Live stream a single / static audio file using Azure Media Services

Question

I'm struggling trying to figure out how to implement live streaming of an audio file through Azure Media Services. What I'm trying to do is have a single/static audio file that live streams and repeats when it reaches the end of the file.

The thought is to have a radio station type experience that when the user starts listening to the audio it begins playing at where the file is currently at in the live stream.

I have very limited knowledge with codecs, streaming types, and encoding. That said, I was able to upload my mp3 file to Azure Media Services, encode it using "AAC Good Quality Audio" and am able to play the audio clip. However, I want to enable streaming to ensure the experience I described above.

The last piece of this will be enabled through a responsive website so I would like to enable the stream using HTML 5 so it's playable on all devices that support it (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc). Is there a HTML5/JavaScript player that is able to do this? Flash/Silverlight is not an option since this won't render on mobile nor tablets.

If I can provide any further information please let me know. Most/all of the articles I see about live streaming is about video and I'm struggling to find how to do this with audio. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There is no such thing as Live Streaming a single audio file. Live streaming as such imposes a live event. Something that is happening and while happening is streaming. And it doesn't matter if it is Audio or Audio + Video or only Video.

Using only Azure Media Services you cannot achieve this goal. You need a process that plays in repeative mode the media and streams it to a live streaming channel of Azure Media Services.

But it would be a rather expensive exercise! For your need, a more cost effective way would be use some linux streaming server on a Linux VM, like http://icecast.org/

Answer 2

You can also send one file, and Azure can transcode it to various formats for you. I have a full list of tutorials I wrote on Azure Media Services:

• Intro to HTML5 video
• Intro to Azure Media services, AES, and PlayReady DRM
• Live streaming HTML5 video using Azure Media Services
• Using Azure Blob Storage to store & serve your audio and video files
• Use this Azure Media Player for streaming Media Service video to all devices
• Uploading video to Azure Media Services

In terms of the encoding, Azure can do that for you. Give it one file type, and it can create multiple copies of various formats for you. I have a short post and a 10 minute video on how to do that.

There is also an Azure Media Player, and the selling point behind this is that it adapts the video stream based on the device it detects the player is running on, which is nice for pairing with the format changes listed above. So it saves you the trouble of having to write the fallback conditions yourself. (Ex: Running on an iOS device, so use HLS).

You can use any of this for audio, as well. Your best bet is to set set Looping = true on the video player, as both the HTML5 audio and video player has this attribute.

Let me know if you need more info.