Ubroadcast.com is gearing up to let you "Host hour own live Internet talk radio show or music station". Slick site. Looks promising. From the Company Overview:
ubroadcast, Inc. is The World's Online Broadcasting Community for the entertainment, education, advertising, marketing and sale of goods and services by a diverse community of individuals and small businesses. ubroadcast's mission is to provide a global broadcasting platform and forum where practically anyone can discuss anything, and to provide "premium" content of music and entertainment to its listeners. We intend to provide the best of traditional radio, satellite radio, and Internet radio rolled into one venue.
which continues,
Empowering the listener and broadcaster alike through a web radio network, ubroadcast allows anyone to easily set up an Internet radio broadcast and begin transmitting almost instantly from any location with ubroadcast's software and an Internet connection. ubroadcast's mission is to provide a global interactive Internet broadcasting platform - a forum where practically anyone can discuss anything - and provide free or premium content to its listeners. The ubroadcast web portal (www.ubroadcast.com) will provide listeners with an index of broadcast programs that can be easily searched by a number of key parameters, from location to subject matter to host name and profile. ubroadcast represents a major venue for listeners to find the type of content they seek and for broadcasters to air opinions, promote products and services or increase exposure for themselves, their company or organization. In traditional radio, there are a finite number of frequencies a station can use to carry its signal. ubroadcast does not have these limitations, nor does its stations have to register with the FCC. Therefore, thousands of stations can be broadcasting at any time, and new stations can go online at will to discuss topics or subject matter without the limitations of censorship.
"Portal". Venue". "Premium content". These all say "silo" to me. Or, for in less technical jive, "walled garden". A private habitat. Worse, the "more" link on that page goes to an Investors page that begins, To access the ubroadcastª Executive Summary, please complete the following information... Name, address, phone number, email address. No thanks. I might fill it out if it also said "Your personal information will be kept private and confidential" or something like that. But it doesn't. And there's no reason the Executive Summary shouldn't be public anyway. What's to hide? Finally, it requires a player that is currently Windows-only. No Linux or Mac versions. No sign that you can create your own player. Also no sign that some kind of open and standard codec is used. Certainly not .mp3, which would allow ubroadcast stations to be heard on iTunes, WinAmp, XMMS, or hardware such as Penguin Radio or Sonos. .ogg would be great too, but let's be real. These are not Linux Dudes, clearly. As we saw in this IT Garage post, there is still no practical and easy way to do what most individuals would like to do on their live or podcast online radio shows: play RIAA-copyrighted music. The regime for live streaming is bad, and the one for podcasting is worse. Hence the need to stick with much less familiar music. What we need is an easy prodiction system that navigates the legal mess that the record industry and their handmaidens in Congress have made of music use on the Net. I haven't seen it yet. The Liniux-based Rivendell system for broadcasters, however, is coming along nicely. Maybe there's a way to build in podward and streamward directions from there.