Icecast Streaming Media Server, Basic Installation on Ubuntu 18.04

In the next article we are going to take a look at Icecast. This is a Free personal media streamer (audio and video) that supports popular streams like Ogg, Opus, WebM and MP3. Users can use Icecast to create an Internet radio station or stream our media from the user's computer or server and be able to provide access from anywhere through the Internet. It is very versatile as new formats can be added relatively easily and are compatible with open standards for communication and interaction. Icecast is distributed under the GNU GPL, version 2.

With Icecast, anyone can enjoy their music from anywhere. In addition you can share with family and friends using available applications that can be found for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, and many more.

Icecast is designed to handle large music collections and is optimized for MP3 streaming. Basically works with any media format that can be streamed over HTTP / HTTPSIncluding AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC, APE and others.

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In the following lines we are going to see how we can install Icecast on Ubuntu servers and desktops. For this example I am going to use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. It can get more detailed information about Icecast, visiting the project website.

Install Icecast on Ubuntu 18.04

Icecast comes with Ubuntu support, ready to install and use. All you have to do is open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run the following commands to install the Icecast packages easily.

First we are going to update the packages available for our system by typing:

sudo apt update

After this we can run the installation typing in the same terminal:

sudo apt install icecast2

During the installation, we will see that the console will ask us if we want set up Icecast2 passwords. If you want to configure them manually, you should choose «No«. To make it easy, we are going to choose «Si»And we will start the configuration.

We continue specifying the hostname for the server. In this case I will use "localhost”. To continue, just click on «Accept«.

After this, it will be necessary write passwords for administration, repeater and user to access the backend. It is important not to forget these passwords.

Once the Icecast installation is finished, we will be able to execute the commands shown below to start and enable the Icecast service. With this, we want it to start when the server starts.

sudo systemctl start icecast2

sudo systemctl enable icecast2

We will be able check service status, executing the following command in the same terminal:

systemctl status icecast2

The terminal should show us lines similar to the following:

Finally, we only have open our favorite web browser and write the server name as URL or the IP address followed by port 8000:

http://localhost:8000/

The default username to access is admin. The password we are going to need is the same one we wrote when we were installing Icecast. After logging in, this should take us to see the default Icecast page:

Configuration

If you want to configure Icecast, open your config file executing the following command:

sudo vi /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

When you see the file, make the appropriate changes. For example, to change the default port, modify the port highlighted in the above screenshot. Then save and close the file.

By default, the process runs as root user. To improve security, it is strongly recommended to run as a dedicated user with less powerful privileges. You can specify this user by setting the owner in the security section of the configuration file called /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml.

Once everything is properly installed and configured, you will be able to use any of the supported Icecast Clients or the source client to stream audio to the server and all listeners. Here you will find the list of supported clients.

To get more information about Icecast settings, you can visit your documentation page.