Rose Rock Radio

[ryan]

Okay, here's a call to round-up ideas for how to continue Rose Rock Radio, our group's foray into webcasting. This weekend, I've been investigating our options to continue broadcasting. I haven't reached any definite conclusions yet, but I figured I'd share my thoughts and observations.

First off, we've all discussed Jeff's method of broadcasting, and while it certainly works (and inspired this venture), we've already established that it's not ideal. Jeff's method, as you probably recall, involved using an application called ShoutCast to stream audio off his PC through WinAmp and out over the Internet.

In this situation, all the programs responsible for streaming the audio are actually running on the broadcaster's PC at his or her house. This could be seen as an advantage, as it gives you total control over your broadcast -- but in reality, it's more of a disadvantage, because it means that your broadcast-bandwith will be limited to the bandwith of your residential ISP connection -- and even under the most ideal conditions, this probably means that only 5 to 10 listeners could connect to your audio-stream at any given time. In addition, it requires the broadcaster's computer to be powered-on, connected to the internet, and running WinAmp and the ShoutCast Server application anytime the station is to be broadcasting. Not to mention the security risks involved, this setup is terribly inconvenient for the broadcaster and, ultimately, for listeners who would doubtlessly prefer to tune-in at their own convenience.

I suggested that we try running ShoutCast off a webhosting space, thinking that this might resolve all the above problems. Well, I was ignorant about how the process actually works. It seems that, no matter how or where it's configured, the ShoutCast Server application must obtain its source material from a running copy of WinAmp, which must itself be configured with a special plugin which connects it to the "input" side of the ShoutCast Server. In a nutshell, this means that, even if we did get ShoutCast Server installed on a webhosting space, one of us would still have to assume the broadcasting duties, and dedicate our PC to running a WinAmp playlist while the station is airing. While this might resolve our bandwith issue (allowing for more users to connect, since the Server application is on a "real" webhosting space), it would still be inconvenient for us, the broadcasters.

Here's what I would like: I would like the station to be run entirely off of a server. I don't think it makes sense for any of us to have to run anything on our home PC's in order to broadcast. The broadcast should happen automatically, 24 hours a day. Any of us who wish to edit the station's playlist should be able to do so easily, using an FTP client to connect to the webhost to upload or delete song-files -- or using a simple back-end interface similar to those used by WordPress and CPanel. We should furthermore be able to construct a simple website containing a link to the audio feed; users click on the link, it launches in their default audio-player (windows media player or quicktime; winamp or realplayer support is secondary to me), and they hear the station. The feed should supply the name of each artist and song, and the feed should continue until the user closes the window in which it is playing.

So, with the scope of our group-knowledge, is there any way you guys can conceive of doing this?

I'm still researching the matter, but here's what I've discovered so far:

* The proper term for what we want to do is "Webcasting." "Internet Radio" is a less proper term, also used to mean the same thing. A Google search involving either of these terms reveals a myriad of resources. Also try "How to Stream Audio."

* There's always the "Live365" option, which we discussed a few months back. I don't mind going that way, but I'd prefer to have our audio streaming off our own webhosting space; that way, we can design a website around it if we want. If we have our station hosted by Live365, we have to send people to the Live365 website to find us. Live365 does have their "pro" accounts, which allow you to put your branding on their player and which give your station a customizeable URL -- but these accounts are expensive; they start at $75/month, which is frankly ridiculous for us.

* I'd prefer to have our radio station hosted on my friend Wassim's webserver. He runs a small webhosting business. I've used his webhosting service for years. His service is cheap, he offers top-of-the-line features -- and because he's a friend of mine, he's willing to do things for me that other webhosts would not, such as install certain server-side scripts at my request. His website is www.kmethosting.com.

* Check out this website: mp3soundstream.com. Watch the tutorials available there, and you'll see how this software works. It basically automates the process of creating a flash-movie containing an MP3 file and "player" controls. This is really cool. It doesn't exactly provide the webcasting solution I'm hoping for, but it got me to thinking outside the box.

[ryan]

Here's something close to what I imagine us doing:

nunzioweb.com/jukebox.shtml

[ryan]

I still haven't reached any conclusions about anything, but using the information and examples on the Nunzioweb.com page, I just put up a barebones example of such a "streaming jukebox" on my own website:

www.collapsiblefortunes.com

It was working fine for a moment, and then it stopped working altogether -- but I think that's just due to some kind of ISP or server issue, which is probably momentary. At any rate, I'll leave it as-is for now, and continue playing around with it later. Right now, it's so barebones it doesn't even tell you the name of the song that's playing; there's got to be some way to make it pull the name from the id3 tags.

