SHOUTcast Blog

After a successful June launch of the new SHOUTcast 2.0 platform, the SHOUTcast team has continued to make tweaks and upgrades based on the feedback received from Listeners and Broadcasters. As we have told you before, we value user feedback and use it to improve and innovate the SHOUTcast platform and to that end, we have released an update to SHOUTcast 2.0

Please keep your feedback coming and see our release notes below that detail the new features.

What's new?
For Listeners:

• Improved Search: Based on your feedback, we changed the order of search results to give preference to "Station Names" over "What's Playing" across the SHOUTcast station network. Now users will get more relevant results when searching for their favorite station.
• Updated Search Results Filters: To further help users find the station they are searching for, a 'Station Name' filter (located in the left rail) refines the search results.
• Station Info Balloons: We've added more information to the station listings in the directory. If you hover over each station's name, a balloon pops up with additional information like the station's website & keywords as listed by the broadcaster.

For Broadcasters:

• Broadcaster Registration. The final step in the SHOUTcast 2.0 platform rollout! Broadcasters can now begin to upgrade their stations to the new platform. Instead of entering their station details in a config file, broadcasters can now add their stations to the SHOUTcast directory using a simple easy to use web form. Plus, the Broadcaster Profile lets Broadcasters manage and configure their stations in real time. Check it out now! You will need to log into SHOUTcast using your existing account with your Google, Facebook, Yahoo or AOL account.

We invite you to take SHOUTcast for a test drive now at shoutcast.com and tell us what you think!


Cheers
The SHOUTcast Team.

Did you know you can listen to SHOUTcast Radio stations using your default media player like Winamp, iTunes or Windows Media Player? Here's how:

Select 'Settings' under the 'Help' menu, or just point your web browser to http://shoutcast.com/settings

In settings, select 'Play SHOUTcast stations in default media player (eg: Winamp / iTunes / Windows Media Player)' [the second option] and scroll to the bottom and hit 'Save Settings'.

Note that you will need to have cookies enabled for SHOUTcast.com to remember your setting when you return to the site.

For a complete list of new features as well as some frequently asked questions, check out the SHOUTcast 2.0 FAQ here:http://www.shoutcastblog.com/2010/07/09/shoutcast-2-0-faq/

Since SHOUTcast 2.0 launched we have received tons of feedback both good & bad.

We've received lots of feedback specifically around the new Search, unfortunately not good feedback but we appreciate the candid emails listeners have sent.

We take user feedback very seriously and we are currently working on an update that will adjust the search functionality to preference to station names rather than what's now playing as it does today.

These search improvements will be rolled out within the next few weeks on SHOUTcast.com.

We hope these improvements will make it easier to find the SHOUTcast stations you are looking for.

In the mean time, if you'd like to use the old/classic search experience you can use SHOUTcast within Winamp.
Please click here to download Winamp.

Thank you for using SHOUTcast!

Greetings SHOUTcast Broadcasters! Some SHOUTcast Broadcasters experienced issues with their station listings after the launch of the new SHOUTcast 2.0 platform. We worked directly with many of you and we identified a few bugs in the back-end platform and YP - which was the root cause of these issues.

Last week we successfully deployed an update to the SHOUTcast YP2 platform that addressed the bugs that caused some stations to not appear in the SHOUTcast directory.
Most stations that were experiencing this issue should now be listed in the directory -- the update should have automatically fixed the issues.

However, if your station is still not listed please try the following:

• Stop your SHOUTcast SC_SERV servers. Wait about 7 to 10 minutes to allow the SHOUTcast YP to completely purge any lingering data for your station in the database, and restart your server.
• If previously you had set your main relay to public and wish to change to back to private for your load balancing needs, you may do so. Please note you may have to restart your server for this setting to take affect.
• Make sure you have entered a correct genre for your station. A list of genres is posted here.

If you are still seeing issues with your stations, please see the SHOUTcast Technical Support Forums for tips and advice from other broadcasters or leave a comment here in this blog post.

