Setting Up An Internet Radio: Part 1 - What You Need

So, you have got to the point whereby you want to start a radio station. Whether this be for your community, or for your personal interests and fun, there are many ways you can do this.

The first point we need to cover is liscenses. Unfortunately, here in the UK you can't broadcast without having a liscense. You can apply to your local authority for a community radio license, and this is the same principal in many countries. I am afriad I do not have the time or knowledge to go into this, so it is best before you start to check this out with your authorities.

The second step is to establish some stuf to broadcast from. All you need is a laptop, as a bare minimum. There is lots of software however that will do the wonderful job of broadcasting for you.

Once you have got the kit, you need somewhere to put your radio station. There are lots of different price ranges and features between different internet radio hostings, and that is something that you need to be aware of. My favourite of them all, however is Canstream. This company offers a personal service that is very easy to use, whereby a real person will set up the hosting then give you all your details to access you CPanel and your hosting server.

For me, when doing the radio, this feature is fantastic as it allows us to stop and start the hosting whenever we want, meaning we are not tied into any contracts or any long term things, so we can litterally just broadcast whenever we want to. Also in all the times we have had technical difficulties we have been able to fix it very quickly with an email, as apposed to any pre-recorded helplines or FAQs, that never really help anyway.

I mentioned earlier about software. Now there are 2 pieces of software that I use: Both of which I paid for and both of which don't work very well. But they are the best that I can find. Now this is where opinions split over software, as they always will do, but for me, the best actual program to make the radio is a program called Radiologik. It is really easy to use and links very well with iTunes music library, as well as the navigation system within the program being very easy to use. Now there is a difference in software depending on whether you have a PC or a Mac. For mac there is a program called Nicecast, and for windows it is called edcast. These programs are your broadcasting program, that allows you to put the radio on the server and for people to then download it and listen to it.

Nicecast is paid for software, whereas Edcast is freeware, however both work equally well for their respective operating systems.

And there you have you basic kitlist

-Laptop

-Microphone

-Radio Hosting (canstream or similar)

-Radiologik

-Broadcasting Software (Nicecast/ Edcast)

I will look in other articles to talk about video streaming on things like ustream, adn the posibility of a radio station on this, but for now this should get you started.

In the next article I will talk about actually getting your radio broadcasting, so that you can finally get your show on the road.

I hope this article has been helpful. For updates on this blog please follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Thank you for reading!