Start an internet radio station

3 min readJul 1, 2021

Using icecast2 server and ices2 client.

Following steps were tried on an Ubuntu server.

Install icecast2 server

Install icecast2 server and configure default password when prompted for during the installation

sudo apt-get install icecast2

Start the server

icecast2 -b -c /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Install ices2 client

Install client which is responsible for reencoding and sending the mp3/ogg files to the icecast2 server.

sudo apt-get install ices2

Modify /etc/ices2/ices-playlist.xml, to change metadata, log file path, encoding params as per your requirement.

Make sure relevant folders are in place to hold the config files, log files and the audio files that are to be streamed. As per the default configuration, following files should be in place in /etc/ices2/ices-playlist.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ices>
    <!-- run in background -->
    <background>1</background>
    <!-- where logs, etc go. -->
    <logpath>/var/log/ices</logpath>
    <logfile>ices.log</logfile>
    <!-- 1=error,2=warn,3=info,4=debug -->
    <loglevel>4</loglevel>
    <!-- set this to 1 to log to the console instead of to the file above -->
    <consolelog>0</consolelog>    ...    <stream>        <input>
            <module>playlist</module>
            <param name="type">basic</param>
            <param name="file">/etc/ices2/playlist.txt</param>
            <!-- random play -->
            <param name="random">0</param>
            <!-- if the playlist get updated that start at the beginning -->
            <param name="restart-after-reread">0</param>
            <!-- if set to 1 , plays once through, then exits. -->
            <param name="once">0</param>
        </input>        ...        <instance>
            <hostname>localhost</hostname>
            <port>8000</port>
            <password>hackme</password>
            <mount>/play.ogg</mount>
            <encode>
                <nominal-bitrate>64000</nominal-bitrate> <!-- bps. e.g. 64000 for 64 kbps -->
                <samplerate>22050</samplerate>
                <channels>1</channels>
            </encode>
        </instance>
    <stream>
...

Start ices2 client to start streaming audio via server,

ices2 /etc/ices2/ices-playlist.xml

Verify the setup

Verify if both the server and client are running.

$ ps aux | grep ice
icecast2   72943  0.0  0.7 395348  7392 ?        Sl   May14   0:35 /usr/bin/icecast2 -b -c /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml
root       73181  0.7  0.5 116972  5212 ?        Sl   May14   5:13 ices2 /etc/ices2/ices-playlist.xml

Check the setup by connect to the server from a browser

http://server-ip:8000/play.ogg

You will need to whitelist port 8000 on your server. Alternately you could also setup a nginx reverse proxy to stream the file from port 80. Inside you server block on nginx, have the following.

location /play.ogg {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/play.ogg;
}

Issue with mp3 format

ices2 doesn't support .mp3, and .ogg is not supported in safari, to make .mp3 streaming work, use ices0.

ices0 has to be built from source

apt-get install libmp3lame-dev libxml2-dev libshout-dev libvorbis-dev

cd /tmp/
wget http://downloads.us.xiph.org/releases/ices/ices-0.4.tar.gz
tar xf ices-0.4.tar.gz
cd ices-0.4/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-pic --with-lame
make
make install

mkdir /etc/ices
cp /usr/local/etc/ices.conf.dist /etc/ices/ices.conf

Run the server

/usr/local/bin/ices -c /etc/ices/ices.conf -v

Notice, the config structure for ices0 is changed when compared to that of ices2. Make the relevant changes if you wish and restart the client.

Other commands

You can get the current file info that is being streamed from the ices0 client from /etc/ices2/ices.cue

You can also use sox tool to get details of any other mp3 files from your playlist.

sudo apt install sox
sudo apt-get install libsox-fmt-mp3 # to run sox on mp3 formats