS
for some mysterious or on purpose reason shoutcast.com is using the CURRENT LISTENERS
value instead of the UNIQUE LISTENERS value ... thus helping the fraudsters.


2)

UNIQUE LISTENERS ... indicates the number of ip-adresses that are listening,
it will not take in account if people are using 10 or 100
fake players , rippers or whatever on a same ip-address to inflate their listener numbers.
ie: UNIQUE LISTENERS will allways show 1 listener per ip-adress.

This is a much more fair indication and a representation of the truth.


3)

The shoutcast.com listing can take the UNIQUE LISTENER from either:

admin.cgi?mode=viewxml&page=1 (DNAS status that includes UNIQUE LISTENER stats)

or from

The XML-feed ... as described here

http://wiki.shoutcast.com/wiki/SHOUTcast_DNAS_Server_2_XML_Reponses#General_Server_Summary

which also includes UNIQUE LISTENER stats.

This will take only a few minutes to program in the source of the shoutcast.com
or database that it is connected to ... unless it is a mess (usually the case).


3)

There is no reason why the shoutcast.com listening should not show nr of listeners
using UNIQUE LISTENERS instead of the CURRENT LISTENERS

So make it UNIQUE LISTENERS !

I don't get it why you have the door open wide for fraude
i cant believe you do not know about this ... so there´s probably a bad excuse for it
to solve some other problem ... its bad programming of the worse kind.


4)

Some stations (like me) work around the clock to create a good station with real audience
I myself have spend maybe 150000 hours on it ... pay everything from my own pocket.

Now comes some criminal (or ignorant) ... he doesnt do anything to improve his station
so he inflates his listener-numbers and therefore his rank on shoutcast.com and as a result
also on another 500 portals and apps who base their ranking on shoutcast.com (API) , and therefore will get even more listeners (high rank means seen-first) ... that's how a small variation has big effects.


5)

Here´s an example of a trick to triple your listener-numbers ... its simple:

You build your radio-website ... you put 3 embedded players on it (for example jPlayer)

You hide 2 of them (invisible) and set their audio-volume to zero.
The other one visible player controls all 3 players ... and voila each single listener
that comes to your website and hits the playbutton will now cause 3 streams
and that is what shoutcast will show ...pfff !

You could also have 10 hidden embedded players on any website (under your control)
you set them all to autoplay and volume = 0 .. now theres 10 listeners showing up on shoutcast.com

Visitor will usually not notice much since 3 or 10 times 128kbs is nothing these days.

Above trick is much better then having 25 instances of winamp or streamripper
on your own pc ... but that could be done too .. there must be 10´s of ways to do it.

In addition (nothing to do with tricks) many mobile phones (both iOs & Android)
and some browsers can not handle streams very well and they may open several streams at the sametime ... instead of the intended only one ... this is not on purpose but bad design of the embedded player i have studied this in extent ... yes even welknown players.

All of the above can be solved by using UNIQUE LISTENERS


6)

Its an important issue ... so i would expect a reply from shoutcast.com.
or from one of the devs / mods here.


Thank you for your attention

[djSpinnerCee]

excellent points -- i totally agree -- there are more reasons why unique listeners are a more accurate reflection, than an erroneous undercount -- only the powers that be know why gross client connections are publicized over unique clients.

[RadioTech01]

I would appreciate some reply from shoutcast-staff
or moderator or one of the oldtimers here.

Why does it take so long to get some "official" reply ?

If this is not the right place to inquire or complain about this ... let me know.

[RadioTech01]

So can i should conclude that there is absolutely no support from shoutcast ?
and none of the moderators will help or say anything usefull ?
Even if I say there is fraude going on ... nobody is interested ?

[RadioTech01]

How can i correct a message ?
when i posted for the first time in this forum it said
"not allowed to edit posts" ... i don't see that anymore
but still i cant edit it .. how to edit ?

[RadioTech01]

Sorry to say but what a useless shit forum !
everything shoutcast (and radionomy) allways sucks
obviously that includes those that work for it cause they are the company
ha ha ... keep on trying to get people to sign-up for your monitizing services
never ever will i spend a single dime on such a shitcompany ... with ZERO SUPPORT.
and who doesn´t give a damn about their users ... it is so stupid to waiste a product
like that ... the owners must be total fools.