Streaming MP3 Audio Question...

Factual Questions
1

Hi guys…

You know… I think this might be the first thread I’ve created here but I sure as hell have had some fun responding to various others over the last few months!

I have some queries regarding internet streaming of songs…

Most of us are probably aware that we can click on certain links on websites and either ‘play’ an mp3 song file, or alternatively, choose to download the file for multiple use at a later time.

An example of such a thing is this link… a rather wickedly amusing tune of mine relating to a certain famous widow of a certain famous grunge musician. Those of you out there can either click on this link or download it by right clicking and choosing the “Save As” option… and fear not… the tune is mine and it’s copyrighted and it’s my choice to give it away if I wish. The RIAA can kiss my posterior!

However, you have my word of honour that the above example of blatant self promtion is NOT why I created this thread. My question relates to “streaming audio” - a technology which allows the listener to hear a tune without leaving an mp3 on your PC anywhere.

If possible, I’d like to read some answers to the following questions from you my fellow Dopers!

(1) I’ve seen .m3u files - who defined these? On “mp3.com” for example, I rarely get to hear anything other than a .m3u file - and yet, by default neither my Windows Media Player nor my Real One Player know about these files… when did they come onto the scene?

(2) I’ve seen “.ra” and “.ram” files too - that’s the “real.com” version of streaming audio isn’t it?

(3) To setup streaming audio on a webserver - for delivery to lovely folks like yourselves, what sort of systems do I need to install on top of IIS - if any? I remember seeing something like “rsttp://link” instead of “http://link” somewhere… any input?

(4) On some websites, you get to hear music purely by default. You don’t need to do a thing. The Rupert Wainwright sites and the Bic Runga sites are real good examples of this. How do they manage to play music without you, the user, even needing to invoke a media player of some sort?

(5) As a further question to number (4) above, what sort of stuff would I need to create to replicate Point (4) and how best would I implement it on a webserver? I’m sure the answer relates to “Flash” technology in some capacity I rather think.

Thanks people for your answers in advance.

For your reference, I’m a systems analyst by trade and I own a business which designs corporate databases to run over the web for clients - which is a long winded way of saying I already own some really wicked webservers and some major broadband pipes with which to play with you see. (Lucky me huh?)

However, I also own my own recording studio and I have a thoroughly wicked album totally mastered and completed waiting to play with, and my goal is to do some topflight internet website fun without going anywhere near a major label. My goal is to leverage internet technology and hopefully be the first to do a “Blair Witch Project” of the audio field. At the very least, I intend to exploit my current pipes and webservers to the max. Perhaps my fellow Dopers might be interested in following the progress of such an experiment?

Look forward to hearing from you all. Bye for now!

P.S. For those of you who are interested, the album sounds like what? Well… imagine Foo Fighters meets Led Zeppelin meets Nirvana meets The Police meets Pink Floyd and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the tunes! Throw in some U2 overtones too I guess! Have fun friends!

2

1.) .m3u, as far as i know, are just mp3 song lists. So when you play an m3u flie, you are actually playing a list of .mp3 songs. Very convenient when you want to make different lists for rock, pop, etc. Then instead of clicking on each song you want to hear, you just click on rock.m3u to listen to all your rock songs.

2.) .ra and .ram are Real Audio files.

3.) You could use Winamp.com’s ShoutCast. You can then setup your own radio station with ease.

4.) They just use an audio embed tag. The browser understands this and automatically, without user intervention, loads the song through a plug-in for that format of audio. Do a view/source to see exactly which type of embed tag they use.

5.) flash is different. if you want to play just audio automatically, have a look at some of those sites’ source codes. or do a search for audio embed.

as for your additional info, if you are looking to make money out of streaming your audio it is not very difficult to set up given your hardware. You might also want to stream music videos of your songs. that too is not very difficult.

3

A media file contains a header which tells the program opening it what the format is, what compression codec was used and other such necessary and useful information. Streaming media just means this information is repeated periodically in the bitstream so you can tune in in mid stream. The codecs, etc can, and most often are, exactly the same. therefore, it makes sense to use a streaming format for . . . streaming. Broadcasting where someone may tune in in the middle of the broadcast. But if you are talking about a discrete file which will be dowloaded from the start every time, then there is no need for a streaming format (although many sites and people use it anyway). If you just want people to be able to click on your link and hear a file, you do not need streaming format as they will download the header every time. This saves a few bytes.

If you want the music to sound automatically in the background, you just include the corresponding HTML command like
<BGSOUND SRC=“orient.mid” loop=“12”> or
<EMBED SRC=“algarv.mid” AUTOSTART=TRUE REPEAT=TRUE>
I do not recommend this because many people hate it. If you have to, use MIDI files rather than audio files. Just a few days ago I was trying to download a page from some idiot who thought it was a good idea to embed a 1.5 MB audio file in his document hosted on a slow server. What a jerk.

Real Audio is a particular format which I happen to hate because you need their player and it installs some spyware (Real Networks is being sued over this). Since my last OS reinstallation I have not installed RA any more. I had a few files in this format and I have just converted them to MP3 compressed WAV.