Many Shoutcast listeners complain to radio stations that they are unable to listen to their stream. Station owners often worry why their listeners drop during certain times of the day. The question that Shoutcast station owners have is: Are their stations reaching a wide audience? All these problems can be solved if the Shoutcast server is using Port 80. The difficulty is that certain listeners cannot access the radio station when they are in a place where the ISP blocks certain port numbers. For example, you may not be able to hear to your favorite radio station from church, your university, your work, or college. When you setup a Shoutcast server and start streaming, the port number that is assigned to you is normally above 8000. Places like universities, offices, colleges, and schools have firewalls that restrict data coming from certain port numbers. Shoutcast streams are normally blocked by such firewalls. The downside for this is that if a university dorm firewall blocks the station that you love to listen to, you will be frustrated and never able to hear your favorite radio station on your free time. On the flip side, the radio station owners complain that they experience a drop in their number of listeners. How can this problem be solved? Simple: stream from your Shoutcast server using Port 80. Why Port 80 for Streaming? Port 80 is the allowable port number for web browsing. If someone is able to view and interact with a website and download files from the site, that means they are using Port 80. As said earlier, normal Shoutcast server use a port number above 8000 to stream. From your control panel (ex Centova Cast), when you assign the stream the Port 80, it acts as a proxy and the entire stream from your normal Shoutcast port is then redirected via Port 80. This way, the listeners are able to trick the firewall into believing that the audio stream is coming from a regular file from a website. The firewall then allows the stream to pass through successfully and play on the listener’s computer. Using a Port 80 Shoutcast radio station, owners can reach a wider audience and increase their customer base. More and more radio stations are now starting to stream through Port 80, as it helps them reach more people. Shoutcast hosts normally charge a small fee to stream using Port 80. You can contact your Shoutcast host and inquire about streaming using Port 80. In order to reach a wider audience, I would recommend using Port 80 for your radio station.
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