A radio station for SL ..gimme some feedback

I dunno if this would work or is feasable ..but something I was thinking of today..Is a radio station for SL. I often play SL and stream music from Shoutcast.com in the background, I noticed on their site that anyone can DJ or setup a radiostation for free just by downloading their software. I thought it would be cool to have a radio station for SL that evryone could here in game tunes and possibly even run radio spots for events, parties or ads for their shops...I dunno what do u guys think..im still kinda new here..just somtin i wanted to toss out ..so the community could hash it over. Gimme some feedback..and seeya in SL soon I hope

I would check it out ! Sounds good

This kind of falls in with my suggestion on the features board about being able to assign a shoutcast server to an object. Would be nice to be able to make your jukebox actually play music without splitting wavs into a million parts.

I think it's a great Idea - and I've seen it work! I briefly played the sims online (throw tomatoes at your leisure) and there were a few good stations operating there - which did indeed advertise events and shops with great success - to the point that the guys running the radio station were some of the richest folks in the game!

Great idea IMO. Have a booth and DJ's, a whole studio and a lounge - you could do a lot and have some fun with this at the same time as making some bling bling $linden$

Good luck - if you decide to go ahead - I'd lend a hand.

Well actually i was thinking of doing this for a long while and talked about it with my friend, im pretty sure...well i think this might be possible, if you want to find out how this could work and mabe start a radio station together i would be happy to do it, im an ok scripter but my friend is amazing and we made a walki talki system in sl so me and him and a few other people could communicate and it worked out very well i dont see why we just cant do that with music instead of text. So contact me inworld if you want to consider doing this i think it would be great

I might be off here, but it seems to me that Darzus is talking about running an off-line Shoutcast radio station that you'd simply play in the background while you played SL.

Not 'in game radios' that need scripting and 10-second splicing and in-game DJ booths.

And... I think it sounds like a fine idea.

that's a cool idea Zolrath! the stream wouldnt need to come through SL servers so no increase in their bandwidth usage.

Ya i was thinkin of maybe broadcastin directly through Shoutcast.com...Ill be lookin into this in the next couple of days hope to have somtin runnin by this weekend...I dunno zip about scriptin tho..if its posible to script it in game that would be even cooler

Lol oh sorry i misunderstood you but hey if anyone wants to make an inworld radiostation contact me, oh yeah and about the importing 9 sec clips dont worry i import like 3 songs every time i log on to sl and i go on every day lol so importing new songs is not even a problem

i'd even listen to the station at work Darzus. Looking forward to it.

I understood he meant an offline station that you listen to ingame - my suggestion was that he also have an in-game location to treat as the radio station itself - where you could meet/greet the listeners/clients and generally run it as the facility which you are 'virtually' broadcasting from - just thought that would be awful fun

I think thats a great idea to Trent to have..an actual ingame Radio Brocasting Facility...I am runinig into some complications with Shoutcast atm..but i still think this is a doable task..Ill be in game later today..IM me and maybe we can brainstorm this out thanks for all the feedback everyone

This is a real coolio idea -- one that I've been toying with myself for a short time...

Trent:
I would like to inquire about these TSO radio stations... do you happen to know of any user # limitations that were placed on them? I'm looking at what kind of server you'd need for a project like this...


Zenimus

This is a good idea. If you guys need music to fill your time with, I've got about 2 hours worth of my stuff you can use I don't mind the extra exposure

Lordfly

This would be excellent. I'd be in favor of it, certainly.
This might be just the thing that makes music more commonplace in SL.

I'd be an avid listener, even if I couldn't find time to try and help out.

While music stations would be a great thing, I'd love to see a talk-format one too. Sort of a SL version of NPR.

Yeah, I'm definitely pro-radio.

The guys i was involved with ( i was a DJ doing mainly talk stuff - visiting and reviewing sites and delivering a commentary on them - it rocked) - were using a service to broadcast with - I think they paid $20 a month for rebroadcast of low bandwidth audio. I think the number of seats was in the neighborhood of 50 concurrent - and more was more money.

There are a number of services out there for doing this - I'll look into the prices and we should try to plan a meeting of intersted parties to go over this stuff.

I'm not takin' over here! Dont let me steal your thunder man - still your deal I just think it's exciting, and having done some RL radio in my time (university) I love the atmosphere it provides. Adds a whole new element to the game - and a great community resource. I always loved checking out the places in the ads and in the reviews

Trent we need to talk man!..Im on tonite and tommorow..ive got a lil jazz cafe in Natoma near the Lindens store AV central or whatever the heck its called..lol..send me an IM soon so we can hash this out..I want to hear some ingame tunes..not 10sec uploads..and I think a radio station will make the whole community come alive..we could mix several formats to..talk..news..ad spots....jetball sports reports..and of course some hot tunes ...man I love this game..the possibilities oare unreal!

I have wondered and hoped when someone might try doing a shoutcast or live365 station to stream while playing SL. I used to DJ in TSO and I loved it. I've always wanted to get into radio so this was kind of filling a small fantasy of mine lol. I ran a small one of my own that a friend and I used for private parties etc. Only prob with that was it didn't hold many listeners so yeah paying money looks like the way your gonna get alot of listeners. Check out Live365 if you haven't already. Also let me know if you need DJs I'd love to do it again

I think that sounds like an excellent idea Darzus! I have a feeling that bandwidth is going to be the biggest problem. I used to run my own shoutcast server from home for broadcasting at work. At 128k (usual for ADSL/Cable in my area) I could hold 3 or 4 people with a 24kbps stream and no problems. That makes sense, 96k + overhead is a good portion of the 128k allocated. I garantee SL pings would suffer badly when competing with that load.

The good thing about shoutcast is that it's fairly easy to set up a repeating broadcaster (that's what my co-worked does now). It not only alleviates the bandwidth problem by having fat pipe pushing the stream while you are mastering it from home but also, when you change your WinAMP shoutcast source the repeater changes also. So you could have a number of disparate shows in any location broadcasting their show at a certain time at which you tune your shoutcast source to their streams and you will be streaming to the real broadcaster with a lot of bandwidth. I've never tried anything that complicated but it *should* work.

I was also a co-DJ of the morning show for 3 semesters when I was in college for what it's worth (which would be just about nothing).

Sounds like a great idea. I'd love to help out with a bit of building or in-game cash or something, or helping with broadcasting. So drop me a message too.

Pirate Cotton.

Grand! Grand ideas I love em all..I havent been able to do much lately due to the storm here a couple weeks ago .."Isabella" but Im on vacation for a few days and got some time available to try and get this thing kicked off..naybe do a test this weekend..I spoke to somone in game a few weeks ago who said he could provide a server to broadcast thru. I dont know much about servers or networking..so i am sure ill need some help on this..IM me in game all who want to help maybe we can have a meeting and hash this out..also start a group SL DJ or somthing to that effect...other ideas once we get it running is to get Linden support and do radio broadcast events like the trivia shows some people do in game..I have several ideas for differnt radio formats also..like SL news..SL sports reports ..updates on whats down the pike for sl..all this in addition to some live jams..anyways hit me up in game..ill be on for the next few days full time ..cya in game