Shoutcast

Last updated
Shoutcast
Original author(s) Nullsoft (Stephen 'Tag' Loomis, Tom Pepper and Justin Frankel)
Developer(s) Radionomy
Stable release
2.6.1 (Build 777) / January 30, 2022;22 months ago (2022-01-30) [1]
Type Streaming media
License Registerware
Website shoutcast.com

Shoutcast (formerly SHOUTcast) is a service for streaming media over the internet to media players, using its own cross-platform proprietary software. It allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding format. The most common use of Shoutcast is for creating or listening to Internet audio broadcasts; however, there are also video streams. [2] The software is available to use for free or as a paid cloud service with additional professional features. [3]

Contents

In the early days of esports for video games, Shoutcast was used by some to stream play-by-play commentary, leading to the term "shoutcaster" as a name for esports commentators. [4]

History

Created in 1998, [5] Shoutcast's streaming protocol uses metadata tags and responses that all start with ICY, which stands for "I Can Yell." Nullsoft was purchased by AOL on June 1, 1999.

On January 14, 2014, AOL sold Nullsoft to Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy Group; no financial details were publicly announced. [6] [7] [8] In 2018 the software was rebranded from its original name of SHOUTcast to Shoutcast. In 2020 Radionomy shut down its own streaming service and migrated to the Shoutcast platform.[ citation needed ]

Software

The Shoutcast software uses a client–server model, with each component communicating via a network protocol that intermingles audio or video data with metadata such as song titles and the station name. It uses HTTP as a transport protocol.

Shoutcast servers and clients are available for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Solaris. There are client-only versions for Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS (iPad, iPhone), Palm OS and webOS (Radio Hibiki), PlayStation Portable, Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and UIQ, [9] Nintendo DS (DSOrganize), and Wii.[ needs update ]

The output format is supported by multiple clients, including Nullsoft's own Winamp as well as Amarok, Exaile, foobar2000, iTunes, Songbird, Totem, XMMS, and Zinf. If the client does not support the Shoutcast protocol, then the Shoutcast server sends the stream without the metadata, allowing it to be heard and viewed in clients such as Windows Media Player. Shoutcast servers are usually linked to by means of playlist files, which are small text files (usually with extensions .pls or .m3u) that contain the URL of the Shoutcast server. When that URL is visited in a Web browser which identifies itself as Mozilla-compatible (as most do), the server will return a generated Shoutcast server info/status page, rather than streaming audio.

In 2010 VideoLAN dropped support for Shoutcast from VLC Player at AOL's request, as Shoutcast's license forbade its integration into other software that contained free or open-source components, additionally specifying that it "forces us to integrate the spyware and adware based Shoutcast Radio Toolbar inside your browser". [10] An alternative to Shoutcast is Icecast [11]

Popularity

A feature of Shoutcast servers is the ability to optionally publish server information, including the current number of listeners, in a directory of stations that Shoutcast maintains on their website. Site visitors can pick a station to listen to and download a playlist file for use in their own Shoutcast-capable media player.

In 2011 up to 900,000 concurrent listeners could be seen on public Shoutcast streams during peak hours.[ needs update ] The maximum and minimum number of listeners fluctuates widely during a day, with roughly three times as many listeners during peak hours as at low use times.[ citation needed ]

As of June 2022 85,317 stations were streaming using Shoutcast. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is played at the same time as it is downloaded. In the past, many internet radio stations used RealAudio to stream their programming over the internet in real time. In recent years, however, the format has become less common and has given way to more popular audio formats. RealAudio was heavily used by the BBC websites until 2009, though it was discontinued due to its declining use. BBC World Service, the last of the BBC websites to use RealAudio, discontinued its use in March 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justin Frankel</span> American computer programmer

Justin Frankel is an American computer programmer best known for his work on the Winamp media player application and for inventing the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. Frankel is also the founder of Cockos Incorporated, which creates music production and development software such as the REAPER digital audio workstation, the NINJAM collaborative music tool and the Jesusonic expandable effects processor. In 2002, he was named in the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winamp</span> Media player for Microsoft Windows

Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014, now known as the Llama Group. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nullsoft</span> American software company

Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona, in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In later years, their open source installer system, the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) became an alternative to commercial products like InstallShield. The company's name is a parody of Microsoft. Mike the Llama is the company's mascot; this is frequently referred to in promotional material citing llamas. Frankel introduced the llama in Winamp's startup sound clip, inspired by the lyrics of Wesley Willis: "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass!"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VideoLAN</span> Non-profit organization developing software

VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Playlist</span> Curated list of video or audio files

A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of television broadcasting, radio broadcasting and personal computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VLC media player</span> Free and open-source media-player and streaming-media-server

VLC media player is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

Ultravox or Ultravox Media On Demand Server (UltraMODS), is a streaming video project by AOL. The goal is to create something like SHOUTcast but for routers, so that the data is handled much better, can handle more users efficiently, and channel changing is much faster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Icecast</span> Streaming media server

Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/January 1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan to provide an open-source audio streaming server that anyone could modify, use, and tinker with. Version 2, a ground-up rewrite aimed at multi-format support and scalability, was started in 2001 and released in January 2004.

The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.

M3U is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.

PLS is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. It is typically used by media players for streaming media over the Internet, but may also be used for playing local media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Altacast</span> Open source audio encoder

Altacast is a free and open-source audio encoder that can be used to create Internet streams of varying types. Many independent and commercial broadcasters use Altacast to create Internet radio stations, such as those listed on the Icecast, Loudcaster and Shoutcast station directories.

Tom Pepper is a computer programmer best known for his collaboration with Justin Frankel on the Gnutella peer-to-peer system. He and Frankel co-founded Nullsoft, whose most popular program is Winamp, which was sold to AOL in May 1999. He subsequently worked for AOL developing SHOUTcast, an Internet streaming audio service, with Frankel and Stephen "Tag" Loomis. After leaving AOL in 2004. he worked at RAZZ, Inc. He continues to collaborate with Frankel on independent projects like Ninjam.

Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a free and open source music player server. It plays audio files, organizes playlists and maintains a music database. In order to interact with it, a client program is needed. The MPD distribution includes mpc, a simple command line client.

AOL Radio powered by Slacker was an online radio service available in the United States only. It had over 200 free internet radio stations.

HTTP Live Streaming is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and streaming media servers. As of 2022, an annual video industry survey has consistently found it to be the most popular streaming format.

The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.

Radionomy was an online platform that provided tools for operating online radio stations. It was part of Radionomy Group, a company which later acquired the online streaming platform SHOUTcast from Nullsoft, and eventually consolidated Radionomy into its SHOUTcast service.

References

  1. ↑ "DNAS 2.1.6 Build 777 Changelog". Shoutcast Yellow Pages. 2022-01-30.
  2. ↑ "Can I stream video through SHOUTcast? | Internet Radio & Audio Streaming". www.asuracast.com. Retrieved 2017-11-15.[ permanent dead link ]
  3. ↑ "Shoutcast - Pricing". Shoutcast. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  4. ↑ Hill, Nathan (December 7, 2017). "The Overwatch Videogame League Aims to Become the New NFL". Wired . Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Internet Radio -- Computers Help You Hear What Might Be Broadcasts | The Seattle Times". archive.seattletimes.com.
  6. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid (1 January 2014). "AOL Sells Winamp And Shoutcast Music Services To Online Radio Aggregator Radionomy". TechCrunch . AOL.
  7. ↑ "Winamp lives on after acquisition by Radionomy". The Verge. 14 January 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2014.
  8. ↑ "Radionomy + SHOUTcast?". Broadcasting World. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  9. ↑ "Internet Radio | PSP (PlayStation Portable)".
  10. ↑ "Press Release about Shoutcast Removal in VLC". VideoLAN . January 2010. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  11. ↑ "Differences between shoutcast and Icecast". www.gossdhosting.com.
  12. ↑ "Shoutcast". Shoutcast. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
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