Streaming your community radio online: server, format and bitrate

How the sound travels: encoder, server, listeners

Your on-air sound goes through three steps. Encoding software, which the Icecast documentation calls a “source client”, compresses the sound and sends it to the server. The server passes it on to each connected listener.

Icecast is free, open-source server software, licensed under the GPL. Each stream on it has a name, the “mountpoint”, for example “/live.mp3”. The stream URL combines the server, the port and that name: it is what you give to websites, directories and apps.

Hosting the server: at the studio, on a rented server or with a stream hosting provider

The server needs enough outgoing bandwidth for all your listeners at the same time. Each listener uses the stream’s bitrate for as long as they listen.

It can run at the studio, on a rented server, or with a stream hosting provider. At the studio, the limit is your connection’s upload speed. Elsewhere, compare the bandwidth included in the offer with this calculation: stream bitrate × simultaneous listeners.

Format and bitrate: MP3 at 128 kbit/s plays in every major browser

MP3 plays in every major browser. MDN, the reference documentation for web browsers, recommends at least 128 kbit/s in stereo for MP3, and 96 kbit/s for AAC or Opus.

Safari’s web player plays Opus only in an Apple file format (CAF). For AAC, Firefox relies on the operating system’s decoder.

On 24 October 2026, the 8 stations with an app from Radio App streamed with Icecast: 7 in MP3, one in AAC. Their declared bitrates ranged from 64 to 320 kbit/s.

Working out bandwidth: bitrate × listeners

The bandwidth you need is the stream’s bitrate multiplied by the number of simultaneous listeners. At 128 kbit/s, 100 listeners at the same time need 12.8 Mbit/s of outgoing bandwidth.

Data volume works the same way: 128 kbit/s comes to about 58 MB per hour of listening, for each listener. A listener on a mobile plan uses that data too: a lower bitrate costs them less data.

What a mobile app needs from your stream

An app plays your stream from its URL. Two things matter: https and the current track title.

Since version 9, Android blocks unencrypted http addresses by default. iOS does the same with its connection security check (App Transport Security). An app can ask for an exception, which App Store review asks it to justify. An https address avoids the question. As of 24 October 2026, 5 of the 8 Radio App stations have an https address.

An Icecast server can send the current track title along with the sound. All 8 servers we checked on 24 October 2026 have this channel open; what goes through it depends on each station.

Internet-only radio in France: Arcom and FSER

In France, a station that broadcasts only online declares itself to Arcom, France’s broadcasting regulator, using Arcom’s web radio declaration form (in French). Arcom gives its decision within 2 months of a complete application.

The FSER, the French state fund for local radio, is reserved for stations broadcasting over the air with a permanent licence: a web radio cannot receive it.

For music streamed online, contact Sacem (the authors’ and composers’ society) and SPRE (the body collecting fees for recorded music broadcast). We could not read their 2026 rates.

Frequently asked questions