20:55 EST: The datacenter is now back online.

21:05 EST: Down again, I will update this post with some info.

21:40 EST: Now back online, I hope for good.

Here is some good news about our flash player — we just released an update.

Features:

- We have moved some of our files to a CDN (Akamai) in order to increase the speed of our flash player.
- Small code change implemented to allow the album cover and title to load much faster.

Bug fix:

- We have fixed a bug that was preventing the title and album cover from updating in Internet Explorer.

If there is a particular topic you would like to see covered in our article section, you can post a request in the comments section of this page: http://cloudbroadcaster.com/articles/. We will do our best to add your requested content.

I have been in the hosting industry since 2003; back then there were not many companies out there. I started hosting Web radio in 2005, and launched a dedicated server company in 2007, which I sold in 2009 so I could focus more on consulting and Web radio.

In 2010, I decided to open Cloud Broadcaster, and since then I have been dedicated to bringing down the cost of radio streaming while keeping the quality up. I know that when you are a small radio station—or even a bigger one—your expenses are really hard to keep under control. Bandwidth is expensive and it can be a challenge to attract enough advertisers to generate the income you deserve. At Cloud Broadcaster, we are here to change that. The first 18 months have been geared towards bringing the price down, but now we are starting to focus on the business side of radio. We will be bringing in a lot of new tools in 2012 to help you.

With a strong background in the hosting industry and a degree in business administration, coupled with a love of the music as strong as yours, I think my team and I have a lot to offer, and we look forward to growing with you.

Hugues Morneau
CEO
CloudBroadcaster.com

After a few checks, your Sam Broadcaster was frozen. This can cause you a lot of problems, including losing your listeners if they can’t tune in to your radio station, they are likely to tune in to your competitors, and they may stay there for good.

That’s why we now offer radio monitoring. We will check your SHOUTcast admin page every five minutes, and if the message “server is currently down” comes up, we will send you a notification by email. This service is available from $9/month per SHOUTcast server.

You can get your code here: http://cloudbroadcaster.com/generator.html

We have also added a new background design (simply use the color you prefer). You can also create your own logo by hosting it on your own website by specifying the URL as “background URL”.

Here’s a demo of the new popup script:

Listen Now

Thanks to Andres for his nice design work—we hope you like it—you can see his portfolio here: http://www.andresls.com/

On top of that, we have now added a data center page showing the total bandwidth in use. This graph is live and updated every five minutes. We hope you like it.

As you can see, we don’t use anywhere near our total bandwidth capacity, so we encourage our customers to use as much bandwidth as they want. And yes, at Cloud Broadcaster, all our plans include unlimited bandwidth.

Since this blog is new, yet Cloud Broadcaster has existed for more than a year now, we will also be posting our past progress, so people can see what we have done so far.

25 slots: Stay free, no disk space
50 slots: 0GB to 5GB
150 slots: 5GB to 10GB
300 slots: 10GB to 15GB
600 slots: 15GB to 25GB

We have also introduced the following plans:

25 slots with 1GB auto DJ for only $45/year
1000 slots for $149/month
3000 slots for $399/month

We hope this will meet all your needs for both smaller and larger radio stations.