6 ms·

Icecast: Open Source multimedia streaming

100 points by phantom_oracle 8y ago

kiallmacinnes 8y ago
Oh wow, I forgot about shoutcast and icecast, it's been a while! Looking around, I see those stations still exist!
doublerebel 8y ago
The Icecast/Shoutcast protocol is really simple, and supported on basically all platforms. I've made some fun things with implementations [0] and I know a few guys who have made a business of it. [0]: https://github.com/livebassmusicrightnow/even-nicercast https://github.com/livebassmusicrightnow/even-nicercast
jypepin 8y ago
I have to say, for someone who doesn't really know how those kind of things work (i usually work on web stuff) I tried to help a friend who had a radio already setup, and I couldn't wrap my head around how anything works. The documentation is extremely poor (when any) and I'm still confused at the difference between icecast and ezstream, which does what and such. It's too bad, because as another comment mentions, it does seem pretty simple and powerful once you know how it works, but the lack of documentation (official or not, yes I tried googling stuff) makes it almost impossible to do anything if you don't know how it works already.
- fps_doug 8y ago
  I had similar experience when I played around with it a decade ago. I actually resorted to the closed source shoutcast server back then, which was almost plug and play, even though it was already pretty much abandoned software at that time.
alias_neo 8y ago
Slightly off topic, but there is an internet radio station I have set as my morning alarm, when my radio turns on or I switch to that station it always plays their intro track, then a song. The intro is just a short ~3 second "Welcome to...". It's the only station I've witnessed that does this but I like it, I wonder if icecast has a feature like that.
- erk__ 8y ago
  Even more off topic, the Korean live streaming site Afreeca does something similar, when you get the hls segments the first 3 you get are called "pre loading" I am not really sure why there are there. Though I suspect it is because they usually breaks players so you can not play it without doing something about it.
- therealidiot 8y ago
  You can set an intro file in Icecast's mount settings http://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings http://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mount...
  - alias_neo 8y ago
    Nice thanks, I'm tempted to set up my own radio station for my morning alarm now!
    - therealidiot 8y ago
      I do something similar, using a liquidsoap script as the source to icecast https://www.liquidsoap.info/ https://www.liquidsoap.info/
- mikeash 8y ago
  My local NPR station has an intro set up to play ads, I mean “sponsorship messages.”
cvs268 8y ago
Reminds me of an "How-To" i wrote several years ago... https://thecodeartist.blogspot.com/2013/02/shoutcast-internet-radio-protocol.html https://thecodeartist.blogspot.com/2013/02/shoutcast-interne... Capturing any Shoutcast stream from the terminal in 13 lines of C code.
- sitkack 8y ago
  Or wget.
moreentropy 8y ago
Icecast existed for ages. It's streaming protocol (about the same as the proprietary shoutcast) is basically an endless progressive HTTP download, which means you can simply put a stream URL into an audio tag in HTML and the stream plays in a browser or save a stream using wget/curl. The protocol is/was directly supported by about any MP3 player software since the end of the 90s, including display of metadata updated (song/show title). One problem with Icecast streams is that content is streamed through a long lasting HTTP request. If the TCP connection breaks there is no way to recover without interrupting playback. Some Antivirus software will think the stream is a downloadable file, so it will withhold data from the browser while trying to download the whole stream. Using HTTPS for Icecast helps to keep most AV software from MITMing the stream. If you implement A/V streaming to the web today, you most probably would want to use chunked streaming with modern protocols like HLS or DASH. ffmpeg can do this. The encoder will save a live a/v source into small fragments (like 2 seconds) on a webserver that the browser can download, reassemble and play one after the other. If one chunk download fails (because of a network change on the client side), the browser might be able to retry downloading chunks. Caching/distribution also works using standard HTTP accelerators with chunked streaming while you need to chain multiple Icecast servers if you want to scale Icecast. Edit and shameless self plug: I wrote an Icecast exporter a few years ago to get nice streaming stats in Prometheus: https://github.com/markuslindenberg/icecast_exporter https://github.com/markuslindenberg/icecast_exporter
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  Additional benefit for chunked streaming: It continues working when switching networks (going from home wifi to mobile network etc.) and the client can switch to different quality based on bandwidth (especially for video)
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  The chunk based solutions are rather high latency though, at least in typical implementations streaming sites relying on them are often 10-30 seconds behind live data. IceCast is much faster than that at least - and not so problematic - typically the stream starts a bit before live data so you have a second or two in which you can reconnect and match up the current ending of the data. EDIT: Both of these are abuses of HTTP though while they probably should be using a dedicated UDP-based streaming protocol which wouldn't suffer from any of these issues. WebRTC goes in the right direction by using RTP for this.
ddevault 8y ago
