hello, somebody knows what is needed to offer profesional streaming of audio/video ?
Hostony, aren't you offering some service like that, right ?
I think it need so powerful server and great networks..... I see on internet this is a high value service to sell ... (or resell )

I noticed this when you first posted it Martin, but I hadn't had the chance to say anything yet. (Sorry for talking too much in this post! )

I have lots of music up on my site, and in the past I was very concerned about streaming as opposed to downloading, but I changed my mind about that. I used to make Real Player files, you know, just the player files rather than MP3s to keep people from downloading my tunes. I know that's not the right solution for a professional site though.

I have friends in the industry who go on and on about how hard it is to get those streaming sites set up. At CNET they pretty recently set up their streaming service after much anticipation but it uses a special player you have to download. (Here's a link to my page there for example: Orphic Endeavors at CNET) I think a lot of music places are going that route.

Any music site becomes a big deal to us independent musicians, so too many sites come and go. I've been on dozens of them. (I'm still on a good handful of them.) I'm one of those who refuse to use a site that requests payment for putting music up. There's a collection of people like myself who used MP3.com back when it was at it's height and we were actually paid a tiny bit of money each time someone downloaded our music. The model was nice for musicians, but apparently there wasn't much revenue for the site itself and bandwidth became a big issue so they took away the "pay for play" service and reversed their entire set up so that musicians had to pay for space on their site if they wanted to post more than 3 tunes at a time. And only the ones who paid the big special price would get money for downloaded tunes. Many musicians hated it and stepped out of the picture. I left my three free tunes up, but I basically walked away from that idea. I'm not a fan of "vanity press" and to me that what those places are. I do put my music up at lots of sites, but only to get people to go back to my website. I use them as doorways to my homepage. Many musicians do. Still, there are a lot of musicians who like pay sites and don't have much web building skills. Pay places are great for them.

Whew... Sorry Martin! Long winded post there, but this is a subject I actually know a little bit about.

-Bonnie

Thank you very much Bonnie !! Is an awesome reply!!

Maybe I was thinkg more in RADIO owners, who want to put their RADIO signals to internet, or TV, (not just static audio files ... ) supporting formats like, (taking the example of a streaming provider) :

"Windows Media 9, Real Media - Helix, Apple QuickTime 6, MP3 Audio, MPEG, AVI", or Live webcasting, etc

I see streaming servers providers who have "number of users listening online" as a feature and the price (high comparing with normal hosting service) depend of this... I don't know, maybe the point is to keep away of this service

I'm just looking around for new business

thank you for the info!!

(I have no audio in my work computer, but tonight I will download your music from my home computer )

Ooh! Yeah... Webcasting! Now that's something I'd like to learn more about myself! I did some research on making a webcast, but I'm not much of a radio-type personality. I got some good advice, but more about what to put in the webcast rather than how to build and use a webcast. (Best file format, bitrate, etc.) I can't imagine the amount of bandwidth it would take. If you make a 128kb mp3 say of a 60 minute webcast the file would be enormous! I have one 20 minute 192kb mp3 on my Hostony page and it's over 35mb!

I do know some musicians/DJs who do real radio shows and later stream them online. Hmmm.... Maybe I can find a link for you to check out.

-Bonnie