Is internet Broadcasting the in thing now?
As I look at my twitter time lines everyday, I’m noticing that internet brodcasting seems to be THE hobby for more and more people. I’m either seeing people talking about it, or promoting their shows or someone else’s, and it got me thinking. When my best friend Desiree and I were in Junior high, we used to do things like that. Now, granted, we didn’t have internet, nore did we have a radio station in wich to work, but we did have duel cassette recorders, mocrophones, and music mixers. Well…she had the music mixer. Anyway, so we would go on tape and pretend we were doing radio shows. Sometimes we’d do them alone and trade them the next day, sometimes we’d meet at one or the other’s house and do them together. Umfortunately, I don’t have thes joint efforts anymore, or I’d show dimonstrations to those interested. It was always in the back of my mind as something that would be really cool to do, but then again, those tapes were for us. We didn’t ahve to worry about making total arses of ourselves for a bunch of people to hear. We could be as crazy as we wanted to be, becuase we knew that not even our parents would hear them. In some cases, this was a good thing.
So now, I see people actually doing this over the internet…for the reals. People either phone in, call in on skype, or IM in with requests or something whitty and funny to say on the shows. As much as I would love to be able to do something like this, now that we have awesome technology to do so, I’m kind of afraid to do it, because it would be just like all the other guys and gals out there doing radio shows on the net. I’m a creative person, but if I were to do something like that, what could I possibly do. There’s already shows with music in every genre, you have your chat shows, the funny and the serious, I just don’t know. Maybe since I work for an insurance hot line, I should do something where people call in about their health insurance? Let me think about that one for a second. NO!!! I’m not a sex doctor, so that’s out. I’m not, nor do I ever want to be like DR. Laura, so that’s totally out. I’m most definitely not doing taro readings over the net, because for one thing, I’m not experienced enough to be doing that for people, and for another, I don’t think that kind of thing should be done on a public channel for all to hear. So somebody give me more ideas, and maybe I can fuse them together, or…something. I thought of soem kind of karioke, or parity thing, but I just don’t know. Plus, I have no idea how I would even get set up on something like that. Do you have to install special software, or hardware? I have a microphone, windows media player, and winamp, I’ve got tons of music, and could get more if I needed it, I don’t have a program for karioke yet, but I imagine with a little looking, that could be obtained.
So these are just my thoughts about the matter. My mother thought I was weird when Desiree and I were kids, because we loved recording things and pretending. I just had no idea that I was doing something that a lot of other kids my age thought about, but are now able to bring into fruition.
Hi,
With what you have now, you could very easily do the broadcasting thing. You don’t need new hardware at all. There are certain scripts for Winamp, called the SAM Broadcaster scripts, which will allow you to broadcast. I have never used them, but they are what a lot of people I know use. Or you could also use some outside applications, which you will need to buy. The only ones I know of, though I know there are probably more, are SAM Broadcaster and Station Playlist, abbreviated to SPL. More blind people tend to like SPL better, supposedly because of accessibility, but I have used SAM Broadcaster, and can honestly say that I had no problems with it. I don’t know if the particular version I was using at the time was an older one, but it worked for me.
Awesome! Where do you go to get the scripts for that? Where would you find the other outside programs you mentioned.
I wouldn’t worry about being totally original. I s’pose everything’s been done. If you want to spin music, though, there’s lots of room for things like playing longer pieces, deep album tracks by well-known artists, or playing fairly specialized sorts of music, like world music or punk or underground stuff or even relaxy-type stuff if you are into that. I say this because most people seem content to just play very popular mainstream music, but that’s their taste and their choice. For me it doesn’t make for very interesting radio. Also along with assorted Winamp plug-ins, you’ll need a Shoutcast server. Best value I’ve seen are at http://ultrahost.us. You can avhe a stream at 128 KBPS for I think a hundred listeners at less than ten bucks a month. I’ll be getting one myself next month, as I’m borrowing a friend’s server right now when I do stream stuff. I haven’t used this Sam thing because I’m not a Jaws person so can’t be dependent on scripts. I use the free Shoutcast plug-in and need to learn to use the Linerec plug-in so I can actually speak on-air.