If you want to set up a radio station which just shuffles a big playlist and takes listener requests (like my friends and I did), you will probably find my buddy's kawa project a better solution: https://github.com/luminarys/kawa https://github.com/luminarys/kawa We started with icecast+liquidsoap and replaced it because whoo-ee is it crufty. Also check out our Python daemon for controlling it, indexing music, searching the database, and taking requests: https://git.sr.ht/~minus/stewdio-api https://git.sr.ht/~minus/stewdio-api
ds0 8y ago
A pleasant Icecast-using website is n10as (pronounced "antennas") radio[0]. I'm a longtime listener. Personally, I like to use Icecast alongside Mixxx[1], an open-source DJ software that I highly recommend, to do live mixes of dance music over the web. Mixxx comes with configuration settings for broadcasting live audio within the program itself without the need for any extra client. [0] http://n10.as/ http://n10.as/ [1] https://www.mixxx.org/ https://www.mixxx.org/
- TheSwordsman 8y ago
  Wow, going to n10as website is an experience...
- sitkack 8y ago
  Reminds me of the 90s when there was a plethora of independent net radio stations. We ran a icecast server at work (in the 90s) with a multiperson playlist, the test lab had speakers so it would be the same music playing in my office an the lab. Fun stuff.
soylentcola 8y ago
I still listen to several of these types of stations (even ran one for a few years in the early/mid 2000's). Mine was essentially just an unlicensed stream of whatever I'd put into a huge Winamp Playlist, but I also had some friends from an online forum and we would put together silly jingles and "station ID" clips to sprinkle throughout the day as well. Hosting was provided by a friend who worked for a small ISP/hosting company and he just gave me free access, saying that nothing I could use would make a dent in their available bandwidth (and he would let me know if that changed). It was pretty fun and I even went "live" on the mic occasionally if I knew there were people listening, but eventually I started looking into going "legit". For a while it was looking like I could actually afford the basic ASCAP/BMI/etc. license with hobby money but that changed when laws were changed to require you to pay royalties per-song-per-listener (unlike terrestrial radio). Ran it unlicensed for a little while after that but eventually shut it off as it got to be a hassle and I had too many other things going on in life. Still, it was cool to get emails from people around the world thanking me for my stream. At a time when friends were paying monthly subscriptions for XM radio, I plugged my little Palm Treo into the car stereo and had my own station to listen to all day. Before commercial streaming, there weren't many similar options but a good set of Shoutcast/Icecast bookmarks gave me the best radio dial I could imagine...without the subscription! I still listen to several of these stations when I'm not listening to something in my own library or the local NPR affiliate. There's something to be said for real human-programmed playlists from people who love music. I know Spotify playlists serve this purpose for many folks, but I haven't really gotten into that since I have so many options.
- natural20s 8y ago
  "For a while it was looking like I could actually afford the basic ASCAP/BMI/etc. license with hobby money but that changed when laws were changed to require you to pay royalties per-song-per-listener (unlike terrestrial radio)." ^^^ This is what really killed hobby streaming. The fear of getting popular and reported had a serious chilling effect on this scene. Coupled with the rise of streaming services that changed the music paradigm from ownership to on-demand access. Yes the platforms had a bit of a learning curve... hand editing icecast config.xml beyond basic settings could be daunting. But I still run icecast and shoutcast servers on digitalocean for $10/month with an autodj randomly cycling through my mp3 collection... comes in handy when entertaining and need my own music etc. It is still possible to find great niche streaming stations using directories: [0] https://www.streamfinder.com https://www.streamfinder.com [1] http://www.radio-browser.info http://www.radio-browser.info As a side-note - Nullsoft (shoutcast developer) was purchased by AOL and languished. Recently a French company radionomy purchased shoutcast from AOL and has relaunched it. They have a pretty mature radio broadcasting platform built on it. (I don't work there just admire their product)
mikhailfranco 8y ago
A good example of the open source Lang Whack: Nominate an open source project home page and challenge someone to find out the programming language. The longest time or most traversed links wins. Sometimes you can read the whole site, understand the features, the architecture, the license, the supported platforms, the whole FAQ, how to contribute, the bug tracker, the mailing list, and even get to the main page of the github site, all without ever seeing a statement about the implementation language. The developers writing the site take it so much for granted, they never mention it. However, the more obscure or fanboyish the language, the more likely it is to be mentioned early. Those developers are proud and delighted to be using that niche esoteric language. In some cases, they take more pride in using that language than actually implementing something useful. Of course, in this case, one might suspect that media libraries would be in C/C++, but there are many other fun examples out there. Do you have any strong contenders for Lang Whack champion?
dano 8y ago
There remain a large number of streaming stations available. There's the icecast directory [1] and Streamfinder [2] and I'm sure there are more. 1. http://dir.xiph.org/ http://dir.xiph.org/ 2. http://www.streamfinder.com/ http://www.streamfinder.com/

Oh wow, I forgot about shoutcast and icecast, it's been a while! Looking around, I see those stations still exist!

