Streaming audio server, should the venue provide one?

ozRocker · Streaming audio server, should the venue provide one?

I have a gig in SL on Saturday and there's a few things I need to know. I have set up an IceCast2 server on my PC and everything works fine but I'm told this won't handle the number of connections if I'm playing to a full club. I'm just wondering, do venues usually provide a "proper" streaming server for performers to send their encoded music to or is the performer meant to find one on their own?

Haroldthe Burrel

Most venues have a stream, some don't. You can rent stream time in world from a number of places. It should be worked out before any gig as to whose stream will be used.

HtB

Silas Scarborough

Jamie Otis supplies the streams for many SL performers. The charge is $4000L per month for a 100-listener stream and you can choose Icecast 2 or Shoutcast.

Doubledown Tandino

I'm a stream renter with 3 different servers and rent em at $3800L monthly. I'm usually inworld daily for help or troubleshooting as well.
(not to slight Jamie, he'd be the one I'd recommend if I couldn't help out)

Sometimes I recommend to performers that if the cost is too high, to get a few people together and share the stream and split the costs. Like for example if one person is from US and one person is from europe, then there's rarely a time you'd both need it at the same time, then the price is cut in half for each. Or if you're not gonna need it daily, you can even get 3 or 4 performers to all split it.

ticious

Most larger venues have streams. Rocky Shores has two, one from the Stream Team (1000 listeners) and one from Jamie Otis (100 listeners) which I use as back up. Through my partnership with Spotlight Promotions, I also have access to additional streams.

When you're part of a multiple performer show, using the venue's stream is best practice as there is less delay and 'fumbling' with streams when handing off from one performer to the other. This is especially true in a multiple sim venue where the owner has to change the urls of both parcels (if they're using the artist's stream) at the same time they're trying to take care of all the other tasks they need to see to at that point in time (which at my place, includes paying you). For this reason, even if the artist has a stream, I insist they use mine. Bottom line, it makes a smoother show for the audience and that's the whole point to the exercise. This is why I have so much redunancy in streams. On top of which, I just happen to love redundancy Laughing