SHOUT cast

SHOUTcast is a freeware audio streaming technology, developed by Nullsoft. SHOUTcast uses MP3 or AAC encoding of audio content and http (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) as the protocol (multicast can also be used) to stream internet radio.

Internet radio

Unlike many sites that only offer internet radio, SHOUTcast encourages its users to create new internet radio servers thanks to the server software they provide. The output format is read by multiple client programs, including Nullsoft Winamp products, Apple iTunes, HTML5 and Windows Media Player (versions 9 and up only) and can be integrated into the web via Flash. With this software, any user can create and adapt a server for their own needs. For example, radios that are only used in local networks and consume internal bandwidth but not Internet access, can be used to save on the communications bill for companies and various organizations.

This technology requires the user himself to provide the necessary bandwidth to feed user requests, which means that if you want to send a high-quality stream, you have to consider an ADSL connection or higher, because in the case of transmissions in MP3, at 128 Kbps, each connected user consumes precisely that bandwidth of the origin server, therefore, if you have 10 users at that transfer rate, you will need a sending capacity of 1280 Kbps (just over a Megabit). Recently, the AAC+ format has solved the dilemma, allowing 32 Kbps transmissions to be sent with almost the same quality as a 128 Kbps transmission in MP3, and therefore it is a solution that many radio stations are choosing to save costs.

When a user downloads, installs and operates the necessary codecs to start streaming, they are also added to the SHOUTcast catalog, which contains nearly 9,000 internet radio servers, classified by genre, by transmission bandwidth and by the number of users who listen to it and who can serve at the same time. In the catalog, the radio stations are also ordered by musical genres, be it Talk Shows, rock, Latin, etc.

Technology

The system works as follows:

When a user opens a page whose HTML, PHP or JAVA document contains the connection service IP:PORT that is connected to the SHOUTcast service, it makes a request to the DNS service that links it to the servers that are regularly found in three Texas cities. Once the request is made and the code is authenticated, a response link is generated to the requester and it sends 32-bit and 128-bit unencrypted packets for security models for government use.

The system can be counted by number of nodes and not by number of listeners, each node can be an ADSL, T1, T2 and DialUp link, and this node can contain as many clients (network users) as desired, but the accounting is limited to one node regardless of the real listeners online, the listeners for wireless links due to limited band issues cannot be detected, that is, if there is a node which only contains clients in WIFI wireless link these cannot be detected by this technology.

Winamp and SHOUTcast for sale

At the end of 2013 (November) the official page of Winamp, a multimedia player offered by this online radio service, showed a message indicating the end of Winamp on December 20, 2013 along with the other services that it offered, among which is SHOUTcast. This notice led to offers to purchase the service from its owner, AOL, who finally closed an agreement with the Belgian startup Radionomy for an approximate amount between 5 and 10 million dollars and a shareholding for AOL of about 12%. from Radionomy during the first days of January 2014. Currently the closure announcement has been removed from the official site and the service continues to function normally, now under new management.