Shoutcast / Icecast URLs

Shoutcast streams are usually pretty straight forward and most users only have one stream that they need to monitor. However popular stations usually have more than one server to handle large numbers of listeners so they may have a playlist invovled.

Stream URL
A Shoutcast URL usually consists of three or four parts

 http://
 127.0.0.1 :8080 /live 
http:// Protocol - this tells the media player how to connect to the server. Usually uses http
127.0.0.1 Host - the address of the server, usually an IP address but it somtetimes includes a domain name
:8080 Port (optional) - This tells the player what port number to use when connecting to the server. If none is specified, the default is linked to the protocol. WARNING: See the note about ports below!
/live Mount Point (optional) - if a server hosts multiple streams then your url will have a mount point to tell players what stream to connect to

Port Warning
Our monitoring software has a small bug where it will fail a stream whose URL protocol is http and port is set to :80. If your URL has both of these items, please delete the :80 and your stream should pass the test.

Playlists

Stream Alerts can grab information from a properly formatted Windows Media playlist and display the streams found within. If you enter a URL with an extension of .pls or .m3u the system will automatically grab the first URL from your playlist and start monitoring. If you wish to choose a different URL from your playlist, edit your stream and choose one of the URLs listed.

If you would like to pull a URL from the playlist yourself, open the playlist in a text editor and find the lines highlighted in blue below

[playlist]
numberofentries=3
File1=http://127.0.0.1:80
Title1=(#1 - 136/300) Beethoven Radio
Length1=-1
File2=http://127.0.0.2:80
Title2=(#2 - 420/500) Beethoven Radio
Length2=-1
File3=http://127.0.0.3:80
Title3=(#3 - 424/500) Beethoven Radio
Length3=-1
Version=2

The information above appears in a .pls file and amongst all of that information it contains three stream URLs marked in blue. When someone clicks on the proper link, their chosen media player opens and reads through this file. First it tries to connect to http://127.0.0.1:80 and if is successful, then it simply plays the stream. However if the first server is down, the player tries to connect to http://127.0.0.2:80 and will play that stream and so on. So in this case we would want to monitor 3 different streams so that we know if any of the servers fails.

So how do you find out what’s listed in your playlist?

  1. If you don’t have the file saved to your computer already, open the web page with a link that points to your playlist.
  2. Right-click on the link and you should see a menu pop-up.
  3. Select Save Target As… from the menu (Save link as… if you are using Firefox)
  4. You will be asked where to save the file. Save it somewhere you can find it easily.
  5. Then use a simple text editor to open the file. Windows users can use Notepad or even Word. Don’t double click on the file from My Computer or Finder because it will simply load the file and start playing your stream.
  6. Once the file is open, look around for URLs similar to the ones in the example above.

Save the playlist to your desktop