The technology, which has taken the world by storm in the internet radio industry, is known as SHOUTcast which was invented and programmed by the guys at AOL. Quiet simply they programmed a server which can be run on either a linux or windows machine and is available for free. Now lets get started. All you will need for this is the free software: Winamp, Shoutcast server, and Shoutcast dsp. These are all available from the winamp and shoutcast website completely free. You will also need to find out your IP address. You can do this by going to google and typing whats my IP?  Your IP is a set of numbers.

Once you have the software and your IP install your Shoutcast server on your computer first and run it. This will run in the background and this is the software which we will broadcast to from winamp and our listeners will connect to it and listen to your radio station. Next step lets install winamp and the shoutcast dsp plugin which will install itself into winamp. 

Great were all set and ready to broadcast. Now all we need to do is launch winamp and the shoutcast dsp server which should open up automatically within winamp. Now fill in the IP and default port (8000) in the winamp dsp shoutcast plugin as well as the default changeme password. Set the bitrate to 128KBPS for a decent quality audio and select the input to soundcard. The will broadcast everything that passes through your soundcard to the world. This way we can make use of software like skype and use our microphone for call ins etc..  

I wont cover any more about that for now the priority is that you are broadcasting. Once you have filled in the server details and set the correct audio source input to broadcast from it is important to fill out the yellowpages which is actually what you want to show in the SHOUTcast directory on their website. Here you can add your website address, your genre, and of course the radio station name which you have chosen. Thats it. Lets start playing some music in winamp and press connect.

Great! Looks like you are now streaming and broadcasting to the world.  

You can pass around a listen link to all your friends on facebook and msn so they can tune in to your new radio show or add it to your website. The listen link will go like this IP address which is the one which you researched earlier from google. Once you have the IP address enter it into the address bar, then add a colon sign after it ":" and straight after the colon add the default shoutcast port which is always set as 8000 unless you chose a different port during the setup process of your server.  Add a /listen.pls just after the port number and we have our "tune in" link which can now be passed around to everyone that might be interested in listening. By clicking this link or opening it from the address bar will open the live radio stream in the default radio player which is usually winamp or real player.

Just change the youripaddress to the one you obtained earlier which you should have by now. Port is always 8000 if you are running directly from your PC or unless you change the code in the SHOUTcast software which is possible in case you have a firewall or other software running on port 8000. An standard home internet connection will handle about 5-10 simultaneous listeners so an upgrade in the upstream bandwidth from your ISP might be necessary if you get big.  Otherwise you will need to look online for someone to host your radio for you.

Happy Streaming everyone !

For more help or to obtain high data shoutcast hosting please google around for a variety of providers who can handle this using their own network and provide you with a shoutcast server fully set up.