Airtime Pro Provides New Hosting, Streaming and Support Service For Radio

Sourcefabric have announced a new radio hosting and streaming service called Airtime Pro.

Built on its successful open source software, which has been downloaded over 12,000 times this year, Airtime Pro delivers a ready-to-broadcast, cloud-hosted version of the Linux-based application. Installation, set-up, upgrades, security updates, server maintenance and worldwide technical support all come included in the range of packages which start at $59.95 a month.

Originally developed to enable radio stations in conflict zones to control their broadcast remotely, Airtime has found new applications with organisations like London-based community station Resonance FM, Canadian newswire NationTalk, and even trans-territorial networks like West Africa Democracy Radio (WADR).

Airtime Pro offers a ready-made streaming add-on for radio stations, which allows them to broadcast via webstreams such as Icecast or Shoutcast. Elements within Airtime Pro packages can be upgraded or downgraded. As stations grow and require extra storage, streaming or support these can be purchased individually without the need to buy a whole new package.

"Traditional playout system licences and hardware can be prohibitively expensive," said Paul Baranowski, Sourcefabric's chief technical officer. "We wanted to offer radio stations a choice that saved both time and money, whilst retaining many of the features radio stations really need like sound processing, intelligent media archives that watch file activities, and the ability to record and rebroadcast a live show."

Airtime was part of the WADR platform that won a Knight-Batten Innovation in Journalism award in 2011 where the judges commended its integration with SoundCloud. The latest 2.0 version adds the ability to configure Icecast and Shoutcast streams in the browser, a button to listen to the station's output and multiple improvements to the playlist and calendar views.

More information can be found at airtime.pro.