Manage Your Own Live Web Radio Station With Live365’s New Studio365 App
By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.
Let’s get it right out of the way: broadcasting a Live365 internet radio station is not for everyone. It’s not to be taken lightly. If you want to set up your station, you’ll need to load the MP3s into the station yourself, for example, among other things.
That said, if you want to run your own personal internet radio station (starting at $4/month) or even a professional, money-making, advertising-laden pro station, Live365 is the best way to go, and has been since 1999 or so, because it takes care of the technology (a Shoutcast server) and copyright royalty payments, and lets you simply focus on your station.
In a way, it’s amazing that Live365 is still around, given that it launched in 1999 (the same year as Napster), and that it requires way more effort to broadcast a station by uploading MP3s than it does to simply, like, connect Rdio or Spotify to Facebook and do your “broadcasting” that way. Those who don’t want to expend the effort might try Wahwah instead, or any number of other taste-broadcasting techniques. It doesn’t get simpler than this, for instance.
Not only is Live365 still alive and kicking (with over 5,000 broadcasters and “millions” of listeners), but this week, the company released a new iPhone and Android app called Studio365, which lets broadcasters manage their streams from anywhere. Technically speaking, you could probably be sitting at 40,000 feet on an airplane WiFi system, and record a real-time “shoutout” to insert into your station in near-real-time, which your listeners would then hear on your station. It’s an intriguing mix of new-school internet (apps) and old-school internet (streaming actual MP3s that you actually own).
Live365 provided Evolver.fm with a station for us to manage. After kicking the tires on Studio365, we can verify that it works as advertised, which is as follows:
- “Create, preview, and manage Shout Outs
- Set and update pre-roll and station ID messages
- Update the station profile including title, image, description etc.
- Check the station listening stats
- Listen and share the station anywhere”
Indeed, we added an Evolver.fm shoutout to play after the current song on the “80s One Hit Wonders” channel, and it played perfectly. The best part: the music kicked in nanoseconds after our station ID ended, which sounded much tighter than anything I ever managed on my college radio show. Super slick.
There is one big thing missing from Studio365, which is the ability to manage the playlist your station is playing. However, a note within the app notes that that feature will be coming “in the future.”
(Top image courtesy of Live365)
I’ve had my station Bus of Real Country on Live 365 for over 5 years and this is a great addition. I’m a pro station under the X5000 program who runs in Basic mode. This app made it easy to do a bumpers about the passing of
country singer Jack Green and recent music adds to the Library of Congress.
Hopefully the upcoming options will mean I can handle the whole station on my phone verses carrying a laptop to manage the playlists.