A Listener Capacity Pool provides a shared listener slot capacity between multiple streams on your account, which helps optimize costs, reduce unused capacity, and make it easier to manage multiple streams. Streams asssigned to the same pool will share listener capacity, so you no longer have to worry about managing capacity of individual streams. When you purchase a pool, the capacity is dedicated to you and reserved for your streams to use at any time.
This feature is available exclusively for streams hosted on the Radio Mast Streaming Network.
Pricing varies by listener capacity and quality level, and is available on our Pricing page or from the New Pool page inside your account.
Radio Mast is designed to make it easy to manage large numbers of audio streams, and Listener Capacity Pools help reduce the management required at scale.
When you sign up for a Radio Mast account, a Listener Capacity Pool will be automatically created if you sign up for streaming. You can find your pools by logging into your account and clicking Pools at the top of your Radio Stations dashboard.
To see which Pool is assigned to a stream, log into your account and click Streams on the left, then look under the Configuration tab.
Each Pool has a listener capacity (slots for simulatenous listeners), a maximum quality (audio bitrate), and an overage policy. These settings can be changed at any time and take effect immediately.
To edit a pool, log into your account and click Pools at the top of your Radio Stations dashboard. Click the name of the pool you wish to edit, and remember to click Save after you have made changes.
Each Pool has a Quality setting that limits the maximum audio bitrate that streams assigned to the Pool can use. Streams on the same pool can use different bitrates, but they must be below the maximum bitrate specified by the quality.
The available quality levels are:
Pricing varies by quality level and is available from the New Pool or Edit Pool page inside your account.
If you plan to have multiple streams with different quality levels, it may be more cost-effective to have a single pool on the High quality level than having separate Standard and High quality pools.
To provide broadcasters with more flexibility and alleviate concerns about new listeners being unable to connect when capacity is reached, the Overage option gives you the choice to either deny new listeners when capacity is reached or allow them and incur an overage charge.
With either option, you will receive an email notification when your Pool has reached capacity. You can upgrade your pool at any time.
If you choose to allow new listeners and incur overage charges, then you will be charged $0.10 per listener slot per day beyond your chosen capacity.
Overage is calculated and accrued hourly based on the 95th percentile of listeners over your chosen capacity.
For example, if your standard-quality Pool has a capacity of 800 listeners and your 95th percentile listenership peaks at 1000 over the course of a day, you would incur $20 in overage for the day, calculated as $0.10 * (1000 - 800) = $20.
If you are an existing customer that joined Radio Mast before September 2023, your listener capacity will be automatically combined into a Pool for you on September 20th, 2023. Streaming plans with fixed listener limits assigned to individual streams have been discontinued.
API Users: The Radio Streams API has been updated to support Listener Capacity Pools in a way that is backwards compatible, to ensure existing applications continue working:
streaming_plan will be mapped
onto the new pooled-1 plan (the new standard plan for all streams). listener_capacity_pool is not specified when creating a Radio Mast Stream via the API,
then the first pool on your account will be used by default.Listener Capacity Pools are implicitly shared for use within a station (on new streams), with Collaborators and Teams that have access to that station. For more information, read about User Management and Listener Capacity Pools
I am an existing customer. How will my bill be affected?
Our migration to Pools has been designed to keep your bill for existing services the same. Your existing listener capacity will be pooled across your streams at no additional cost.
How does this compare to your old pricing structure?
Under our pre-September 2023 pricing structure, each stream had a streaming plan for a fixed number of listeners at a fixed monthly price.
Our new pricing structure introduces a flat $15 monthly fee for each stream, and separates out the cost of the listener capacity, while allowing you to share that capacity across your streams. This model provides cost savings for broadcasters with multiple streams, while eliminating the burden of managing individual stream capacities.
| Before September 2023 | September 2023 and After |
|---|---|
|
Per-Stream Plans with |
Listener Capacity Pools with adjustable quality and listeners (starting at $20/month) + $15/month per stream + Optional overage, allowing pool caps to be exceeded |
I have multiple streams with different bitrates, or a FLAC stream. How will my Pools be configured?
For existing customers with multiple streams at different bitrates, a separate pool for each corresponding quality level will be created. (Streams at 192 kbps or lower will have a Standard Quality pool.)
For example, if you currently have a 128 kbps MP3 stream and an Ogg FLAC stream, the migration to Pools will automatically convert your listener capacity into a Standard Pool and a FLAC pool, assigned to the corresponding streams.