MUSIC
Free online programs help you create your
own radio station ip your dorm room.
By Mac Randall and Aaron Bell
Most music fans know all too well that
commercial radio stations are atrocious.
Listen to a station for a couple of days and
it’s possible to predict the next time you’ll
hear the latest by Matchbox Twenty or Third
Eye Blind almost to the minute. The only
thing apparently left to chance is which old
AC/DC song they're going to play.
It’s no surprise, then, that listeners tired
of being force-fed the same old slop are
turning away from commercial radio in
droves and getting their music via the
Internet. There are now thousands of online
radio stations transmitting from all over the
world; click on any search engine and you’ll
find everything from the largest corporate
outfits to dorm-room DJs dropping beats.
One good place for Internet radio is Real
Audio’s site at real.com (handy too, since
they have Real Player downloads that you’ll
need in order to listen). But if you think
you can do better than what you’re hear
ing—and who knows, you probably can—
it’s nearly as easy to get your own online
station up and running.
links
Iive365.com
One of the top radio hubs on the
Internet, this site makes online broad
casting a cinch.
shoutcast.com
Similar to Live365, this service is
designed to work with the Winamp MP3
player.
launch.com
Create your own playlist that any user
can tune into. LAUNCHcast also plays
songs that it thinks you might like
based on your previous ratings.
spinner.com
Over 100 stations grouped by genre.
mp3.com
Allows you to put together playlists like
a program director, but those playlists
can only be heard by you.
myplay.com
Similar to MP3.com, but you can share
your playlists with other users.
Before you start down the digital DJ
path, though, you should decide whether
you’re doing this solely for your own
amusement or whether your goal is to edify
the general public through your exquisite
taste in tunes. In either case, you’ve got
plenty of options. “Music manager” sites
like MP3.com make it a snap to devise your
own radio-style playlists—you can use
music taken off the site itself, transfer tracks
off other web sites, or digitize your own
CDs. Some of these sites are designed so
that the files can only be heard by you and
T
teners to your station. EasyCast, meanwhile,
is for people who don’t have the ability to
be online 24 hours a day; after you sign up
for EasyCast, Live365 gives you 100MB of
space for the storage of MP3s and then
broadcasts your music from its servers.
can’t be broadcast to the rest of the
world. (Napster allows you to trade
audio files with others but doesn’t have
the ability to create playlists.)
Closer to radio as we know it are sites
like Live365, meant for would-be DJs
who want to start broadcasting their own
music and for people who want to hear
Click on any search engine and
you’ll And everything from the
largest corporate outfits to
dorm-room DJs dropping beats.
streaming music mixed by fellow users. The
way Live365 works is typical of most online
DJ sites. It offers two different services,
LiveCast and EasyCast, both of which
require a quick registration and a “Powered
by Live365" banner next to their station link.
Our own station, at steamtunnels.net, is
powered by Live365.
With LiveCast, DJs who are already
broadcasting from their own computer can
send their music stream to the Live365
server, which then rebroadcasts the music
over the Internet. This helps deal with
potential signal problems and dramatically
increases the number of simultaneous lis
Most online radio sites feature a list of
broadcasters, grouped by genre, which can
be listened to with an MP3 player. Some
also compile Top-10 station lists, along with
the relevant stations’ listenerships, ratings
and genres. This is a good way of checking
out what other DJs are doing, and the bet
ter you know what the competition's up to,
the easier it’ll be for you to blow 'em all
away with your own station.
Now go make some noise. •
Go to steamtunnels.net and listen to our
own radio station, broadcasting trance and
techno 24 hours a day.
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