How to Build Your Own Audio Streaming Hosting Platform

Podcasts and other forms of audio streaming are becoming very popular in the business world.

Audio streaming is a format for the modern world. As you likely know, it’s an ideal way for busy people to access information on the go. To tap into this demand, many businesses are trying to learn how to create an audio streaming website in 2022.

Whether your ideal audience is commuting, washing dishes, or doing anything else, podcasts and online radio can entertain and inform them about your brand.

In this post, we will explore the topic of audio streaming. We’ll cover what you need to know about building an audio streaming platform of your own. Specifically, we will take a look at two types of audio streaming, where to host your stream, monetization, how to host a high-quality audio stream, and more.

Table of Contents

• How to Create an Audio Streaming Website
• High-Quality Audio Streaming
• Where to Upload and Host Your Audio Steam
• How to Monetize Your Audio Streaming
• On-Demand vs. Live Audio Streaming
• Analytics for Podcasts
• Conclusion

To that end, this article reviews key topics you might overlook if you’re new to the game.

Let’s get started!

How to Create an Audio Streaming Website

Podcast and radio hosts like Anchor, Apple Podcasts, and the like are great options for beginners with low budgets, but embedding and hosting your audio streams directly on your website is the best way to share audio online.

It gives you total ownership of your content and eliminates any rules or community guidelines that could hold you back from creating the audio streams that you want.

The process to create an audio streaming website is simple. Keep in mind that the process for how to make a live podcast is similar to how to make a music streaming website.

And for simplicity, we’ll default to using Dacast as the online audio platform as we explain the next steps, but the same concept is generally true for whichever platform for audio you choose.

Keep in mind, if you’re here specifically to learn how to make a live podcast or how to make a music streaming website, not all video platforms support live audio and 24/7 broadcasting. Dacast does. With that said, let’s go over how to create an audio streaming website.

1. Choose a Hosting Provider and CMS

First, you’ll need to get a website to embed your audio player on. Two common picks for web hosting services are GoDaddy and Bluehost. These two hosting providers also work well with WordPress, which is a very common content management system (CMS). The CMS is where you’ll write text and build the aesthetics of your website.

2. Choose an Audio Streaming Platform 

Many professional video streaming platforms, like Dacast, have audio-only capabilities. For this reason, many businesses choose this type of platform to stream audio over the internet.

The reason many choose a professional video platform is because it gives you access to many tools and features that can help you grow and go viral. For example, some features you’ll commonly see are the ability to broadcast audio 24/7, CDNs, and live audio streaming.

3. Log in to your Dacast account

Again, for simplicity, we will just continue using Dacast as an example.

Once you have your audio streaming website ready, embedding your audio stream is pretty easy, especially if you’re hosting audio streams with Dacast.

When you’re logged in your Dacast account, you’ll look for your list of live channels. Then click on the audio channel or audio file you plan to embed on your website.

On the next page, you’ll click “Publish Settings”.  At this point, you’ll find two embed codes in the lower-left section: iFrame and JS (Javascript). We recommend the JS embed code.

Here is also where you’ll find a share code, which is just a simple URL, to share with your following.

4. Embed the Audio Player Onto Your Website

Copy + paste the embed code onto your website. Most online radio stations embed a player at the top of their website. Alternatively, you can embed it on the websites of partners. This is simply another option when you’re hosting your audio stream professionally.

These are the simple steps on how to transmit audio over the internet using your own audio streaming platform.

High-Quality Audio Streaming

Now that you have your website setup, let’s talk about how to live stream high quality audio specifically. In this next section, we’ll dive deeper into encoding settings.

In 2022, we believe that AAC provides the best high quality audio streaming for most situations. Many people are familiar with MP3 so we’ll compare AAC to that to give you a better idea. When compared to MP3, you’ll generally achieve a high quality live audio streaming at similar bitrates. You’ll find the difference more obvious when streaming at lower bitrates (<128 kbps).

With that in mind, audio streams at Dacast are encoded using the high-quality AAC codec and delivered via HLS streaming protocol. That means the stream can be accessed on any device.

Encoding Your Audio Files

You may want to encode your audio files at different quality levels depending on what you are trying to achieve. Here are some basic recommendations:

1. Low Quality(Smallest File Size): 32-64 kbps, mono, 44100 Hz
2. High Quality (Medium File Size): 128-192 kbps, stereo, 44100 Hz
3. Excellent Quality (Larger File Size): 256-320 kbps, stereo, 44100 Hz

For simple voice conversations, the first option may be fine. For music, you will want to go with option 2. If high quality audio streaming is your number one consideration, choose option 3.

