
However, it's a common practice for HTTPS to be wrapped around HTTP via a second webserver or "reverse proxy", so some stream hosting companies are still able to provide HTTPS streaming for Shoutcast. SSL / TLS / HTTPS Streams: Icecast and Icecast-KH both natively support HTTPS, but Shoutcast does not.Certain features like wildcard mounts allow you to specify certain rules that apply to all mounts, and is useful if you need to implement extra features that are based on this, Flexible configuration: Icecast-KH is the most flexible streaming server when it comes to configuration.Radio stream to for free, including TuneIn (the largest by far), so we don't recommend basis your decision off this feature. However, there's dozens of stream directories on the web that you can submit your Icecast has a similar directory, though it has lower visibility.

Directory listing: Many broadcasters choose Shoutcast because they want to have their stream advertised on the directory.Icecast and Shoutcast are very similar feature-wise, but there are some differences to consider depending on your use case: The removal of this feature is intentional or just a bug.Īlso note that older versions of Icecast (such as 2.3) had issues with AAC streams stuttering or having choppy playback. Warning: As of January 2019, the latest release of Shoutcast (2.6) no longer supports AAC streaming. To find out which codecs Icecast and Shoutcast actually support, we tested them with each codec that Rocket Broadcaster can encode: Codec Similarly, the Shoutcast homepage doesn't mention any codecs beyond MP3 and AAC ("up to 320 kbps"). The Icecast homepage says "Ogg (Vorbis and Theora), Opus, WebM and MP3", without mentioning AAC at all, which is one of the most popular codecs today. The exact list of codecs that are supported by Icecast and Shoutcast is somewhat nebulous. A list of differences between Icecast and Icecast-KH is available here. As a result, Icecast-KH has become the defacto Icecast server used by most streaming hosting companies. Over the years, this branch has served as a test bed for new Icecast features, and due to author's closer collaboration with industry, many of these features were built at the request of stream hosting providers. There's one twist - In 2012, Karl Heyes forked a branch of Icecast called Icecast-KH, to overhaul some of the internals and multithreaded performance, as well as add some experimental features like listener authentication.

In 2004, Icecast 2 brought improved metadata support, compatibility with Shoutcast clients, and more advanced configuration options, which were features that lead to widespread adoption in the internet radio community. Icecast was first released in 1999 as an open source alternative to proprietary and patent-encumbered streaming audio technologies of the day, which included both RealAudio and Shoutcast. (An even bigger opportunity came Winamp's way a year later, with the release of Napster, which propelled compressed audio technology into ubiquity.) By combining high bitrates and better compression, higher quality audio streaming was possible with the MP3 codec, and Nullsoft was quick to jump on this opportunity and create an ecosystem where Shoutcast could serve internet radio streams and Winamp could play those streams.

This occurred right at the beginning of broadband adoption in the Western world, at a time when bandwidth was beginning to become less constrained and the average modem speed was creeping beyond 56K. The key differentiator of Shoutcast was that it streamed MP3 compressed audio instead of RealAudio's proprietary codecs.

In 1998, during a time when Winamp was gaining popularity as MP3 player software, Nullsoft created Shoutcast (DNAS) as a competitor to RealAudio, the dominant audio and video streaming technology of the day. The history of Icecast and Shoutcast goes back to the early days of internet radio. In this article, we compare the two most popular streaming servers, Icecast and Shoutcast, and explore which one might be right for you.
