Broadcast Music With RadioBoss

Dream of being a DJ? Ever want to stream your own playlists across your LAN or the Internet? If you have an understanding of Internet communications, take a look at RadioBoss ($180, free demo), a more-than-capable librarian/player with broadcast abilities.

RadioBoss is easy to use, and in addition to the neat trick of broadcasting across networks, it has a number of features that make it a nice little librarian and player. You can edit tags, create playlists from templates, and more. There's support for a number of audio formats, including MP3, OGG, WMA, Apple AAC, and any flavor of wave file up to the 32-bit 96kHz I tested it with. (It may let you add FLAC and Apple lossless files to your playlist, but don't be fooled: These file types aren't supported.) You can also tap your audio input and broadcast that.

While there are small annoyances--such as being able to add unsupported file types to the playlist--my only serious problem with RadioBoss is the help file. Nowhere within it could I find any help on broadcasting--and it's not a dead simple process. If you're seriously looking at the program, you probably know, but it's a rather large omission nonetheless.

Consumer caveat: streaming your tunes can use a lot of monthly bandwidth. If it's just for you and a few friends, or over the local network, fine. However, feeding lots of listeners on the Internet will probably blip your Internet provider's radar in short order.