To deliver a high quality live audio streaming experience to listeners with all types of internet speeds, Dacast allows you to stream audio in multiple bitrates. Essentially, this functionality considers your listener’s internet speed and automatically serves the best possible quality. This helps prevent problems with buffering and lag. In short, if you want a high quality audio streaming service, Dacast is an excellent choice.

Next, let’s explore two of the encoder settings more in depth.

Mono vs. Stereo: Recommended Channel

Let’s quickly discuss the two possible channels:  mono vs stereo. You’ll find this under encoding settings. Generally, you’ll want to choose stereo for high audio quality when streaming because. There are rare exceptions where you’d want to consider mono, such as if you plan to sing or play an instrument solo, but stereo is definitely most common nowadays.

Audio Sample Rate

Generally, the higher this number is, the fuller the sound. However, the larger the number, the more data that is used. For this reason, we recommend 44.1 Khz (same as 44,100 Hz) as the audio sample rate for high quality audio when live streaming. Again, there are exceptions, but professionals commonly use 44.1 Khz.

Where to Upload and Host Your Audio Steam

With the rising popularity of online broadcasting, countless businesses in diverse sectors are getting involved in audio streaming. These include education and entertainment, comedy, sports, music, news, business, religion, and beyond.

Despite their different industries, these businesses all face similar technical challenges when it comes to podcasting. Most notably, the question of where to host your audio files for streaming is an important one. Most audio streamers choose to use streaming media hosting platforms.

With the differentiation between live and on-demand streaming in mind, let’s consider the benefits of dedicated streaming solutions. Your streaming solution, which is also known as an online video platform, is where you can host your audio content.

One major advantage of an online video platform like Dacast is native support for live streaming audio. Most podcast hosting services center around hosting and delivering pre-recorded content. They don’t support live broadcasts at all.

In contrast, streaming platforms with audio hosting capabilities like Dacast provide functionality and power for live streaming. So if you’re looking for a music hosting service so that you can perform live, you should consider Dacast.

Dacast supports both scheduled events and 24/7 broadcasting. And since the content lives in your video CMS and is distributed via a powerful live-streaming CDN (Content Delivery Network), you can scale to large, globally distributed audiences without buffering or lag problems. Dacast also offers a multi-CDN solution for very large or important events where you don’t want to risk your stream getting cut off.

Dacast also supports the three types of monetization: ad-based, subscription, and pay per stream.

Another thing to keep in mind is that many podcast hosting services offer only limited storage. Often, they offer less than 1 GB per month—and sometimes just 100 MB or even less. In comparison, Dacast offers 50 GB of storage for just $39 per month with our Starter plan. That’s enough storage for hundreds of podcasts encoded at very high quality.

Therefore, if you’re streaming a lot of audio, or streaming super high-quality files, Dacast may be the best choice. Dacast also offers the ability to purchase extra storage if needed and allows for automatic overage protection if your podcast goes viral. Additionally, you can protect audio streams with passwords when you want to limit your listeners.

How to Monetize Your Audio Streaming

This next section is for those wondering “Can you monetize a podcast?” In short, the answer is definitely yes.

As podcasts become more popular, revenue from this type of streaming is booming. In fact, it’s projected to keep growing 31.1% year over year from 2021-2025.

When the concept of podcasts was newer, the idea of how to monetize a podcast was still a mystery.  Now, in the world of podcasting and online radio, there are three proven ways to approach podcast monetization: advertising, subscriptions, and selling services/products. Additionally, broadcasters can opt to use pay-per-view for monetizing a podcast , but this isn’t as common.

Here’s a quick breakdown on how to monetize your podcast.

1. Advertising

Advertising is a top way to monetize podcasts.

There are various ways to add advertisements to your podcast. A main way is to cleverly advertise different products by smoothly integrating it into the podcast in a way that feels natural for everyone. So for example, if you like to talk about health, a common partnership would be to advertise a health product such as healthy cookies.

Everyone chooses to approach this differently. Some people choose to get the advertisement out the way in the beginning, the end, or even midway (like a commercial break). The key is to find partnerships that are relevant to your main topic and your ideal audience so that it doesn’t seem forced or salesy.

It’s also possible to insert ads from advertising networks. For example, Dacast includes support for ad insertion using popular advertising networks. This capability makes Dacast a best podcast host for monetization because advertising is less popularly supported by professional video platforms compared to subscriptions and pay per view. It’s also very easy to do: just copy an ad URL from your ad serving provider, then paste it into the Dacast backend.

