A Sea Of Red

Does anyone know of an inexpensive streaming service that will stream audio only that I could integrate into our church website? Right now, I have a very archiac method of putting our church services online. I record the service on a pocket mp3 recorder, then convert the file to a 22,000khz/16kps audio file to save size and speed up download time, then I ftp it to our website where people can download it.

Since the purpose of this really is just for shut-ins that can't come, I think it would be simpler to stream the service...but I don't know how to go about it.

We have two volunteers in the sound booth each morning. One of them just runs the powerpoint for our praise team...so they would be free to get a stream up and running at the beginning and close it at the end. Our church buys both the CCLI license and the CCLI podcasting/streaming license every year to take care of the legal aspect of the music for the most part. I just don't know a simple way to do a live stream...and one that would use the least amount of data possible.

Any comments suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Ustream is the easy solution and allows for you to have a stationary camera for video as well.

i agree with Sly. I used Ustream when I was with my last church, audio only. Now we use Vimeo now at River Church (https://vimeo.com/riverchurchva/videos ) . We use a video camera and I believe there is some light video editing but not much. I am checking with our campus pastor to see if there are any fees with Vimeo. The camera basically gets the audio from the board and remains stationary.

I was thinking of trying mixlr since it's less $ and audio only. Anyone use this? How much data do you think it will take to stream an hour of audio?

Ustream is free and so is Vimeo unless you upgrade packages. The pairing of the two has been the most efficient and most common clients for churches for close to a decade. Both also avoid the licensing challenges of some services.