Lance writes:
>> The choice for me is ethical: I have an NT box (that is kind enough to
>> crash for me from time to time) that can of course use Microsoft Media
>> Player. But I won't. I can't believe it is cheaper to deploy than a
>> Real Server on a free Unix platform, but if it is, it is only temporary
as
>> Microsoft sucks you in, kills compitition and then jacks the prices up,
>> up, up.
Obviously you've not checked into deployment costs. The rage against the
Microsoft machine is not without merit for us old White House smoke-in,
Vietnam vets who protested against the war and all that, but you need to
talk to Real and bring your calculator with you. They're making some
serious dollars providing bandwidth and proprietary streams and no way could
this working musician/radio jock afford to use Real. You can rage against
Micro all you want but the Media PLayer, however still flawed it may be,
when run from an NT server allows for unlimited streams and a multicast
delivery at no charge. If I wanted to limit access I would probably have
contracted Real for a couple hundred streams and hoped for revenue to cover
it. The way it runs now I can reach an almost unlimited audience size and
my personally installed player supports multiple formats, many of which I
would have had to download seperately at many sites I have visited.
You buy me a thousand streams a month of Real and we'll put it on site!
I've received over 350 e mails in the last month from folks who are loving
and listening to TwangCast on a regular basis. That's a small percentage of
the traffic we get on the server. They are in the majority and when it all
shakes out, it will be a Microsoft world. Sure, other formats will be
running, but the vast majority will be running the software you love to
hate.
If the fact that we use Microsoft Media PLayer pulls your shorts in a knot,
so be it, but before you go slamming what we do, go spend thousands of your
own dollars to buy software packages to schedule music, deliver music to the
web automatically, buy a dedicated server and spend hundreds of hours
putting a library together, hundreds more integrating everything so it runs
smooth and even more for a national publicity campaign. Walk in my shoes
before you start throwing boulders. I ain't getting rich, just hoping to
cover operational costs and mostly, get the music I love to the ears of
people all over the world.
NOW ONLINE, http://www.TwangCast.com TM RealCountry netcast 24 X 7
Please Visit Then let us know what you think!
Mike Hays www.MikeHays.RealCountry.net
For the best country artist web hosting, www.RealCountry.net
