Pseudo-streaming your music

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Pseudo-streaming your music
Date posted: April 9 1999
By Geoff Nicholson
"Hey there. What's the difference between files that end in .ra and .ram? I've seen them when I've been on the web. Someone told me it was to do with streaming your music, but he said it had crappy results. I want to stream my stuff but all this stuff confuses me. Can you help?"
Over the past few weeks, the emails have been different but the question has remained the same. For anybody who wants to put their music on the web, there are a variety of file formats to choose from as well as techniques for delivering the material. We could debate the merits of the MP3 format and Shoutcast servers, but this question largely deals with Real Audio content.
Let's answer the question step by step.

The .ra file is a Real Audio file whereas the .ram file is a Real Audio metafile. The metafile is a text file that contains the URL of the .ra file. In many cases, metafiles are used to stream audio from a HTTP server. For instance, many musicians cannot afford to purchase an account on a high-performance Real Audio server, so they simply stream from their personal web space. While this admittedly doesn't offer great audio quality for the listener, it's a handy way to broadcast speech or demos. By virtue of its performance quality, this kind of streaming is more often known as HTTP pseudo-streaming.
A comparison between HTTP streaming and Real Audio server delivery can be found at http://192.41.33.118/http_vs_ra.html
Creating a Real Audio metafile is easy. It typically appears as a text file containing the Real Audio URL. Remember that addresses you put into a metafile begin with pnm (Progressive Networks Metafile).
Thus your metafile should basically consist of: pnm://hostname/path. For instance, pnm://www.hitsquad.com/smm/test.ra. For now, let's just assume you save this metafile as test.ram and that you have already created your test.ra file.
In your HTML page, reference the metafile in a hyperlink. For instance, <a href="http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/test.ram">Shareware Music Machine audio test</a>
You could also create a playlist by listing more URLs on separate lines. This gives you the chance to create your own online radio station.
To create your Real Audio files, you can catch up on details with a tutorial.
Finally, let's go through the process of streaming your audio. Firstly, create your Real Audio or Real Media file. Make a metafile and reference it in a hyperlink on an HTML page. Finally, upload the three elements. Whenever anybody clicks on the hyperlink on the page you've just uploaded, they should find that their Real Audio or G2 player launches automatically and plays the content.

This explanation isn't exhaustive, but it's certainly enough to begin with. If you've got some sort of audio streaming happening, feel free to add your link below in the message board and we can all take a listen.
Geoff Nicholson
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