How to Broadcast Audio Online

Background

To help you make better use of this guide, let’s go over some jargon first. Feel free to skip this section if you don’t need a deeper understanding of what we’re setting up.

Audio Stream — In order to broadcast live audio online, we first have to create an audio stream. An audio stream is a special URL where you can send your audio to enable others to listen to it. You broadcast audio to that URL using a streaming audio encoder.

Streaming Audio Encoder — A streaming audio encoder is a software application (or a hardware box) that captures audio, compresses it, and broadcasts that audio across the internet. It takes audio you can hear, encodes it to a codec (for example MP3, AAC, or Ogg Vorbis) and sends it out to a streaming server which hosts your audio stream.

Streaming Server — A streaming server powers your audio stream URL. The server rebroadcasts your live audio to any listeners that try to listen to that URL in their web browser or media players.

Next Steps — This guide will show you how to create a stream, broadcast to it with a streaming audio encoder, and finally get a stream URL to share directly with listeners or embed in a website with our Embedabble Player.