How does it work?

Well, exactly for these  purposes the StreamOnTheFly network was designed. StreamOnTheFly creates the opportunity for radio stations to set up an archive for their content and make it accessible for everybody with an internet connection. This alone might not be so special at all, but there is more. Every archive (also called nodes) becomes a part of the StreamOnTheFly node network and communicates with all the other archives that exist in this web. They exchange metadata about the programmes they have stored so every other node knows about every programm that is stored in the network. This way, when a user searches for a program to a specific topic, he might not only find the program of one radiostation, but also programmes to the same topic of other radio stations. A gigantic network consisting of broadcasts emerges providing the base to exchange alternative and independent content in an uncomplicated way.

Moreover, the network is not restricted to radio stations only. Everybody who wants to make his own program can join in the network. Podcasters can upload their content to a node and make their programmes easily accessible for thousands of users. You don't even have to set up your own node. More on individual programmes can be found in the podcasting section.

How many people use StreamOnTheFly?

At the moment, StreamOnTheFly consists of 5 nodes, used by 32 radio stations, contains almost 2000 hours of audio content in different languages and has had about 700 000 downloads. See get more information on the running nodes here.

Philosophy

StreamOnTheFly is meant to provide the base for independent and alternative media to disseminate, exchange and inspire their audio content. Using StreamOnTheFly as a collective interface for their programmes creates an enormous, but well accessible pool of information, that would normally be hard to locate.

Also, a very important issue for the development of StreamOnTheFly is the commitment to an open architecture of the network and the software tools implemented. All software is free of charge, well documented and open for future development and refinement with the open source software developer's community.