Server Rarely Handles Over 100 Listeners at a Time Consistently

T

TejanosBest.com

New Member
Will reducing our Bit rate from 128k down to 64k help our daily listenership? Will we be able to handle more listeners on a daily basis? We are currently paying for 128k with 1000 listener capability but I must say that in the 4 yrs that I have been paying $35 a month with our provider and we can't seem to go over 100 listeners at a consistent basis and considering the amount of advertising we do its frustrating to think that we should easily be at around 300-350 listeners consistently during peak time (10am-2pm). I will speak to our stream host again to see how many more listeners we can pick up by lowering our bit rate to 64k/1000. http://209.105.250.69:8277/
 
Hi TejanosBest.com,

We cannot really see that reducing your bitrate will improve your listenership. If anything, some users may prefer the higher bitrate quality, personally we would prefer hearing a stream at 128kbps over 64kbps. We think that 64kbps is fine for say talk radio but the difference in quality is noticeable with music content.

Lowering your bitrate is only reducing the amount of bandwidth that your server is using, obviously this will help with reducing your overall costs. But its likely that you will lower this only to end up with the same amount of listeners tuning in. To be honest, around 100 listeners is pretty good for the average internet radio station. In our experience its only the more established internet stations that are regularly hitting between the 500 - 1000 listener mark.

Simple things such as the correct genre tagging in your settings can help. You also have to consider perhaps your content is not for everyone and is only for a niche audience? We can appreciate your frustration, but 100 listeners is better than none. If you enjoy running the station and your current listeners enjoy the content, then that's surely a good thing. :)

Anyway, this guide may help you decide which bitrate to opt for: http://forum.internet-radio.com/faq/2055-what-does-bitrate-mean.html

The following thread on station promotion could also be helpful to you: http://forum.internet-radio.com/guides/15-radio-station-promotion.html

We hope that this helps and we wish you best of luck with the station! :)
 
As a music fan I personally would not advise dropping bit rate, especially as it appears that your station's selling point appears to be playing specialist music for the Hispanic community of the USA although (I think) a narrower range than what would be more loosely called "Latino" music (that also influences a lot of pop dance from the USA and EDM genres in Europe via links with Spain / Balearic islands)

100 listeners is a lot for an online station and I work closely with one of the most popular online EDM stations which is regularly on the "top 10" list. (our streams are separated by music genre). Online radio is in its infancy compared to terrestrial radio - a decade rather than a century old.

Also it isn't that easy outside some European countries to listen to an online stream on the move - from what I've gathered smartphone data plan's aren't as generous in every part of the USA
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When monitoring who is listening to Party Vibe Radio's live stream I've noticed the bulk of our listeners are in Northern Europe, Asia and particularly countries where there has been a long standing culture of "listening to radio via a cable" which dates back from the mid 20th century in many nations.

A lot of them are also young middle class students who are in halls of residence at a campus university or their student accomodation where they get a cheap/fast broadband conection, or working in "dot.com" type offices/businesses where not just a work PC but tolerance of the use of work resources to listen to music is available.This of course isn't the situation for 90% of people all over the world.

I've put a fair bit of effort into this demographics monitoring, ranging from directly engaging with the listeners who use our popular forum through to geolocating IP addreses and being mindful of different global timezones.

If you want more listeners and also advertisers/sponsors and can cope with the extra demands/bureaucracies I would also suggest investigating the new community radio licenses the FCC appear to offering (which would not prevent you also having your online stream). The effort involved may not be as prohibitive as it seems and most areas seem to encourage stations catering for ethnic minorities and their music, along similar lines to the European practice.
 
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