The Icecast/Shoutcast protocol is really simple, and supported on basically all platforms. I've made some fun things with implementations [0] and I know a few guys who have made a business of it. [0]: https://github.com/livebassmusicrightnow/even-nicercast https://github.com/livebassmusicrightnow/even-nicercast

jypepin 8y ago

I have to say, for someone who doesn't really know how those kind of things work (i usually work on web stuff) I tried to help a friend who had a radio already setup, and I couldn't wrap my head around how anything works. The documentation is extremely poor (when any) and I'm still confused at the difference between icecast and ezstream, which does what and such. It's too bad, because as another comment mentions, it does seem pretty simple and powerful once you know how it works, but the lack of documentation (official or not, yes I tried googling stuff) makes it almost impossible to do anything if you don't know how it works already.

fps_doug 8y ago
I had similar experience when I played around with it a decade ago. I actually resorted to the closed source shoutcast server back then, which was almost plug and play, even though it was already pretty much abandoned software at that time.

alias_neo 8y ago

Slightly off topic, but there is an internet radio station I have set as my morning alarm, when my radio turns on or I switch to that station it always plays their intro track, then a song. The intro is just a short ~3 second "Welcome to...". It's the only station I've witnessed that does this but I like it, I wonder if icecast has a feature like that.

erk__ 8y ago
Even more off topic, the Korean live streaming site Afreeca does something similar, when you get the hls segments the first 3 you get are called "pre loading" I am not really sure why there are there. Though I suspect it is because they usually breaks players so you can not play it without doing something about it.
therealidiot 8y ago
You can set an intro file in Icecast's mount settings http://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings http://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mount...
- alias_neo 8y ago
  Nice thanks, I'm tempted to set up my own radio station for my morning alarm now!
  - therealidiot 8y ago
    I do something similar, using a liquidsoap script as the source to icecast https://www.liquidsoap.info/ https://www.liquidsoap.info/
mikeash 8y ago
My local NPR station has an intro set up to play ads, I mean “sponsorship messages.”

cvs268 8y ago

Reminds me of an "How-To" i wrote several years ago... https://thecodeartist.blogspot.com/2013/02/shoutcast-internet-radio-protocol.html https://thecodeartist.blogspot.com/2013/02/shoutcast-interne... Capturing any Shoutcast stream from the terminal in 13 lines of C code.

sitkack 8y ago
Or wget.

moreentropy 8y ago

Icecast existed for ages. It's streaming protocol (about the same as the proprietary shoutcast) is basically an endless progressive HTTP download, which means you can simply put a stream URL into an audio tag in HTML and the stream plays in a browser or save a stream using wget/curl. The protocol is/was directly supported by about any MP3 player software since the end of the 90s, including display of metadata updated (song/show title). One problem with Icecast streams is that content is streamed through a long lasting HTTP request. If the TCP connection breaks there is no way to recover without interrupting playback. Some Antivirus software will think the stream is a downloadable file, so it will withhold data from the browser while trying to download the whole stream. Using HTTPS for Icecast helps to keep most AV software from MITMing the stream. If you implement A/V streaming to the web today, you most probably would want to use chunked streaming with modern protocols like HLS or DASH. ffmpeg can do this. The encoder will save a live a/v source into small fragments (like 2 seconds) on a webserver that the browser can download, reassemble and play one after the other. If one chunk download fails (because of a network change on the client side), the browser might be able to retry downloading chunks. Caching/distribution also works using standard HTTP accelerators with chunked streaming while you need to chain multiple Icecast servers if you want to scale Icecast. Edit and shameless self plug: I wrote an Icecast exporter a few years ago to get nice streaming stats in Prometheus: https://github.com/markuslindenberg/icecast_exporter https://github.com/markuslindenberg/icecast_exporter

johannes1234321 8y ago
Additional benefit for chunked streaming: It continues working when switching networks (going from home wifi to mobile network etc.) and the client can switch to different quality based on bandwidth (especially for video)
shittyadmin 8y ago
The chunk based solutions are rather high latency though, at least in typical implementations streaming sites relying on them are often 10-30 seconds behind live data. IceCast is much faster than that at least - and not so problematic - typically the stream starts a bit before live data so you have a second or two in which you can reconnect and match up the current ending of the data. EDIT: Both of these are abuses of HTTP though while they probably should be using a dedicated UDP-based streaming protocol which wouldn't suffer from any of these issues. WebRTC goes in the right direction by using RTP for this.

