FAQ: How can listeners reach my stream?
Basically your listeners need a player. You can listen to ShoutCast mp3 streams by using common free players like Winamp, the Real Audio Player, Freeamp or the Windows Media Player. In our opinion Winamp delivers the best quality. But this is up to your listerns.

The link for ShoutCast servers basically looks like this:
http://rs2.radiostreamer.com:10000/listen.pls (our 128 kbps live stream)

Of course you can use the link together with an image like this:

(DRS 2006 Radio Network - 128 kbps live stream)
(ShoutCast Stream played with default pls player)

If your listeners click on this link, their standard player for *.pls files will open and play the stream (try it ;-). This will usually either be Winamp or the Real Audio Player. If you want to force that the Real Audio Player will be used, then you simply make a *.ram file which points to the shoutcast stream. To do this you open your windows editor and enter 1 line:
http://rs4.radiostreamer.com:8000/listen.pls
Then you save this file as for example "real128.ram". Now you upload this file to your server. If you now link to http://www.yourname.com/real128.ram the Real Audio Player will be used for sure to play the stream (if installed). Here is a Demo.

(DRS 2006 Radio Network - 128 kbps live stream)
(ShoutCast Stream played with Real Audio Player)

If you want to learn more about the options you have with ram files then visit this site at Real Audio.

When using Windows Media 9 to stream this looks pretty similar.
The link will look like this:
http://rs2.radiostreamer.com/drs64
(our 20-64 kbps Windows Media 9 stream)
mms://rs2.radiostreamer.com/drs64