Filthy Noises Online Live Music Cafe

Before you can play on the Filthy Noises stage you’ll need to meet certain criteria. They’re no different to the sort of thing you’d expect from a normal cafe, bar or nightclub that you wanted to play at.

Basics
• You need to be well rehearsed, professional and punctual,
• You need a place to perform uninterrupted, at the time of the show, with a broadband connection that is at least a 512/128 ADSL link. If you don’t know what that means, you’re hard-pressed already,
• You need to provide and know how to use the audio gear at your end.
• You need to provide and know how to get sound from your audio gear into your PC.
• You need to provide and know how to use appropriate software to turn that incoming audio into an Icecast stream…
  Recommended software (no software support is offered by Filthy Noises)
  • Mac: Nicecast from Rogue Amoeba. At $40 it’s cheap yet powerful. Worth every penny.
  • PC: Icecast 2 is the tool for you.
  • Linux: Icecast 2 is the tool for you, too, but it gets a bit trickier because you install from source code.
• The internet at large must be able to hear your Icecast server. Some ISPs have security and usage policies which block certain port numbers, servers and peer-to-peer connections. If you can use bittorrent, you can probably be heard outside your home, but don’t take it for granted. Set up your server, feed some music into it, call a friend across town and tell them how to connect to it. If they can’t get it (and they know what they’re doing) there’s a good chance Filthy Noises’ relay server can’t and you’ll need to sort out why or arrange an alternative connection or venue.
• You MUST make time to do a test transmission at least 1 week before the gig. This to make sure it all works, and leave time to sort alternatives if it doesn’t.

If you can manage all this and, more importantly, know what it means, you’re ready to take your music to the world. Just remember, think about where your biggest audience might be in relation to you. Time-zone differences may mean you’re going to be playing at odd times, if your most likely audience is in the USA, and you’re in Australia, for example.

Don’t let the list above put you off. You can get help getting set up from various sources, just like you can book a PA system for a pub gig. Get setup to stream and find a bigger audience. If you can build a buzz in your local area on MySpace or Facebook, then think of the buzz you’ll get selling to the world. Give it a go.