Internet Radio on AzuraCast

Recovery and deployment of internet radio from scratch

Client

Community of independent artists with a mobile application and an audience of several dozen daily listeners

Challenge

After losing a rented VPS (along with the active configuration, website, and broadcast history), it was necessary to completely restore broadcasting for two internet radio stations. The only input data was a set of mp3 files. The task required deploying a new server, setting up an automated broadcasting platform, recreating a landing page with an embedded player, and ensuring stable 24/7 operation.

Solution

1. Infrastructure and control panel

• Rented a new VPS and installed Hestia Control Panel as the base server management layer
• Hestia provided: basic protection (fail2ban, firewall), automatic acquisition and renewal of Let’s Encrypt certificates, domain management, and website backup
• Created a separate domain in Hestia for AzuraCast — for obtaining SSL certificates; the domain was configured as a reverse proxy to the AzuraCast port
• Nginx within Hestia acted as a frontend proxy: terminated TLS and forwarded traffic to the internal service

2. AzuraCast — broadcasting platform

• Installed AzuraCast (self-hosted, Docker variant) from scratch on the prepared server
• Deployed two independent radio stations within a single installation:
  • Station 1 — meditative and ethnic music, long compositions (including tracks up to 30 minutes in duration)
  • Station 2 — original music by independent artists from the community
• Configured the broadcasting stack: Liquidsoap (automation and rotation) + Icecast (streaming server for listeners)
• Uploaded and cataloged the entire media library from the provided mp3 files

3. Rotation and broadcast scheduling

• Configured smart rotation taking into account track duration: long compositions (20–30 minutes) were moved to the night schedule to avoid disrupting the daytime listening experience
• Daytime broadcast composed of short and medium tracks with a comfortable rhythm
• Added jingles (station IDs) at 30-minute intervals — to create a radio feel and station branding
• Configured playlists with different rotation modes (sequential, shuffled, scheduled)

4. Statistics and monitoring

• Activated the built-in AzuraCast statistics module (AzuraCast Analytics) based on InfluxDB
• Data collection: real-time listener count, connection history, listener geography, popular tracks, peak loads
• The data confirmed the audience: 20–30 unique listeners daily, sessions lasting several hours, peaks up to 50 simultaneous connections

5. Broadcasting formats and streams

• Configured multiple Mount Points for each station with different bitrates:
  • High quality: MP3 320 kbps for desktop clients
  • Medium quality: MP3 128 kbps for mobile devices and the embedded player in the application
  • AAC / OGG as alternative formats
• Configured stream metadata: station name, current track, cover art — all transmitted in ICY metadata

6. Landing page on Joomla

• On the same server (separate domain via Hestia) deployed Joomla CMS with bilingual configuration (ru / en)
• Used Helix3 Ultimate Framework + SP Page Builder page constructor — allowed building a landing page without manual coding
• Site structure: homepage with community and radio station descriptions, embedded HTML5 player from AzuraCast (iframe embed) for both stations, contact information
• The site is accessible via direct links and serves as an entry point for listeners outside the mobile application

7. Backup

• AzuraCast backup configured on schedule using the built-in script: full backup (configuration, database, media library) saved locally
• Configured backup replication via SSH to a remote server — to protect against data loss in case of primary host failure (this scenario had already occurred previously)
• Website backup (Joomla) — via the built-in Hestia mechanism

Technologies

Linux

Nginx

Docker

Bash

Joomla

Let's Encrypt

Results

✅ Recovery: broadcasting resumed from scratch using the only source data — a set of mp3 files
✅ Two stations: independent broadcasts with different formats and rotation schedules
✅ Audience: 20–30 daily listeners, sessions lasting several hours, peaks up to 50 simultaneous connections
✅ Reliability: 24/7 operation, multi-level backup (local + remote SSH)
✅ Security: SSL/TLS for all entry points, fail2ban, isolated domains
✅ Maintenance: technical support for ~2 years — updates, adding tracks, website edits

Architecture

Duration

2–3 days (deployment + configuration + media library population)

+ 2 years of technical support

Price

from $200