I was never quite crazy about the /AutoDJ element of CentovaCast and have always been looking for a a better (and more fun) alternative and found one in Airtime – I absolutely love their slogan “Find a way, or make one”.
The live #opened12 live audio streams were powered by an army of mic wielding volunteers and Airtime. It worked great and served up live audio from mobiles over 3 concurrent conference streams. See here for listener #s over stream 1, stream 2, stream 3.
So taking inspiration from TeamDTLT and their great Domain of Ones Own ethos I figured it was high time #ds106radio gets its own domain and start exploring some interesting ways to further freeform and distribute the audio experiment.
So, introducing the new digs:
The link above is a placeholder for what will morph into an HTML5 friendly mobile player. For now, you’ll see links to 128k and 64k streams along with a widget the shows what is playing now and what is scheduled up next.
Much of the functionality of #ds106radio remains the same (e.g. mobile broadcasting, scheduled rotations of audio collections) but there are a few new pieces that I am jazzed about.
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Smart Playlists
ds106rad.io will will have it’s own dropbox coming soon – goodbye http://dropitto.me/ds106 . Airtime’s ‘Smart Playlists’ will allow blocks of programming to be scheduled that will only play tracks submitted to ds106rad.io according to a wide range of criteria. These playlists will be generated dynamically, so essentially if you wanted a show called ‘Listener’s Choice’ you could create daily Smart Playlists that only play submissions made that day/week. Each day/week in that slot you will hear a different mix.
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Scheduled XCasting
There is a long tradition of #ds106radio XCasts – essentially taking a live audio stream from your computer or terrestrial station, broadcasting it to #ds106radio and narrating over the top. Airtime supports the ability to dial in any online stream and syndicate it with a given time period. For example, in the North American witching hours on ds106rad.io listeners will hear UbuWebRadio syndicated. This sort of radio syndication is something public broadcasters have been doing for decades – tune into NPR, BBC, or CBC in wee hours and you are likely to hear programming from PRI and other such groups – now #ds106radio can play with this too. At present I am only syndicating WFMU (Tues thru Thurs 9-11 EST) and UbuWebRadio (Every day – Midnight-5AM EST).
If you have any other live programs you think are a good fit for ds106rad.io which have a live online stream please let me know in the comments – would love to fill out weekly roster with some scheduled XCasts.
I will be keeping the old server at 208.82.115.69:8010 for a few months as a relay of everything that is being broadcast at http://ds106rad.io/listen .
Now despite all the new fun stuff like smart playlists and AutoXCasts you can all still broadcast live – cause that’s where the magic happens. The live settings are:
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Name: ds106rad.io
Server: ds106rad.io
Port: 8010
Mountpoint: live
Username: source
Password: ds106
Codec: mp3
Bitrate: 128 (or less)
Protocol: Icecast2
Stereo: Yes (or no .. as you like)
Will put the above settings for /LIVE broadcasts in play starting tomorrow. I will be posting some details on how everyone can turn their hand to station manager hijinx soon – stay tuned. Looking forward to playing with the new digs.
This looks amazing, and that’s the best domain name ever! Love the idea of scheduled broadcasts from friendly sister stations. What a great update to my favorite radio station ever. You rock!
Thanks Tim – inspired by all the awesome work you and TeamDTLT do – prompted me to light new fires. Really looking forward to playing with this and seeing what new ds106 students will do with their radio assignments in the coming weeks.
Shopping around for a good uploader front end for ds106rad.io if you happen to know of any – thinking I will setup WebDAV w/ a simple point & shoot uploader.
It’s a whole new age in radio, woo hoo! I’ll be sorting out the details so we can update the ds106 site. A few questions:
* So any broadcasters now need to use the new broadcast settings, right?
* I like the little play widget, are there more styles? OK to run them from our sites?
* What (and who) will need to change the @ds106tadio twitterbot?
* No more “Can You Dig It!”
Awesome more history making
* Request for Xcast — KJZZ (Phoenix http://www.kjzz.org/ ) Those Lowdown Blues with Bob Corritore 6-10pm (AZ Time) http://riosal.ic.llnwd.net/stream/riosal_kjzz.m3u
Still a bunch of things to develop, but in answer to your questions:
* yes, as of tomorrow /LIVE broadcasters should use the new settings listed above
* there are 3 widgets – I will post the [iframe] embeds for them this week to share the love – all the widgets are skin-able – so we can play with the look
* all that needs to change in the Twitter bot is the ref from http://208.82.115.69:8010/stream to http://ds106rad.io:8000/ds106radio_128
* am going to hardcode the ‘Can You Dig It’ preroll into the icecast.xml config soon – that it plays every time you connect to either the 128 or 64 stream.
Looking good. Wondering though how we get enough word out to people to change their broadcast settings, what happens if they use the old one in the interim? It looks like theere will be new and old mountpoints available.
Not sure who runs the twitterbot, I think maybe Jim has the keys. I will email him.
Alan: need to work on the way metadata is updated in IceCast via http://savonet.sourceforge.net/ and Airtime … Twitterbot may be down for a bit until I can get this piece updated.
Locked in the KJZZ Blues Show for weeknight crosscasts 6-10 AZT to ds106rad.io
The widgets are at:
http://ds106rad.io/airtime-widgets/today
http://ds106rad.io/airtime-widgets/live
You can straight iframe them in a sidebar like:
iframe src=”http://ds106rad.io/airtime-widgets/today” marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ frameborder=”0″ height=”150″ scrolling=”no” width=”320″
Can’t wait to take the new ride out for a spin buddy! 128 kpbs will be DEADLY for my sets, I plan to push that sucker to the max, in the MIX! Classy branding and UI as well, thanks for not using D’arcys’ icon. 😮 #4life
Yowzah!
I’m thrilled about this direction Grant. I know you’ve been working on it for a long minute.
Might I suggest KEXP 6am-10am, M-F as a xcast? I do that occasionally. It’s my favorite mix show w/ a good sample of the oldies (e.g., Pixies, Clash, etc.) and the latest rock.
Looking forward to seeing if this new interface invites new folks to join our happy family.
Thanks for keeping the lights on at the station for TWO YEARS. Many days, #ds106radio has been my lighthouse, and many more nights… when I need it the most.
Continuamos con la musica y que viva la revoluccion!
GNA
KEXP 6-10 AM weekdays – done.
I love Airtime! I use it at home here and have used it to rebroadcast our personal radio stream to ds106 :). fantastic and so cool with its ability to upload from a cell anywhere in the world. you can even use it live as it intergrates with the Mixxx project (DJ software) take a look. anyone broadcasting to the /live point should look at mixxx anyway. less lag for the mic and great control over music and all opensource.
After finding I was listening to something different from /stream and then seeing an empty /live and also /autodj (all with 0 listeners) — it seemed as if something had to be going on, and so after checking the #ds106 and seeing David and David chatting, I’ve just read this little stream here. Excited to learn more and continue to play along. Little sibling 105theHive.org needs to keep pace ….
It’s beautiful!
to get the word out about the change,how about hard coding a second preroll message on the old stream as well as twitter?
Man I just love this place! Here we are another year gone by and I’m initiating a whole new West Coast family to #ds106radio. I’m with GNA – this place has been a light in the dark for me on too many occasions to count. Thanks again for making the space for others to flourish!