Adding a station

Preface
Introduction
Basic tips
Criteria for being accepted as a public station
How to get an URL
Playlists
How to identify the stream format

Preface
If you have a favorite Internet radio station that you would like to share with the Channelservice.fm community or you are contributing to extending the Channelservice.fm database with “free” Internet radios (audio streams), please take a moment and read this webpage first.

All suggested radio stations will first have to pass a test by a Channelservice.fm moderator before they are made publically available, to make sure that they properly “play”. This document will give you a few pointers, so that your suggested streams are not rejected.

Adding an Internet radio station in Channelservice.fm assumes that you have an Internet connection, an Internet browser installed in your PC and basic knowledge of surfing the Internet.

Introduction
A station in Channelservice.fm is a collection of one of more web URLs. Each URL (commonly known as web address) can point directly to the audio stream or to a list of audio streams, also known as a playlist. The stream URL tells an audio player (SIR, Winamp etc) the location of the audio in the Internet/Network.

There are four possible audio formats supported by Channelservice.fm: MP3, WMA, OGG and AAC+. MP3 and WMA are the most common used formats on the internet, while OGG and AAC+ are becoming more and more popular. Realaudio is not supported by Channelservice.fm yet, as the popularity of the this format is declining very rapidly yet. Almost each radiostation which is broadcasting in this format, also has a MP3 and/or WMA stream available.

Before buying or using a Streamit internet radio device, please check which formats are supported by the device! Please note that all Streamit internet radio’s which are available on the market (except the old Lukas devices with 7-pin programming connector), are supported by Channelservice.fm.

The table below summarizes the formats and also gives a general idea of the URL representation (dummy URLs) and commonly used logos on the website.
Someaddress, could be the IP of a server followed by a port name (98.76.321.54:8000) or a domain name (e.g. www.mydomain.com) while mountpoint, script and playlist names can be different text.

Format	Common URL representation	Common used logo
MP3	http://someaddress/radio.pls http://someaddress/radio.m3u http://someaddress/mountpoint
WMA	http://someaddress/radio.asx mms://someaddress/radio http://someaddress/script?.wma http://someaddress/script?.asf
AAC+	http://someaddress/radio.pls http://someaddress/radio.m3u
OGG	http://someaddress/radio.pls http://someaddress/radio.m3u http://someaddress/live.ogg

We also recommend that you use Winamp media player as a means of helping you with testing the audio streams. You can download Winamp for free from http://www.winamp.com/player. Streamit devices are in most cases Winamp compatible for the supported formats.

Basic tips
This section contains a collection of basic tips. As mentioned above, all contributed streams will be tested with Streamit SIR/Lukas devices to ensure that they are valid, before they are accepted and added to the publically available ChannelService database. The exact requirements are described in the next chapter.
1. Not every audio stream is a station
  Nowadays, everybody is able to set up in a matter of minutes his own radio station. These are in most cases amateur and experimental radios, which do not have a specific program or up-time. We aim with ChannelService, to create a database of “mature” Internet radios. These are reliable Internet radios that would be online the whole time. If the Internet radio is not online at the moment of the test, it is a great chance that this stream will be rejected from the public Channelservice database.
2. Always try to find the URL's from the official website
  When we talk about a “mature” Internet Radio there is normally an official website associated to it. We recommend that you use this as a starting point for getting the URL(s). As mentioned above, it is easy to setup an Internet radio; the same is valid for “retransmitting” one. What this mean is that “John Doe” might decide to use his own server to retransmit RadioX and serves the URL on his website under the name of RadioX. This URL might be working at the specific time when you would test, but could be changed (removed) in a short time or the capacity of John Doe’s server might be just a few users. As a result you might get notified from Channelservice users/administrators that your stream is not valid anymore. At this point you will have to start searching again to find the proper one.
3. You need to know the format of each stream
  All streams go through (Streamit hardware) testing. Different devices support or do not support certain formats. When you mark a stream as WMA, it will get tested with WMA capable device. Should you mark and WMA stream as MP3, there is a good chance that your stream will be rejected. This because the stream will be tested with an MP3 (only) capable device and the test will of course fail. See section “How to identify the stream format” for more information on this topic.
4. Go for the playlist
  Practice shows that most “mature” Internet radio stations “serve” playlists in their website. A playlist contains a number of “possibly” available sources of audio. These could be physical/virtual distribution servers which have the same audio input.
  The advantage is that when the first entry of a playlist, for whatever reason is not “valid”; the device (SIR/Lukas) will try the second entry and so on. When all entries are not valid, the playlist is reloaded and the same procedure will follow. Had you used only one of entries of the playlist “directly”, you would (temporarily or permanently) not be able to connect to the stream.
  
  Further, using playlists is more flexible for an Internet radio station. When changes need to take place happen; new server IP, servers are replaced, added, removed etc. the Internet radio administrator would just modify the content of the playlist and has no reason to change the playlist name/location itself. This change is transparent to you; your device will get a valid URL, in return increasing the validity of your channels.
  
  For more information on playlists, please see chapter 6.
Criteria for being accepted as a public station
Everybody on this website is allowed to add radiostations for his personal use, of being a reseller, for his customers. He is also able to add this stations to his own internet radio devices.

But we can imagine you want more listeners to your radiostation. In this case, you need to do the following things:
a.    In the edit page of your station, set the Availability option to Public.
b.    Give a good description of the radiostation.
c.    Ensure the stream is always available.

If not, you will increase the chances that your contributed streams to the Channelservice.fmch will be accepted and they will not require everyday editing, to ensure they remain valid.