Anyway, I think this is an interesting prospect -- but I'm not entirely sold on it, because at a very basic level, it's more of a "jukebox" than a "radio station." What I mean is, with a radio station, everyone listening-in would "theoretically" be listening to the same songs, in the same order, at the same time. Everyone would be hearing the same portion of the broadcast simultaneously. With a jukebox, everyone comes in at the beginning of the audio-stream, and listens to it independantly. The real-world differences here are tiny and largely intangible -- but it's always seemed to me that a "radio station" style broadcast fosters more of a sense of community; a "jukebox" or "on-demand" performance fosters a sense of isolation. It's the same difference as watching a sitcom on TV and watching the same episode of that sitcom on DVD. Or, perhaps its like hearing your favorite song on the radio, compared to playing it on CD. I've always felt a difference. Am I the only one? And, really, does it matter? I really don't know. What are your thoughts?

[Jeff]

Ryan called Justin and I tonight, and I think we decided that as a first move we will get our own webspace from which to run this forum. Once that is secure we will start looking into html-based streaming possibilities. We may be able to use software to randomly generate playlists from a database that houses all our songs. This would be allow all our songs to be heard, though it wouldn’t quite be internet radio. Ryan lamented this fact and described the mystique of radio, that it is both a communal experience and one which commands more attention than the more passive media on demand. I think he is dead on about that, but apart from some daydreaming about unlikely html coding possibilities, Ryan and I couldn’t figure out how to bring that experience to a webpage.

Still, my main concern is just to provide some way for the world to access our large and growing catalogue of music. We have about 10+ hours of material right now and are digging up and recording new stuff all the time. Further, I would love to host Chris’ films, David’s paintings, Rick’s graphics, a searchable copy of DI, THIS FORUM (DII?), et al. I just think we are doing work that we should be proud of. It’s definitely work that I would like to archive in a meaningful way.

So, I guess what we need first is a domain name. What should our webspace be called? We’ve talked about this before. As I recall, indigenouscircle.com was not registered, but it had that offputting air of exclusivity. Should we be roserockradio.com? Ryan held this one for us. But it would be kind of strange to call ourselves a radio station when we didn’t do any radio at all. I don’t know, and I didn’t really get a feel for what Ryan thinks on the phone. He merely directed me to start a thread. This is it.

(BTW, if you promised Ryan that you would donate money to the cause, you might think about actually making your donation. He set up a paypal account for exactly that purpose: Login to Paypal and when it asks you for the "Recipient's Email or Phone," type-in Ryan’s email address: [e-mail].)

The immediate upshot is that very shortly we’ll be saying good-bye to Proboards and closing down this forum. I will back it up, but it is almost certain that the new forum won’t be able to incorporate the data here as Proboards uses a proprietary db that looks incompatible with phpbb, the forum app that Ryan talked about using on our own site.

So,

1. Post your domain name ideas here.
2. Keep looking for websites that work the way you think ours ought to.
3. Tell us about the features you'd like to see on our own website.
4. And try to think of a way to do internet radio via html.

Jeff

[Jeff]

This is what I found tonight, Ryan:

Icecasting
www.icecast.org/
www.gnuware.com/icecast/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icecast

PHPStreamcast
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhpStreamcast
www.adfinis.com/node/22
php-stream.sourceforge.net/

And here are some interesting webbased radio stations that I found:
www.crockfm.com/
www.weasel.net/ (Wow, Giuffria Call To Your Heart!)
www.ipartyradio.com/

(It looks like we need a dedicated server to stream the media with this method. I am not exactly sure how much one would cost, but we might be able to use one of our old PCs to do it. A properly configured 1.5Ghz 512 MB RAM box will support 500-750 individual streams, so this is probably not as big of a deal as it sounds ($200-$400). It would also need to be set up in someone's house on someone's internet connection. We might even need to pay for a dedicated line (about $40/month) if traffic gets high. If all that is true, the radio station would cost about $500/year plus the initial investment in a server. But I might be wrong about all this.)

[Ryan D]

What's in a name?

I originally objected to "indigenouscircle.com" when we discussed it as the domain name for our radio station -- but I feel that it would be appropriate for our forum's domain. So that's a possibility, in my book.

I also like "indigenousfamily.com," which is available, and "indigenoussociety.com," which is also available.

On a brainstorming note, I feel like we should choose a name for our forum which identifies what we are. So, that raises the question: What are we? What is our purpose on the web? Why do we have a forum? If we can answer these questions, I believe we will find a name we can all agree on.