2. Subscription

Alternatively, you can charge a recurring subscription fee for access to your show. This can be done via a secure paywall.

Dacast streaming solution includes a built-in paywall with various configuration options. It supports credit cards and PayPal, as well as multiple currencies. This provides podcasters with the ability to quickly launch and monetize premium audio streaming.

Giving your audience an opportunity to subscribe is a good way to build a deeper relationship with them. If you’ve built an audience with a free podcast and have given them a lot of free value, people will be interested in learning more from you at a deeper level. By giving them an opportunity to pay for a subscription to your channel, you encourage them to become more invested in the value you provide and the topics you speak on.

We live in an age that loves feeling like they’re a part of a community and that’s why so many people happily pay to be a part of communities even though there are so many free options available.

3. Sell Your Products or Services

Selling your own product or services is arguably the best way to monetize a podcast. In practice, it’s very common to start by giving your audience free advice surrounding particular subjects.

For example, let’s say you’re a Facebook ads specialist looking to sell consulting services to businesses. On your podcast, you can take the approach of answering frequently asked Facebook ads questions.

By doing this, you establish yourself as an authority among the eyes of your ideal target audience. Once you’ve done enough podcasts and helped enough people, the rest will come naturally.

If you stick with it, one of your listeners will eventually want to scale up their social media ad spend. When they do, they’ll naturally think of you when they’re looking to hire someone for Facebook ad implementation or consulting. The concept applies for practically every profession (legal, sales, accounting, etc.).

Keep in mind that you don’t have to go from giving free advice straight to higher ticket sales. Sometimes it helps to have a less costly service or product as a stepping stone. For example, the Facebook ads specialist may want to make a downloadable PDF with 100 proven Facebook ad templates and then sell it for a small price of $9. That way, the podcaster appeals to people with all types of budgets and goals.

4. Pay-Per-View

Using pay-per-view is another way of monetizing podcasts and audio streams. A paywall can charge for access per episode or for access to a series of entire shows.

Again, this is not very popular.

On-Demand vs. Live Audio Streaming

There are two main types of online audio streaming: on-demand and live.

On-demand is podcast-style audio. Listeners can play an episode at any time. Content is always available in an archive, stored in your video content management system.

The second common type is live audio streaming, which is like internet radio. Businesses may use live audio streaming for a single event or broadcast, after which they can make the recording available on-demand. 

Alternatively, you might choose to do 24/7 audio broadcasting in the style of linear streaming. This is the case for online radio.

Both approaches are valuable in their own way, and many broadcasters might choose to use both approaches if it is appropriate for the context.

Analytics for Podcasts

Analytics refers to capturing data about your viewers. You can use this data to help increase the quality of your work going forward. 

The most basic analytic data includes:

• Number of listeners
• Listener locations (country and city-level data)
• Average listening time
• Revenue
• Most popular shows
• Most popular device types
• Revenue data, broken down by time, device, and location

Dacast also offers innovative real-time analytics. This means that audio live streamers can get real-time information about audiences as they broadcast, which is pretty valuable.

How to Use Analytics (Examples)

Let’s go more in depth on ways to put analytics into action.

One way to use analytics is to see where most of your listeners live. For example, if you see a lot of your viewers coming from New York City(NYC), that’s helpful to explore. Why is a lot of your traffic coming from NYC? Maybe an influencer in the area shared your podcast. Or maybe your humor just really resonates with people from NYC. By diving into the analytics, you can learn a lot about your audience.

To take it a step further, since obviously your podcast is liked by people in NYC, you can consider running ads in the area to further advertise your podcast.

Let’s use another example. Say you are getting a lot of traffic from Nashville, Tennessee but for some reason, you’re making more revenue from NYC where you have less of a following. Now you know to spend more time and money advertising to people in NYC because it’s proving to be a higher return on your investment.

Of course, the specific decisions you make will be different depending on your goals and your main monetization strategy.

Conclusion

Audio streaming is growing more and more popular for good reason. It’s a great way to get your content out there in a way that is easy and convenient to access. Thanks to streaming platforms like Dacast, it’s easy to start streaming today.

If Dacast sounds like an audio streaming platform you’d like to try, you can sign up for our 14-day free trial (no credit card required) below. That way, you can test out all of our great features before making a commitment, and we can answer any questions you may have during the process.

GET STARTED FOR FREE

What’s been your experience streaming podcasts? Let us know in the comments below.