Joseph,
We're looking into it too for our KillerOrange.com portal. There are a lot of "all ya have to do is..." sites out there - but like everything computer, it's not always as easy to assemble as the box claims.
Webcasters United is a great Webmaster site of the sort you're looking for.
You don't seem to be planning to play music, so you will be spared the licensing issues thereof. It's expensive to get licensed directly, but there are several outfits that handle licensing for you if you pay for their service:
JKC Media
Loud City
Sound Exchange
Live365
Creative Commons is a great source for both licensing and for copyright information. They have several licenses that you can use to copyright your work - reserving rights and defining what others may do with or without your permission.
There are a lot of streaming media hosts out there including:
MediaCast
Live365
SpacialNet
SB Hosting Solutions
WaveStreaming
Streaming iRadio seems to cost about $1.25 to $3 per listener hour! It's very expensive!
You don't have to stream, of course - you can just offer your shows as downloads from a more conventional host. But be sure that you will have sufficient bandwidth and that the host will not ding your credit card without warning you first that you are running out of bandwidth. We once went around for months with a host who had dinged us for about $300 in excess bandwidth. Never again will I allow them to hit my card for additional charges without my prior authorization! :-(
You can also put together your own server. Just be careful about bandwidth - your ISP may cancel your account if they discover you are using a residential connection for business bandwidth.
There are a lot of books on Podcasting - look at this
Amazon.com page for example.
One of the things you will need is an audio mixer, which come in software and hardware varieties. My understanding is that it is much better to get a hardware mixer. You will, of course, need microphones. And - judging from some iRadio broadcasts we have listened to - it would help if you have an assistant tend to the audio mix while you are interviewing - sometimes one of the participants needs his/her volume adjusted.
We are a commercial site that makes a fair amount (relatively speaking) from Google, Amazon, affiliate programs and local advertising. One of our main concerns was the probability of making money from the venture. What we discovered was that just about no one actually makes money from iRadio alone - the sites who are making a net profit off iRadio are the ones that are using it as a promotional pull for their site.
In other words, it is advertising expense. And - if it is a good advertising investment - it will pull in more revenue than it costs. Just don't make the mistake of thinking it is a Revenue item on your Income Statement. From what I can tell, it is advertising expense - even for big outfits like commercial radio stations.
Politically, there is danger afoot - Congress is being lobbied by the telecom monopoly to allow them to institute a tollway where freeway now exists. They want to give themselves and their corporate cronies premium bandwidth while squeezing the small guy (you and me) out of competition.
There is an article about the economics of the Internet
here and an article about how they are trying to screw us
here.
Please write your Congressperson!!!
Best of luck with your new venture.
Streaming Radio
Linear Mode
