Streaming to Shoutcast

Although Liquidsoap is primarily aimed at streaming to Icecast servers (that provide much more features than Shoutcast), it is also able to stream to Shoutcast.

Shoutcast output

Shoutcast server accept streams encoded with the MP3 or AAC/AAC+ codec. You to compile Liquidsoap with lame support, so it can encode in MP3. Liquidsoap also has support for AAC+ encoding using FDK-AAC or using an external encoder. The recommended format is MP3.

Shoutcast output are done using the output.shoutcast operator with the appropriate parameters. An example is:

source = single("audiofile.ogg")

output.shoutcast(%mp3, host="shoutcast.example.org",
                     port=8000, password="changeme",
                     source)

As usual, liquidsoap -h output.shoutcast gives you the full list of options for this operator.

Shoutcast as relay

A side note for those of you who feel they ``need’’ to use Shoutcast for non-technical reasons (such as their stream directory service…): you can still benefit from Icecast’s power by streaming to an Icecast server, and then relaying it through a shoutcast server.

In order to do that, you have to alias the root mountpoint (“/”) to your MP3 mountpoint in your icecast server configuration, like this:

<alias source="/" dest="/mystream.mp3" />

Be careful that icecast often aliases the status page (/status.xsl) with the /. In this case, comment out the status page alias before inserting yours.