For further updates, follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SHOUTcastRadio

For a complete list of new features as well as some frequently asked questions, check out the SHOUTcast 2.0 FAQ.

Starting August 17 broadcasters will be able to upgrade their stations to the all-new SHOUTcast 2.0 infrastructure. In order to do so, broadcasters will need to sign up for Authorization Hash Keys that they will need to plug into their SHOUTcast servers' config files. The Auth Hash generation scripts will go live on SHOUTcast.com starting August 17 2010.

The goal of SC_SERV2 is to provide enhanced serving features and access to the new yp2 infrastructure
while maintaining as much backward compatibility with the previous sc_serv as possible.

Download Link >> http://www.aolcdn.com/shoutcast/sc_serv2_beta_02232010.zip

Release Notes:

1) Serve multiple streams from a single server instance
2) Relay multiple streams from a single server instance
3) Multiplex all server activity through a single IP port.
4) Shoutcast 2 wire protocol support for sources, relays and clients
5) Repackaging of Shoutcast 1 and Shoutcast 2 data as appropriate for the connecting client(s)
6) yp2 infrastructure support

To take advantage of these new features you will also need the following:

1) sc_trans version V2 B38 or higher: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=317229

2) authorization hashes (register as a broadcaster in the new infrastructure and you will be issued the necessary hashes) - COMING AUGUST 17 2010!

sc_serv must be configured to use the yp2 infrastructure to take advantage of the multiplexing and multiple stream support. The original yp interface had no means of
expressing multiple streams from a single port.

The yp2 interface is still in development and will be released soon! Stay tuned for updates.

If you are going to connect multiple sc_trans instances to sc_serv, you must use the Shoutcast2 protocol.
The original Shoutcast protocol had no means of specifying a stream ID. Clients connecting to the
server do not need Shoutcast2 support, since sc_serv will repackage the stream data and metadata for them as appropriate.


Comments / bug reports / feedback / feature requests welcome and encouraged!

Welcome to the All-New SHOUTcast 2.0! This is not just a facelift of the web site but a complete end-to-end upgrade of the SHOUTcast platform. Read on to find out what we have been cooking up for you for the past few months:

What's new for listeners?

All-New Station Directory:
We heard you loud and clear. You wanted easier navigation to find the stations you wanted to hear. You wanted better and faster search. You wanted more options to listen to your favorite SHOUTcast Radio stations. You also wanted the site to look pretty. We're giving you all that, and a lot more! Presenting the brand new SHOUTcast 2.0 Station Directory featuring:

• Improved search: Find music and audio content playing on SHOUTcast 2.0 stations in real time
• Multiple sorting options including station name, genre, number of listeners, bitrate and type
• New genre list makes it easier to find stations
• New bottom bar player lets you listen to music while you browse SHOUTcast stations at the same time or pop it our for more flexibility.
• New Popup player that is also embeddable on your website
• Get station recommendations with the new "Featured Stations" section
• 'Coming Soon' search results searches against what's coming up next on SHOUTcast 2.0 stations*

What's new for Broadcasters and Developers?

We overhauled the engine to go with the shiny new paint. The completely re-written SHOUTcast 2.0 directory platform (aka YP2) and broadcaster tools are a significant leap forward in the evolution of SHOUTcast. Some highlights include:

• All-new SHOUTcast YP2 protocol
• Real-Time 'Now Playing' and 'Coming Soon' meta data updates
• Streaming from port 80*
• Stream multiple stations from a single SHOUTcast server instance*
• In-Stream metadata in standardized XML*
• UTF-8 and international character support*
• Support for multiple file-types including MP3, AAC+, FLAC, WAV and Ogg*
• Improved server and stream security*
• New Wiki for broadcasters

*ATTENTION... In order for your stations to benefit from the new functionality noted above you must upgrade to the new 2.0 broadcaster tools.

Click here to download the 2.0 tools and upgrade now!