Side question: I'd like to stream some audio content to a few 1000 people (24/7) and wondered if anyone knew (back of the envelope) what the cost model for this would look like? Assuming it's just bandwidth unless I go p2p... Just trying to understand the current lay of the land as I remember the youtube guys were paying $$$/mo for bandwidth when they first started. Thanks.
If you don't stream video, you can use something designed for audio streaming like Icecast[0]. Then your bandwidth per month is approximately users×bitrate×60×60×24×30/8/1000000000. For 1000 people at 128kbit/s, that would be 41.472GB/mo, which you could pay for with $5.
I did sell streams for several years, and have to claim please do !NOT! use icecast. The "standard" streaming server is still shoutcast (sc_trans_040/sc_serv), even if this software is not maintained for nearly 10 years, since AOL bought Nullsoft.
Icecast extends the Shoutcast protocol at several places. This might be great news, if you have Icecast clients, but most of the shelf radios and tvs can only do ages old shoutcast.
An other warning: Do not use cloud providers like amazon, where traffic costs extra money, if you stream more then once. 1000 peak listeners calls to run your own cloud of cheap root servers and vps servers, and I also advise on GeoIP-DNS, with Nagios plugin to throttle servers that are already under load, and disable those who went down. You might do a lot of provider hopping in the early stage, so avoid long contracts. 500 average listeners is the legal distinction between a radio and an internet service for ASCAP, if you stream music. But 500 average is at least 10k in peak.
I wonder if Opus is being used in production anywhere yet. For some content you could get away with 48kbit or less, which would cut the costs dramatically.
