Cloudspeaker Streaming - That's how it works…
…for webradio stations
From a technical point of view cloudspeaker behaves excatly like a Shoutcast or Icecast server. You have two options to bring your input signal to cloudspeaker:
- Choose one of your existing streaming serves as input and use cloudspeaker as a new relay server.
- Upload your stream from your broadcasting software (e.g.SAM Broadcaster, SimpleCast or Winamp DSP Plug-In).
…for listener
The cloudspeaker media player loads directly from the website of the radio station. If you connect to a cloudspeaker stream for the first time a few additional clicks are required. You have to accept our general terms of use and then allow that our player communicates with other listeners of the same stream. Depending on your operating system your firewall may also ask you if the player is allowed to communicate with the Internet. These steps have to be taken only once.
What's under the hood?
Cloudspeaker is built on the community principle, which is the future of the Internet. Instead of strictly separating the servers of the radio station from the audience, we connect the listeners with the radio station in one network, also known as a "Cloud". For Internet telephony Skype has shown the huge potential of this approach and it is our goal to bring the advantages of such a solution also to the operators and listeners of Internet radio stations.
Unlike in traditional streaming in our system a listener no longer downloads the radio program from one single server but from an entire network of servers that also includes the other current listeners of this station. This leads to a massively increased streaming quality as the program can now be downloaded from a large number of differnet servers in parallel.
In traditional streaming systems a problem on the connection to the server leads to interruptions or even a total break down of the playback. In contrast, with our solution such problems are bypassed in milliseconds. If a connections fails the missing data is downloaded from other sources. The system thereby reacts so fast that the listener usually does not notice any interruptions in the playback. The whole system is fully automated and transparently integrated in our media player.
To bring more stable streams to all listeners some teamwork is required. Concretely, all current listeners of a radio station are included in this radio station's cloud. As long as they are listening to the radio station they are part of the distribution cloud and other listeners may download parts of the current program from them.
Benefits
Environmental Friendly
Compared to traditional streaming technologies we require significantly less server infrastructure. This leads to lower energy consumption, less cooling requirements, and ultimately less CO2 emission. Thus, we actively contribute to climate protection.
Managed Servers
As a customer of cloudspeaker you do not have to be an IT-pro to run your radio station. You can fully concentrate on your creative tasks and we take over the chore of managing and maintaining the streaming server.
Reliable Streams
By including the audience in the distribution of your radio program the stream stability and thus also the listening experience of every listener is improved. This effect is caused by the fact that a listener is no longer limited to get your program from one server but where appropriate also from other members of the audience.
BroadcastingTools
Although cloudspeaker employs a new streaming technology you can keep using your existing tools. Our servers support the Shoutcast protocol and you can therefore use any broadcasting software compatible with Shoutcast (e.g. SAM Broadcaster, SimpleCast or Winamp DSP Plug-In) to create your stream.