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Icecast Radio Relay

Icecast Radio Relay is available in the NetActuate Marketplace as a one-click, open-source appliance you can deploy into any NetActuate PoP. Internet radio relays wherever your listeners are. It is grouped under the Media & Streaming category.

What It Does​

Icecast is the reference free-software streaming server from the Xiph.Org Foundation (the team behind Ogg, Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC). A source client (Ices, Liquidsoap, BUTT, OBS, and others) pushes a stream to Icecast, which relays it to any number of listeners over standard HTTP, making it the open backbone of thousands of internet radio stations.

Key features

  • Multi-format streaming: Opus, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora video, MP3, and AAC
  • Named mountpoints so one server can host many independent stations or bitrates
  • Built-in XSLT web status page plus an authenticated admin console (list clients, move listeners, kick sources, edit metadata)
  • Relaying and master/relay setups to fan out load across multiple servers
  • Per-mount listener authentication, URL auth, and access control
  • YP directory listing so stations can advertise to public station lists
  • Live JSON and XML statistics endpoints for external monitoring and dashboards
  • Lightweight C codebase that runs comfortably on modest hardware

Use cases

  • Running an internet radio station or a network of themed stations
  • Live event, conference, or house-of-worship audio broadcasting
  • Low-latency talk, music, or community-radio streaming to global audiences
  • Fronting a Liquidsoap or Ices automation chain for 24/7 playout

Why run it on the NetActuate edge Placing Icecast in a PoP close to listeners cuts buffering and time-to-first-audio for a smoother tune-in. Anycast plus per-region relays serve local audiences from local capacity instead of hair-pinning to one origin, and edge scale-out absorbs large concurrent-listener spikes without overloading a single box.

Best for: Internet radio, Audio relay, Podcast live.

Vendor and Project​

Icecast Radio Relay is an open-source project, offered here under the Open Source listing with best-effort community support.

NetActuate supports the underlying infrastructure. Application-level support follows the listing SLA class (open-source, best effort).

Sizing​

vCPURAMDisk
Minimum1512 MB5 GB
Recommended21 GB10 GB

No VPU (hardware acceleration) is required for this appliance. Choose a size at deploy based on your expected load.

Configuration Fields​

When you deploy, you provide these fields. They are written into the appliance at first boot.

FieldRequiredDefaultNotes
Source PasswordNogeneratedStored write-only in your account secret list
Admin PasswordNogeneratedStored write-only in your account secret list
HostnameNonone

Using the Appliance​

Deploy in minutes

  1. Connect. SSH as ubuntu@YOUR_VM_IP with your deploy password or SSH key.
  2. Open the admin. Browse to http://YOUR_VM_IP:8000/admin/ and sign in as admin with the admin password you set at deploy.
  3. Send audio. Point your source client (for example BUTT or ffmpeg) at http://YOUR_VM_IP:8000/ using the source password you supplied.
  4. Listen. Share the mount URL, for example http://YOUR_VM_IP:8000/stream, with your audience.

FAQ​

Is there a software license fee? No. Icecast Radio Relay is open source and free to run. You pay only for the NetActuate infrastructure and bandwidth.

Where is the web interface? On port 8000 at path /admin/ by default.

Who supports it? NetActuate operates the underlying infrastructure. The application itself is community-supported open source (best-effort SLA class).

Version and Changelog​

VersionStatusReleased
1.0.0Current (default)2026-07-09

Deploy​

Need Help?​

Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.