ddevault 8y ago

If you want to set up a radio station which just shuffles a big playlist and takes listener requests (like my friends and I did), you will probably find my buddy's kawa project a better solution: https://github.com/luminarys/kawa https://github.com/luminarys/kawa We started with icecast+liquidsoap and replaced it because whoo-ee is it crufty. Also check out our Python daemon for controlling it, indexing music, searching the database, and taking requests: https://git.sr.ht/~minus/stewdio-api https://git.sr.ht/~minus/stewdio-api

ds0 8y ago

A pleasant Icecast-using website is n10as (pronounced "antennas") radio[0]. I'm a longtime listener. Personally, I like to use Icecast alongside Mixxx[1], an open-source DJ software that I highly recommend, to do live mixes of dance music over the web. Mixxx comes with configuration settings for broadcasting live audio within the program itself without the need for any extra client. [0] http://n10.as/ http://n10.as/ [1] https://www.mixxx.org/ https://www.mixxx.org/

TheSwordsman 8y ago
Wow, going to n10as website is an experience...
sitkack 8y ago
Reminds me of the 90s when there was a plethora of independent net radio stations. We ran a icecast server at work (in the 90s) with a multiperson playlist, the test lab had speakers so it would be the same music playing in my office an the lab. Fun stuff.

soylentcola 8y ago

I still listen to several of these types of stations (even ran one for a few years in the early/mid 2000's). Mine was essentially just an unlicensed stream of whatever I'd put into a huge Winamp Playlist, but I also had some friends from an online forum and we would put together silly jingles and "station ID" clips to sprinkle throughout the day as well. Hosting was provided by a friend who worked for a small ISP/hosting company and he just gave me free access, saying that nothing I could use would make a dent in their available bandwidth (and he would let me know if that changed). It was pretty fun and I even went "live" on the mic occasionally if I knew there were people listening, but eventually I started looking into going "legit". For a while it was looking like I could actually afford the basic ASCAP/BMI/etc. license with hobby money but that changed when laws were changed to require you to pay royalties per-song-per-listener (unlike terrestrial radio). Ran it unlicensed for a little while after that but eventually shut it off as it got to be a hassle and I had too many other things going on in life. Still, it was cool to get emails from people around the world thanking me for my stream. At a time when friends were paying monthly subscriptions for XM radio, I plugged my little Palm Treo into the car stereo and had my own station to listen to all day. Before commercial streaming, there weren't many similar options but a good set of Shoutcast/Icecast bookmarks gave me the best radio dial I could imagine...without the subscription! I still listen to several of these stations when I'm not listening to something in my own library or the local NPR affiliate. There's something to be said for real human-programmed playlists from people who love music. I know Spotify playlists serve this purpose for many folks, but I haven't really gotten into that since I have so many options.

natural20s 8y ago
"For a while it was looking like I could actually afford the basic ASCAP/BMI/etc. license with hobby money but that changed when laws were changed to require you to pay royalties per-song-per-listener (unlike terrestrial radio)." ^^^ This is what really killed hobby streaming. The fear of getting popular and reported had a serious chilling effect on this scene. Coupled with the rise of streaming services that changed the music paradigm from ownership to on-demand access. Yes the platforms had a bit of a learning curve... hand editing icecast config.xml beyond basic settings could be daunting. But I still run icecast and shoutcast servers on digitalocean for $10/month with an autodj randomly cycling through my mp3 collection... comes in handy when entertaining and need my own music etc. It is still possible to find great niche streaming stations using directories: [0] https://www.streamfinder.com https://www.streamfinder.com [1] http://www.radio-browser.info http://www.radio-browser.info As a side-note - Nullsoft (shoutcast developer) was purchased by AOL and languished. Recently a French company radionomy purchased shoutcast from AOL and has relaunched it. They have a pretty mature radio broadcasting platform built on it. (I don't work there just admire their product)

mikhailfranco 8y ago

A good example of the open source Lang Whack: Nominate an open source project home page and challenge someone to find out the programming language. The longest time or most traversed links wins. Sometimes you can read the whole site, understand the features, the architecture, the license, the supported platforms, the whole FAQ, how to contribute, the bug tracker, the mailing list, and even get to the main page of the github site, all without ever seeing a statement about the implementation language. The developers writing the site take it so much for granted, they never mention it. However, the more obscure or fanboyish the language, the more likely it is to be mentioned early. Those developers are proud and delighted to be using that niche esoteric language. In some cases, they take more pride in using that language than actually implementing something useful. Of course, in this case, one might suspect that media libraries would be in C/C++, but there are many other fun examples out there. Do you have any strong contenders for Lang Whack champion?

dano 8y ago

There remain a large number of streaming stations available. There's the icecast directory [1] and Streamfinder [2] and I'm sure there are more. 1. http://dir.xiph.org/ http://dir.xiph.org/ 2. http://www.streamfinder.com/ http://www.streamfinder.com/