Do you want to send Now Playing Song Data to your Shoutcast streaming media server, from your Radio Automation System? MetaRadio makes this possible. This article explains the setup of MetaRadio and Shoutcast, allowing the current song title and artist to be displayed on your live stream.

Sending song now-playing information to your streaming server has clear advantages for your listeners and also your station. Now Playing data enhances the listener experience by allowing them to discover new tracks, and unlocks additional advertising opportunities by displaying promotional messages on your screen.

What is MetaRadio?

MetaRadio is software which acts as a connector for your radio station’s metadata. It enables you to send your now playing data to dozens of different types of systems (including RDS and streaming servers), and also unlocks new opportunities for revenue and promotions by inserting commercial and non-commercial messages between your song data. While many automation systems can send data directly to some of these third party broadcast systems, MetaRadio aims to connect all your systems together and provide advanced features.

MetaRadio takes all the hard work out of connecting your metadata. There’s no need for custom scripting – MetaRadio does everything you need out of the box.

Getting Song Data From your Radio Automation System

Before you can send your song metadata to your Shoutcast, you must first install MetaRadio and connect it to your radio automation system.

MetaRadio has over 30 different input system – including all the major Radio Automation System vendors. If you don’t have reliable metadata available in your automation system, you may like to consider using radio stream fingerprinting software with MetaRadio.

There is a free trial available so you can test the entire system before committing to purchase.

Preparing Shoutcast

In order to send metadata to Shoutcast, you must have a stream already encoding and sending to the Shoutcast server. You also need to find some connection details for Shoutcast:

  1. Shoutcast Stream ID: If you have multiple streams on the one server, your Stream ID allows you to target a specific stream. If you only have one stream, the ID is probably ‘1’.
  2. Shoutcast Server Address: The address of the server, not including http:// or any trailing slash (e.g. ‘stream.mediarealm.com.au‘). If your Shoutcast server is on a port other than Port 80, you also need to know the port number (e.g. ‘stream.example.com:8080‘).
  3. HTTP Auth Password: The password for your Shoutcast stream. This is the same password you put into your streaming audio encoder, or login to the Shoutcast dashboard.

Sending Now Playing Data to your Shoutcast

Now we have successfully configured MetaRadio, our Automation System, and our Shoutcast – we are ready to connect all these systems together.

All configuration in this step is done in the MetaRadio Configuration App. By default, the MetaRadio configuration app is available by going to http://127.0.0.1:9606/

MetaRadio’s configuration interface lets you control all settings within MetaRadio.

  • The left contains the menu with various options – including the Input and Output settings.
  • The centre of the screen contains information about your system, including license details, and a summary of the inputs and outputs you have setup.

The options you see available will vary depending on the version you have installed, and the license options you have installed.

In the left menu of MetaRadio, click on “Outputs”. Find your station, and click “Add Output”. Now you can select Shoutcast from the list, and configure its settings.

Click “Add Output System” under the Shoutcast heading. You can now configure your output:

  1. Shoutcast Stream ID: If you have multiple streams on the one server, your Stream ID allows you to target a specific stream. If you only have one stream, the ID is probably ‘1’.
  2. Shoutcast Server Address: The address of the server, not including http:// or any trailing slash (e.g. ‘stream.mediarealm.com.au‘). If your Shoutcast server is on a port other than Port 80, you also need to know the port number (e.g. ‘stream.example.com:8080‘).
  3. HTTP Auth Password: The password for your Shoutcast stream. This is the same password you put into your streaming audio encoder, or login to the Shoutcast dashboard.

You can then configure the messages that rotate. The “Now Playing Text Format” messages rotate whenever a song is playing. The “Default/Fallback Text” messages rotate whenever a song is not playing. The Message Interval determines how long a message displays on the screen. By default we only send song title and artist, but these fields allow you to customize the text that is sent.

Click Save, and then click “Apply & Restart” up the top to restart MetaRadio.

The black MetaRadio window will now display a status update whenever a new messages is sent to your streaming server.

If data is not displaying on your radio receiver, check the following:

  • Check the black MetaRadio status windows for errors
  • Check your network allows connections from your MetaRadio PC to your Shoutcast
  • Check your Shoutcast is configured correctly.

Support & Next Steps

Thanks for choosing MetaRadio to manage your now playing song data needs. Make sure you explore all the features, such as station scheduling, message scheduling, and all of our advanced output options. Please get in touch with us if you ever need assistance!

If you have any trouble with this process or it’s not working, please send the MetaRadio log files through to our support team. We’re here to help! You’ll find the support bundle file in MetaRadio’s dashboard.