Friday, April 28, 2006

Computer Audio Services

I listen to a lot of online audio. Mostly I listen to streaming audio. Here are some of my favorite stations. The another station I listen to, am listening to right now is David Byrne Radio. Every month David Byrne is focused on type of music. One month it is classic disco, another month it early country music, this month it is latin music.

That is the view of audio services from a consumer perspective. You however want to be a broadcaster. The software to create your programs are reasonably cheap and can be managed from midlevel machines. Your station or podcast can be listed for free in the various directories, shoutcast for streaming audio , and itunes for podcasts. The cost, the limiting cost is hosting. If you are providing a streaming service you will be paying for a streaming server. Your charges will be based on the audio quality and the number of listening slots, see more here for details. With podcasting the cost is based on total volumn downloaded. However I just come accross a podhosting company, Audio Blog, with unlimited downloads. Quite unusual. Streaming works well with music podcasts work well with speech the begining of sentences are sometimes needed for comprehension. Generally it can cost a dozen dollars a month up to hundreds, depending on bandwidth, to host your own audio programs. This is additional to any web costs to get online.

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