broadcasters

This page contains simple advice for broadcasters - primarily aimed at smaller stations.

Stream Links

Stream Links

There are numerous databases of Internet radio stations - Reciva being one.
If your stream link changes (for example - if you change streaming host providers) then this is probably not a problem for those who use your web site to start the stream,
but for users of Internet radio databases this can be a problem until the database is updated.
There is work in progress at IMDA to come up with a standard way of doing this - but, in the meantime ... the easiest way to minimise disruption is to provide a consistent link to a playlist file and then modify the contents of that playlist when the underlying stream host details changes.

Take Dandelion Radio as an example ...

There is a consistent playlist file at http://www.dandelionradio.com/DandelionRadio.pls

a .pls file looks something like this:

[playlist]
NumbeOfEntries=1
File1=http://streamingprovider.net:8000

Strictly speaking ... you should set the MIME type for the .pls to be audio/x-scpls

If you are running an Apache web server then you would do this by adding the following to your .htaccess file:
AddType audio/x-scpls .pls

However, Reciva radios do not care about that (web browsers and other devices might do though).

As a bonus - it looks more professional.

As Windows Media Player will not play pls files without additional plugin software, it would also be worthwhile creating an asx file and placing that on your web server too. This will maximise the users ability to play your content using their installed media player software.

An ASX file would look like this :-

<ASX version="3">
<Entry>
<ref href="http://streamingprovider.net:8000" />
</Entry>
</ASX>

As above ... you should set the MIME type for the .asx to be video/x-ms-asx (yes "video" even though it is "audio")

If you are running an Apache web server then you would do this by adding the following to your .htaccess file:
AddType video/x-ms-asx .asx

Another widely supported playlist format is an M3U file, which in its simplest form would contain something like this :-
http://streamingprovider.net:8000

With MIME-type audio/x-mpegurl
(in Apache .htaccess file
AddType audio/x-mpegurl .m3u
)

M3U, PLS and ASX files can be created in Notepad (for Windows PCs) or whichever is the standard text editor for your specific Operating System.