General help on starting a streaming station (Beginner)

[ShipofFools]

Hello, all!

 

I go to a small-ish graduate/professional school (1-2,000 students). Some friends and I are interested in starting a student-run internet-based (initially) music/talk radio station, and I'd love to get some help from y'all. We wouldn't be broadcasting 24/7 at first, and listener volume would be fairly small. Right now, monetization isn't something we're interested in, so we'd be (I believe) a non-commercial station. I'm pretty set in terms of equipment(I think); I'd like input on the technical/licensing side of things.

 

I see a lot of talk on here about services like icecast and shoutcast. Would these be better options than just streaming on sites like mixlr, and why? Any suggestions or resources you could point me towards would be great; I'm looking through the Internet Broadcasting Help guides that are stickied, but they're fairly technical...

 

As far as licensing goes, what would we need? I found this (https://www.soundexchange.com/service-provider/non-commercial-webcaster/non-commercial-educational-webcaster/), which seems to apply to us, but I'm a little confused at exactly what that covers. Would we need more licensing if we wanted to play non-public domain music?

 

Thanks for your time, and I appreciate any help!

[Matt Skills]

setting up an online radio station is in expensive and from a school could be done pretty much for free as your school will probably already have the resources needed.

 

1. a computer that you can install and run a shoutcast server from or you can find a shoutcast hosting provider

2. your school will probably already have a website , you could piggy back your station's website on the same server or find a web hosting provider

3. the sound exchange license will cover the royalties for the music that you play (you don't need it if you play royalty free music or no music at all) , as internet radio doesn't fall under anyone's authority , you don't need a license (permission) to run one.

 

 

hope that helps,

 

Matt