How to get an URL
When you are an experienced Internet user, you have already acquired enough skills to be able to “strip” a URL from a webpage. The basic operation is to right-mouse click on the link (button, banner etc.) select for the properties option and copy the link under the URL/Address label. Although this might work in some situations, it is not always the case. That is why we have tried to describe below some of the possible scenarios and some suggestions for each case.

When you are on the homepage of an Internet radio, you normally get some option “Listen live”. If you click on this button; according to your browser setting one of the following might happen.

An integrated audio player starts playing
External link
Playing directly on a local player
Redirected to a Shoutcast webpage

These scenarios are described in the paragraphes below. In some situations, these methods are not sufficient. In these cases, often a search engine brings the solution. Just type in the name of the radiostation and ASX or PLS or M3U and test if the URL works as described in the next paragraph.

Test if the URL works with Winamp
1. Open Winamp and test if the URL works. From the Winamp menu File->Play URL (Ctrl + L). Paste the URL in the Open URL box and click Open.
2. When this works properly, you have a valid URL. In most cases this is not a playlist.
3. Once you have a valid URL, you can go ahead and add this station to Channelservice.fm.
4. Should you have more than one valid stream for this station, then it is possible to add them to Channelservice.fm as well under the same station.
Integrated audio player
If clicking the “Listen” link opens a webpage with an integrated audio player (WMP, Flash, NRJ etc) it means sometimes that the website administrator wants you to listen only from this website. In some cases though it is still possible to get the URL of the channel.
1. Right click on the player. If a menu box opens, and there is an option “properties”, then click on this option. A properties page will open.
2. Search for a field called URL/Address (normally under “File” tab) and copy this link.
3. Test if the URL works.
External link
Clicking the “Listen” link sometimes will result in a window, asking what action should be taken next. The two main choices are “Open with” and “Save to disk” (in the language of your browser). When you have Winamp installed, it will in most cases be as a default choice.

If this option is not available, then click on the dropdown menu and select for the option “Other…”.

Browse to the location where you Winamp is installed (normally C:\Program Files\Winamp) and choose for “winamp.exe”. Click OK to confirm your choice. Winamp will open and you will see one or more items in the playlist editor have been added.
1. When at least one of the streams works properly, you have a valid station.
2. Go back to the webpage and right-mouse click on the link. Select for the properties option and copy the link under the URL/Address label. In most cases this is a playlist.
3. Once you have a valid URL, you can go ahead and add this station to Channelservice.fm.
4. Should you have more than one valid stream for this station, then it is possible to add them to Channelservice.fm as well under the same station.
Playing directly on local player
Sometimes, according also to your browser settings, you might come across a situation when instead of being asked for the next action a local media player is automatically opened and starts playing the Internet radio. This situation is very much like the previous paragraph, in case the player that opens is Winamp. Should this be the case, then you can follow steps b-d from the previous paragraph. If another player opens; normally this would happen with WMA streams (they tend to open WMP), we need to perform tests with Winamp first.
Redirected to a Shoutcast webpage
In some cases you would come across URLs, that when you would click on, will redirect you to a SHOUTcast webpage page, as depicted below. This case has to be treated exactly like 3. External link, by keeping in mind that the “Listen” link now is the Listen menu of the SHOUTcast page.

Playlists
A playlist is a file containing one or more audio stream entries. They are text files containing the entries information and tags. Looking at the type of playlist and tags contained in the file, the audio player is able to parse the information for each entry; this is the stream name (optional) and the stream URL (required).
The Streamit devices support three type of playlists, which are also the most commonly used and get the name from their file extension; M3U (e.g. listen.m3u), PLS (e.g. listen.pls) and ASX (e.g. listen.asx). The M3U and PLS playlists are normally typical for MP3, AAC+ and OGG streams while the ASX is typical for WMA.
When you would open a playlist with Winamp, you will notice that it contains 1 or more stream entries. The format of the streams is in most cases the same; either MP3, WMA, AAC+ or OGG. Depicted below we see the playlist myradio.asx contains three WMA streams.
How to identify the stream format
Normally an Internet radio is valid in more than one audio format. Each of this formats have their strengths and weaknesses. The goal of this document is not to discuss which format is better but how to “tell them apart”.

In most cases, you will see that on the webpage of the Internet radio is clearly mentioned the format, either textually or by means of icons, representing each format.
In some cases you can tell the format of the audio behind a certain URL.
- If the URL starts with “mms://” (mms://server.radio.nl/eradio), it is a WMA stream.
- If the URL ends with “.asx”, it is (in most case) a WMA playlist. The content of this playlist should be WMA streams.
- If the URL ends with “.asf” or “.wma”….it is a WMA stream
- If the URL ends with “.ogg” it is an OGG stream
Using Winamp to identify the stream format, is a fast and reliable way to identify the format of a stream (or playlist content). The procedure is as follows:

Open Winamp and play the URL of the stream or playlist.

Select the entry (one of the entries in case of playlist) and click the right mouse button. From the popping menu, select “View file info…” option.

In case of a MP3 or AAC+ stream, the MP3 Stream Info Box will be shown. This box contains information about the stream. You can retrieve the audio format of your stream by looking at the Content-Type (MP3: audio/mpeg, AAC+ audio/aacp or audio/aac).

In case of a WMA stream the File Info Box will be shown. This box contains information about the stream. In case of WMA this information is available under the Advanced tab. From the screenshot below we can see that the current stream is encoded in Windows Media Audio 9.1 format.

In case of an OGG stream the File Info Box will be shown. This box does not exactly contain information about the stream. If you look at the URL itself, it should end in “.ogg”.