Starting An Online Radio Station

So your thinking of starting your own online Radio show, or station, the first thing you need to know is that their are hundred of thousands of station already out there, and that not only has changed internet radio, but terrestrial radio as well. How you ask, well they was once a tine when people got paid to do radio, now there are so many people trying to get from internet to the next level all radio has turned in what they call brokered show where you have to pay for airtime. Unless you have the best voice out there you have a slim chance of making a living in radio as a host, so don't go into for money, do it because you like the hobby, and you want to be heard.

Your first choice is do you want live streaming audio, or a podcast? below I will show you whats needed as far as equipment to get started. Start up costs can be as little as $7 up to $1000 with the best software and streams.

Podcast If you chose the easier way of being heard you will need a good microphone, powered, or a good headset will work, Second you need to find a recording device, Audacity is a free recording program you can use, but the main challenge you will face is how to get the audio from the person your interviewing to record, for that you will need a small mixer, or virtual audio cables, or an external soundcard. Then record the show, save as mp3 file and upload to a podcast site, I recommend podomatic

Live Streaming Now live streaming gets a bit different and harder, but its not that hard once you see how it works. You will need everything talked about under podcast, plus you'll need to buy a stream hosting server and decide what quality you would like, I recommend 64k for Talk Radio and 128k for Music to get one of these stream I recommend using Voscast.com and the streams are known as a shoutcast stream. Once you sign up and play for the stream you will get a IP, Port Number and Password which might look like http://65.87.123.34 Port 8970 and a password. Once you have this you must decide what broadcaster you would like to use, Winamp is a free broadcaster and works fine for playing files, and talking live, but if you going to run a network or play a lot of short files with a double deck you should use Sams Broadcaster, its about $345 but you can make $69 monthly payments until its paid off. Sams will give you a 30 day trial to get Sams Click Here If you do you winamp make sure to install the shoutcast dsp plugin for winamp. If your a Mac user you'll have to use Nicecast.

I love helping people get set up and to start their own shows, and station feel free to email me for help inceptionradionetwork@gmail.com