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Written by Derick Eisenhardt
Have you ever thought of running your own Internet radio or TV station? Numerous broadcast tools have come out over the last decade, but the bandwidth requiredto run one is still extremely high. The cheapest solution for most was to just let someone like Live365 take care of the bandwidth, but many still felt restricted by this. A couple years back Live365 started charging broadcasters higher fees to run their station without commercials being added to their playlist and users would have to start paying as well. Shoutcast and Icecast stations are still a popular alternative, but once again it costs a lot to host all that bandwidth yourself.
The same problem had troubled websites for years as well 'till Bit Torrent came around. If you don't already know, BitTorrent allows sites to get away with smaller bandwidth by having the people that are downloading from them also upload to each other which cuts down bandwidth needs dramatically. Unfortunately BitTorrent was only designed for static files so this doesn't help out Internet broadcasters much.
There have been two different solutions to this problem. One idea which has become fairly popular is "podcasting", which isn't really broadcasting at all, and "peercasting". Podcasting is a fairly simple process aimed at iPod users and the like. Instead of listening to live, streaming audio, a listener will download an entire playlist of music and then just listen to that. I'm not aware of anyone doing the same with a TV station-like theme, but I'm sure it's quite possible. This however took away the magic of a live broadcast. With live radio you can talk on air, have listeners call in, take requests etc. Still, a lot of people seem to be fine with this loss; probably since most traditional radio stations are filled with boring talk radio and such these days.
If you're still interested in live radio or TV, there are now some quite viable solutions. Although none of these have really taken off, Peercast seems to be about the most popular and mature. The peercast design is pretty simple and easy to setup. For listeners, all you do is download the client (available for Linux, Mac & Windows) and it acts as a middle man between the broadcaster and your media player of choice. For broadcasters all you do is broadcast with a traditional encoder like Icecast or Oggcap, the peercast software receives this stream and then redistributes it for you. Now this may sound very similar to the way BitTorrent works, but it's not. BitTorrent uses a technique called "swarming" which allows you to download and upload numerous little bits wherever it is most efficient. Peercast simply works off a piggy back algorithm where you relay an entire stream to the next person. This seems to work fine for low bitrate streams like audio, but doesn't work too well for decent quality video. There have been many discussion on solutions on their forums, such as "minute swarming", which would use a swarming technique for each minute of the stream, but nothing has really happened yet. As of right now this is a pretty large hurdle in the way of peercasting really taking off. The Xiph foundation have been planning a similar technology called IceShare for a while, but there has yet to be any code produced. The project page for IceShare claims it will use portions of BitTorrent's code, but how so has not really been discussed much.
Ok, so you've got your internet radio station going now, but what are you gonna play? If you want to play mainstream music, you'll probably have the RIAA or ASCAP asking for money for the "right" to play their music. How much they would be entitled to is still iffy since current rules and laws weren't designed with peercasting in mind. Most countries will have rules stating for every 25 listeners you must pay so much money, but with peercast you may be technically only broadcasting to one or two listeners and then it spreads from there. Do they just count how many total listeners there are and charge the original broadcaster based on that, or does each person relaying the station get charged? This is a matter yet to be figured out, and will probably be a topic of discussion for quite some time. Well, you could always play independent artists. Most Internet based musicians are smart enough to realize that you playing their music will only help promote them more for free and will gladly allow you to play their stuff. There are even some musicians releasing their songs under Creative Commons or GPL licenses. Well, what if you wanted to run a TV station? The restrictions on rebroadcasting of TV shows and movies are even more harsh, yet less defined since it doesn't happen quite as often. Once again there are some good indy shows you could find on the net and broadcast, but there's much less to choose from. However, if independent film makers realized the opportunities peercasting can afford them, maybe more would try it. Another benefit peercasting vs. BitTorrent distribution may eventually provide is content on demand type services. If peercasting really took off, mainstream/traditional radio and TV stations might be in big trouble.
So if you've been itching to create your own Internet radio or TV station, but didn't want to pay outrageous fees for bandwidth, peercasting may be your solution.