FrontPage >> Help by function >> Internet >> On-line audio
Intro
There are 3 way of listening to on-line audio:
Webcasting (past) - listening to pre-recorded programs
Streaming (present) - listening to the live program
Podcasting (future) - subscribing to receive not yet recorded programs, as they become available
All our on-line audio is generated from our FM programming. When we split our signal between AM and FM, it's the FM signal that is used. The audio comes from after the OMNIA3-FM processor, the same processor used for our FM broadcast.
Streaming
KGNU has the following streams:
RealAudio, 16 kbits/s - low speed, good for dial-up
MP3, 16 kbits/s - low speed, good for dial-up
MP3, 64 kbits/s - medium speed, good for fast internet connections
Ogg Vorbis, variable rate - medium speed, good for fast internet connections
MP3, 128 kbits/s - high speed, used internally, not available to listeners
Statistics
The total number of listeners over the past 7 days (not including RealAudio) is plotted here: http://kgnu.org/ht/streamlisteners.html
Most listeners listen to the medium MP3 stream. A few people listen to the 2 low speed streams. Almost no one listens to the Ogg Vorbis stream.
It is possible for the tech staff to see the number of listeners for each stream: http://mercury.kgnu.net/w/InfoTechFunctionsInfo (requires login)
Serving the stream
We generate and distribute our own streams in house (we do not use outside companies to generate and serve it for us).
We use RealEncoder to create the RealAudio stream. We use IceCast for all other streams.
We use kgnu.net to distribute the streams
The RealAudio stream comes directly from our studios
We rent an off-site computer to mirror our IceCast streams: when you listen to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, you are actually connected to a computer elsewhere, which is repeating the stream that it receives from our KGNU studios. This is done to reduce the load on our "pipe" to the interenet
Webcasting
We record our stream whenever a KGNU-produced program is playing live and make the recordings available as webcasts
We keep forever news shows, public affairs shows, and music shows to which we own the rigths
For legal reasons, we make available music shows to which we don't have the rights for 2 weeks only
We use kgnu.net to distribute our webcasts, directly from our studios
Statistics
When you click the "More Info" button on a given program, it tells you how many times someone clciked the Listen icon for that program. Now, if it says "10 times" it doesn't tell you that 10 people heard the program; that could be because one lister clicked the link 10 times. On ther other side, if a listener cliks the Listen icon once, and then listens to a program 10 times, it is only counted once.
The ProgramCommittee page has statistics of listeners for various shows
Posdacst
We generate links that allow one to subscribe to any KGNU-produced show
A subscriber uses podcasting software to subscibe to that show
When a new program of that show is recorded, the subscriber's computer downloads that recording, for later listening