**AzuraCast** is a standalone, turnkey web radio management kit. Using its easy installer, you can go from a fresh Linux installation to a fully working web radio station in about 5 minutes.
Today, AzuraCast can help you create and maintain radio stations of all types and sizes. If you look far enough back in the project's history, you'll find the project upon which AzuraCast was based, called [Ponyville Live](https://github.com/SlvrEagle23/Ponyville-Live). This project was built for one specific fan community, but its radio station management code was made standalone, in the process rebranding as AzuraCast. This project's name comes from "Azura Peavielle", the mascot of the former project's namesake media network.
**AzuraCast is currently in alpha.** Many web radio stations already run AzuraCast, and each individual release is stable, but keeping your server up-to-date with the latest code from the GitHub repository is strongly recommended for security, bug fixes and new feature releases. It's unlikely, but updates may result in unexpected issues or data loss, so always make sure to keep your station's media files backed up elsewhere, especially the files contained in `/var/azuracast/stations`.
To install AzuraCast, you should have a basic understanding of the Linux shell terminal. Once installed, every aspect of your radio station can be managed via AzuraCast's web interface.
* **Manage your Media:** Upload songs from the web, organize music into folders, and preview songs in your browser.
* **Create Playlists:** Set up standard playlists that play all the time, scheduled playlists for time periods, or special playlists that play once per x songs, or once per x minutes.
* **Set Up Live DJs:** Enable or disable live broadcasting from streamers/DJs, and create individual accounts for each streamer to use.
AzuraCast uses [LiquidSoap](http://liquidsoap.fm/) as an "AutoDJ" to shuffle songs and playlists and provide an always-online radio stream. You can connect to LiquidSoap and broadcast your own live events as a DJ as well.
To broadcast your radio station to the public, AzuraCast supports both of the gold standards in web radio, [IceCast](http://icecast.org/) (v2.4) and [ShoutCast](http://wiki.shoutcast.com/wiki/SHOUTcast_Broadcaster) (v2). You can switch which of these your station uses anytime you want.
We are always looking to expand our compatibility with host operating systems, and we welcome any assistance in building new deployment scripts for other environments.
We strongly recommend installing and using AzuraCast via Docker. All of the necessary software packages are built by our automated tools, so installation is as easy as just pulling down the pre-compiled images. There's no need to worry about compatibility with your host operating system, so any host (including Windows and MacOS) will work great out of the box.
From that directory, run the following commands as root or a sudo-capable user to install the latest versions of Docker and Docker Compose and set up the AzuraCast instance:
Your station database, statistics and media are stored inside Docker volumes. AzuraCast includes dedicated helper scripts to compress this data into a single portable gzipped file, which can be backed up offsite or moved to a new server.
The backup script is located in the drive root and can be accessed by running:
```bash
./docker_backup.sh
```
This will create a file, `backup.tar.gz` in the app root.
To restore the application's state from this compressed file, run:
```bash
./docker_restore.sh
```
Note that the restoration process will wipe any existing AzuraCast database or media that exists inside the Docker volumes.
**Note:** Some web hosts offer custom versions of Ubuntu that include different software repositories. These may cause compatibility issues with AzuraCast. Many VPS providers are known to work out of the box with AzuraCast (OVH, DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc), and are thus highly recommended if you plan to use the traditional installer.
AzuraCast is optimized for speed and performance, and can run on very inexpensive hardware, from the Raspberry Pi 3 to the lowest-level VPSes offered by most providers.
Since AzuraCast installs its own radio tools, databases and web servers, you should always install AzuraCast on a "clean" server instance with no other web or radio software installed previously.
The installation process will take between 5 and 15 minutes, depending on your Internet connection. If you encounter an error, let us know in the [Issues section](https://github.com/AzuraCast/AzuraCast/issues).
Once the terminal-based installation is complete, you can visit your server's public IP address (`http://ip.of.your.server/`) to finish the web-based setup.
#### Updating
AzuraCast also includes a handy updater script that pulls down the latest copy of the codebase from Git, flushes the site caches and makes any necessary database updates. Run these commands as any user with `sudo` permissions:
AzuraCast is licensed under the [Apache license, version 2.0](https://github.com/AzuraCast/AzuraCast/blob/master/License.txt). This project is free and open-source software, and pull requests are always welcome.
Issues for this codebase are tracked in this repository's Issues section on GitHub. Anyone can create a new issue for the project, and you are encouraged to do so.
AzuraCast will always be available free of charge, but if you find the software useful and would like to support the project's lead developer, click the link below to buy him a coffee. Your support is greatly appreciated.
<ahref='https://ko-fi.com/A736ATQ'target='_blank'><imgheight='32'style='border:0px;height:32px;'src='https://az743702.vo.msecnd.net/cdn/kofi1.png?v=b'border='0'alt='Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com'/></a>