Radio Edit - Start your own Open Source radio station

Lets say you want to start your own radio station.  Or you are a radio station that has not updated your equipment since zepplin's last album release...  Well, Good news is that you don't need to shell out the big bucks to find a quality solution.  It appears that there are a variety of applications out there for moving you to the digital age.

One great place to start is at the ROSS Sourceforge.net website.  On this website you will find all kinds of great information about products (both open source and commercial).  I also came across this PDF which appeard to be very interesting.  It discusses the use of free software to replace radio broadcast automation systems.  Thought I might highlight some of the key packages that I came across from my web surfing....

First Up... CAMPCASTER. 
You can view screenshots here.  Campcaster comes in with two clients.  there is a desktop application as well as a webclient.  The webclient provides you access to the main system from external or automation purposes.

• Unmanned broadcast units can be controlled remotely through the Internet
• An
  unlimited number of Campcaster-powered PCs in a radio station can
  deliver live broadcasts as well as program automation by accessing a
  central audio storage system
• A station's library can be digitized and made centrally accessible from both local studios as well as the web
• Reporters and show producers can file their reports and shows directly to the central archive fron the field via any web browser

A detailed list of features can be found here.  If you are running Ubuntu, the install appears to be fairly simple thru the use of the Universal repository.

Screenshot:


our next application is Broadcast Power 2.5
You can visit the main site here and view a screenshot here.  BP2.5 runs only on windows and requires .NET to be installed.  The main features are described as...

Broadcast Power 2.5 is an advanced free radio automation software that will impress you with its feature list. This program can be used by radio stations, DJ's, broadcasters, shops, offices, hospitals, bars, pubs, night clubs, events and many others. You can use Broadcast Power to program and automate all on-air broadcasts. It is a complete on-air and post production solution for commercial, community and Internet radio stations. Now with streaming capabilities to ShoutCAST and OddCAST servers, when using the streaming plugin.

For a full list of features visit here.

The final solution is Rivendell.
I came across this solution a few years back.  It seems to be pretty feature rich. It runns on Linux and windows.  they even have a liveCD that you can use to test the software out. You can see a screen shot gallery here.

Screenshot, click to enlarge:


Quote from their website:

Rivendell
is a complete radio
broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition,
management, scheduling and playout of audio content. It has all of the
features one would expect in a modern, fully-fledged radio automation
system, including support for both PCM and MPEG audio encoding, full
voicetracking and log customization as well as support for a wide variety
of third party software and hardware. As a robust, functionally complete
digital audio system for broadcast radio applications, Rivendell uses
industry standard components like the GNU/Linux Operating System, the AudioScience HPI Driver
Architecture and the MySQL Database
Engine. Rivendell is available under the GNU Public License.
Further design details are available here.

It also appears that Rivendell has contributed their code to Google labs as well.

In closing. 
It appears that in the last few years there have been a few projects that have sprouted up.  This is fantastic news.  If you are a Linux convert or a Wondows user, you have options available to you.  Personally I have the most interest in Rivendell and Campcaster due to my Opensource/Linux nature.  Since i dont actually have any involvement with radio stations or broadcast, i wont even try to point anyone in a direction here.  But, just to tip the scales.... Here is one more great application... That runs on Linux :)

GCstar
GCstar is a great little application for keeping track of large collections.  These collections can consist of DVDs, CDs, MP3s, Books, Wine, etc.  There is a fantastic web info download capability for automatically grabbing cover info and associated other data.  This application makes finding where you stored or where you loaned an item a breeze.  It even supports email reminders.  So if you are a radio station who frequently loans out your media, this is one way of keeping track of who took the lastes Guns and Roses CD.  Although, perhaps it is best that it just stays missing......

Screen shot, click to enlarge:



GCstar runs on both Linux and Mac platforms.... Sorry windows :)