Eskimo North

I am interested in setting up an internet radio station and recently I've received several inquiries regarding this so it's something I would like to develop as a capability we can offer our customers.

I've looked at a variety of platforms and two look most interesting, Icecast and Peercast. The latter is attractive because of it's ability to utilize peer-to-peer functionality for distribution. This makes much more efficient use of bandwidth and is more scalable because your audience becomes part of your distribution network and thus distribution capacity scales with the audience. But Icecast looks more usable as a service that could be offered. I'm wondering if there isn't some way to combine the two.

I'm thinking of starting up an indie station as a form of protest to the record companies and their excessive greed which makes webcasting prohibitively expensive if you involve them and their "artists". I put artists in quote because it seems in recent years the major labels promote junk that is willing to sign lousy contracts in favor of true artists that can actually demand a reasonable portion of their sales income. For that reason I think independent artists on the whole are a lot more talented than their major label slave counterparts anyway.

At any rate; I'd welcome any input from anyone who has dabbled with webcasting.