Zelaron Radio?
 

It has come to my attention that not only myself and Kagom think it would be a good idea to have a Zelaron Radio (podcast/playlist host) through the site. I'm not entirerly sure how the Admins would implement it, possibly through a portal in a sublink, or even add a bar somewhere on the main forums page, but the idea is there, and I'd like to get a feel of how the rest of the Zelaron community feels.

Would you like to hear various music through different podcasts of different members? There could possibly be different time slots for different types of music, i'm sure there are plenty of decent loyal members that wouldn't mind hosting a podcast or something similar for the rest of the Zelaron community.

I'm also sure that if this became popular enough, it would definately draw in outside populairit, along with the fact that we can do anything that we want with it, actually possibly turning members that are willing enough, into Internet DJ's that people would rather listen to, etc etc. The possibilities are endless, and suggestions are Very welcome! So post up guys, what do you all think?

I'd just like to post my opinion. I think it would be a good idea, it'd have to be a highly supported idea for it to honestly go through, and there have to be a few members that can volunteer and throw down to get this thing going, I know in the other thread there we're a few that had mentioned it...

I think this is a good idea for the sole purpose of it giving me something to listen to while i'm at work :) . I'd love nothing more than a free website to grab different kinds of weird music from, especially from our other members.

Check out projectplaylist.com - you can upload your own music and stream it through your myspace, facebook, etc. If we could have something like that here, that'd be tits.

Sure, and as I said I will host it.

I remember talking to Chruser about it and we both agreed it would be a good thing. The only real problem I remember with it is that there was some law passed recently that would make it very difficult to do this. I can't remember the specifics, but Chruser probably could explain it.

Hooray, something good may have come from one of my threads. Truly an accomplishment. It's too bad we may not have the space to compile everyone's music into one big list, sift out the duplicates, and make one gigantic playlist. By the way, did anyone ever clear up what a podcast is?

A podcast is a pre-recorded radio-station type thing that you download through I-tunes and listen to on an I-pod.

At least, that's how I've listened to them. It's pretty much recorded talk-radio. There are WoW podcasts and such, where people talk about what's happened lately in WoW, strategies for PVP, etc.

Yeah, I listen to Lex and Terry (morning talk radio show) All the time since they started podcasting their shows, it makes it awesome for when I come in later to work, I can still listen to the show that was on earlier that day :)

Recently the cost of running internet radio went up like 6 times due to a law passed, that's probably what the hangup was.

I'm sure there's a technical way we can get around this, maybe like what Thanatos said, we can just have it hosted through somewhere else, and redirected here.

That sounds about right, though Chruser explained it as it being illegal I think.

Hm... as far as I know you can still host winamp streams.

Yeah there's nothing wrong with that I don't believe, atleast, they're not going to be able to track you down and actually do anything about. I remember "Justice radio" through City of Heroes had a thing like that.

Pressure from net radio supporters on U.S. congressional representatives and senators resulted in changes to this law, so net radio is saved for now:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m...ers_face_music
http://www.savenetradio.org

As for the Zelaron Radio, I prefer live streams over podcasts. The latter would hardly qualify as radio as much as a library of previously uploaded news, commentary and music. Listen to it once, then it gets old. With a live stream, we could have:

• A music directory Zelaron members can log onto via FTP and upload music to. The server would then automatically play (stream) the music found in the directory, so everyone can tune in with Winamp / Media Player and listen 24/7.
  
  
• Live shows / DJ sessions on schedule. Basically, a "DJ" would send whatever Winamp is playing to the server, which in turn forwards it to all listeners. This temporarily overrides the automatic stream mentioned above.

Of course, we would need a server with a fast connection to transfer, say, a 96 or 128 kbps stream to every listener. With 20 listeners, that's 1920 - 2560 kbps, or roughly around 2 mbps upstream. The Zelaron server could definitely handle the load, but I don't know what WetWired thinks about the idea (it's his server). Otherwise, if anyone is willing to donate their bandwidth, it will work fine too.

Software-wise, SHOUTcast and Icecast (Linux) should be fine. Both are free options, although I'm convinced we'll have to come up with a clever solution to use the auto-play music in directory approach.

I do very much like your idea for users uploading their own music. Though that makes me wonder how abused that could be. What if someone uploads a bunch of barney and teletubbies and shit.

Warn/temp. ban them? I don't think we have anybody that immature around here.

I don't think that's really a problem as you could tell who logged on when and when files were added.

The Zelaron server has relatively little server space on fast hard drives. Uploading large amounts of music to it is out of the question. The music would have to be stored elsewhere.

I'm setting up a temporary shoutcast server with FTP uploads for testing purposes. Does anyone have a plugin or a method for Winamp to automatically update its playlist from a music directory when content is added or removed? A periodic playlist updater would work too.

A test stream is up: http://radio.zelaron.com/listen.pls

Winamp or some other decent player is needed to listen. If the link above doesn't work, go here and click Listen:

http://85.224.124.24:8000

(If the first link didn't work, let me know.)

First link didn't work in winamp