I'd urge us to answer these questions as inclusively as possible. In other words, I'm not intersted in imposing any artificial constraints on what we do. I'm interested simply in looking at what we have done, taking a few steps back, and saying, "What definition fits all of this?"

So, the definition must be broad. Here's my attempt: I would describe us as a loose association of like-minded individuals, each creative in his or her own right, gathering online to share our thoughts and ideas, for the purpose of supporting each others' creative endeavors and adding a level of meaning and context to each others' lives. In this respect, we function much like a family -- albeit a geographically scattered one. The forum is our dinner-table, our center of meaningful discussion and community.

It just occurred to me that this kind of sounds like a mission statement. That could be a fun and informative project, actually: Write a mission statement for this forum. Wow, I'd like to see what everyone would submit. We should do that.

But back on the subject, my definition of this forum forces me to ask, "Why are we drawn to the word, 'indigenous?'" Does this word inform our function? Does it speak of something vital to our essence? I've always thought the word was a reference to our grassroots level of thinking. As in, "We are close to the earth. We build from the ground up; our structures are strong." But I wonder if that's what others here think? Does the word 'indigenous,' specifically in relationship to our forum, have other meanings to you guys/gals? Are there other words we might choose to replace it?

I submit these questions merely as brainstorming-starters. I'm not dissatisfied with the word "indigenous" or with any of the domain-names I suggested at the beginning of this post. But I'd like to solicit fresh ideas, and possibly suggest a few of my own, if any occur to me.

Words I'm continuing to toss around:
* Community
* Table
* Indigenous
* Foods/drinks that suggest community rather than eating -- bread, wine.
* Family (although I don't like the way this word has come to be associated with the Christian Right)
* Society (although I'm not sure this word's political connotations are appropriate)
* Fringe, Press, Brew, Stamp, Rock, ...

[Betterout]

Hmmm....

Maybe it's just me, but on second thought, I *kinda* like the idea of the website in question being an auditory-only affair. I wouldn't want to limit the music available for the site to just "Group" folks, 'cos there are only a few prolific acts in the bunch. Why not broaden it out beyond ourselves, and include some of Ryan's myriad Tulsa connections or the South I-35 acts Zakk knows socially? Perhaps some of these guys couldn't care less about process philosophy, art history, or modern liberalism. That doesn't mean they can't rock out. And we all know what it's like to be hunting around for a musical audience.

My vote: roserockradio.com

[Betterout]

By the way, I still think there needs to be an Indigenous site. But as far as I'm concerned, we'd ideally have two sites.

[ryan]

Justin,

I wholly agree with you. That's actually what Jeff and I discussed, and what we decided to do, although it admittedly doesn't seem very clear from the postings we've made here. Jeff's post and my own post about domain names were actually in regard to setting-up a new site for the Indigenous forum, not for the radio station site.

See, when I called Jeff the other night to discuss the radio station (immediatly after talking to you), I got the impression that he doesn't want to set-up the radio-station site without also setting up a new home for the Indigenous Forum. The two sites would be sister-sites, and could even be hosted off the same webhosting account. So, Jeff's solicitation for domain names was in regard to the Indigenous Forum site, not the radio station.

I have not moved forward with anything yet, but as soon as we've decided on a domain name for the Indigenous Forum, I'll obtain our webhosting space and the Indigenous Forum domain name, then I'll point both the Rose Rock Radio and the Indigenous domains to separate folders within our webhosting space. Or something like that. At any rate, it works; I've had two domain names hosted from the same webhosting account before.

Setting-up the new Indigenous Forum site should be a piece of cake; I'll just install PHPbb on our webhosting space, and point our domain name to its index. Then we can start using it instead. (It keeps all its data in a MySQL table. I'm not sure how we'd back up the site, but I'm sure there would be a way, seeing as how we'd have access to all the files.)

But first we need a domain name for the IndigenousForum site.

Wait: "indigenousforum.com" is available. Why didn't that phrase occur to us before? It's so obvious. I think it's perfect. I'm in for "indigenousforum.com." I'll reserve the name and obtain our webhosting account ASAP, as soon as Jeff or Justin approves.

[Jeff]

Hey Ryan, sorry for my tendency to spread confusion. (That's what I get for being a lumper instead of a splitter.) But your clarity is the antidote. indigenousforum.com sounds great, easy to remember and traditional, for us anyway.

roserockradio.com

and

indigenousforum.com

[ryan]

Done, and done. The webhosting space is arranged, as are both domain names. I'll let you know once I get a working bulliten board installed.