Promotion

Radio Mast streams can be promoted or published to various internet radio directories, to make it easier for new listeners to discover your radio stream. Several radio apps use these directories as their source of data too, so publishing to these directories can significantly boost your listenership beyond the web.

A unique advantage of Radio Mast is that your stream can be published in both the Icecast and Shoutcast.com directory simultaneously, for maximum exposure.

Configuring Promotion

Shoutcast.com Directory Settings

To publish your stream on Shoutcast.com, you must enter an "Auth Hash" obtained by registering for an account on Shoutcast.com. Find out how to get an Auth Hash for your stream.

If you already have an Auth Hash for your stream, enter it under Promotion.

If you do not wish to publish your stream to the Shoutcast.com directory, leave the Shoutcast.com Auth Hash field blank.

Icecast Directory Settings

Streams published on the Icecast directory can include extra information:

  • Genres - A comma or space-separated list of genres that describe your stream. This will help listeners discover your stream.
    • Good example: HipHop,Rap,RnB
    • Bad example: Hip Hop - This will appear tagged as "Hip" and "Hop".
  • Description - A sentence describing your radio station. This will appear under your stream name in the Icecast directory.

Making Changes After Publishing

Due to some limitations of these directories, it may be necessary to disable promotion for 10 minutes to get changes to apply. We recommend configuring the fields above first before enabling publishing for the first time. If you need to make changes later, disable publishing for 10 minutes while you make your changes, save your stream, then re-enable it.

Enabling Promotion

Before enabling promotion, we recommend filling out all the fields first, as changes may not be reflected for 5-10 minutes afterwards.

Finally, to enable publishing your stream to internet radio directories:

  1. After logging into Radio Mast, click Streams on the left.
  2. Click the stream you'd like to promote, then click the Configuration tab.
  3. In the Configuration tab, under Promote, check the "Publish to public internet radio directories" checkbox.
  4. Click the Save Stream button.

Obtaining an Auth Hash for Shoutcast.com

  1. Register for a "freemium" account at Shoutcast.com using this link. You do not need to download the Shoutcast server software.
  2. During registration, follow the wizard and fill out your station information.
  3. After registration, click the "Go to your Manager" button.
  4. In the Shoutcast Manager dashboard, click Settings on the left.
  5. Click the Advanced tab, copy your Authhash.
  6. Paste the Auth Hash into your Radio Mast stream's Configuration tab, in the Shoutcast.com Auth Hash field.
  7. Ensure Publish to public internet radio directories is checked, and click the Save Stream button.
  8. Your stream will be published to the Shoutcast.com directory within the next 5 minutes.