A live audio stream that lets your site visitors listen to local police scanner online can be one of the most riveting services you can offer. In fact, this is one of the more effective ways of generating traffic for your website. Enabling your visitors to listen to police scanners online for free also provides great community value, along with the usual entertainment value as well.
While there are several ways of doing this, perhaps the easiest way of becoming an audio stream feed provider is by signing up at radio communication broadcast sites like http://www.radioreference.com/.
What You Will Need
Here are the tools you need so that your website can offer live audio streaming:
- A police scanner.
- A computer with a sound card. This computer should be on all the time (24/7) and the use of UPS is recommended.
- A reliable broadband Internet connection that’s also 24/7.
- An audio cable that can connect your police scanner to your sound card.
You’ll need to become a member of Radio Reference, and then your application will have to be approved first. Once it is, you will then receive the special programs you’ll need so that you can make your broadcasts.
Your visitors can then listen to police scanners in your area simply by going to your website or by finding your feed on Radio Reference. The chatter from live police scanner online they listen to can actually help your website visitors avoid places where trouble is currently happening.
Benefits of Being a Radio Feed Provider
Perhaps the most notable benefit of featuring live audio streaming is that it offers a vital service for your website visitors who are in your neighborhood. The ability to listen to local police scanner online can be crucial for many residents, and it can also help budding journalists do their job much more effectively.
Radio Reference also offers a number of benefits:
- You can get a premium subscription to Radio Reference for free, instead of having to pay the $30 annual cost.
- You can broadcast your services to half a million registered members, as well as to tens of millions of smartphone users. You can also advertise to the community as well.
- The content of your feed can be offered in 30-minute mp3 segments which your visitors can download.
- You can use various stats about your online scanner feed, including number of listeners.
Additional Tips
When you apply to Radio Reference as a feed provider, you will have to comply with the company’s terms of service. These terms will specify what types of info you are allowed to broadcast. Noncompliance with these terms can have your feed yanked offline.
Using Radio Reference is also not a burden on your bandwidth. In fact, it uses very little bandwidth, and you’ll only need to upload 5GB of data per month.
