A Case Study In Managed Growth:
Digitally Imported Radio

"Being on a shoe-string budget, we didn't have the resources to build up a sophisticated infrastructure, so our initial strategy was to make arrangements with providers in as many regions as possible" says Shohat. "Usually we colocated a few of our servers at strategic locations where we had a good source of bandwidth. From these locations we set up relays from different global regions pulling and serving to the public. We had to pay very close attention to where we set up relays, as we wanted a great number of people to be able to access our streams with quality service."

To a large extent, this is how Digitally Imported Radio’s MP3 streaming is still done, mostly on flavors of Unix. "It’s less of a resource hog and easier than setting up a Windows Media Server at each end," says Shohat. The site has private MP3 stream links from specific Internet service providers in Europe and Australia, but the process is tedious and the bandwidth abroad is very expensive.

But while Digitally Imported Radio could juggle MP3 servers here and there on Unix/Linux, it could not afford to do so when it came down to offering Windows Media format to its listeners. So it started shopping around and chose a "pay as you go" solution from Conxion Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif. to beef up its broadcasts across the board. Conxion provides additional performance on an as-needed basis by pulling content from its customers' servers onto its own network. Digitally Imported Radio didn’t buy any additional hardware. Instead, it linked to the closest Conxion server to ensure the fastest arrival of music – and videos - to each listener around the world.v
"Our broadcast power was dramatically boosted by accelerating our content through Conxion's network. We are now able to broadcast our events globally to our loyal fans at a performance level equal to what we would get if we bought expensive servers on our own," says Shohat. "One recent event reached listeners all the way to Slovenia without a hitch, and we didn't need to buy additional streaming equipment to do it."

Since then Digitally Imported Radio has worked with Conxion to power additional broadcasts, which have also been very successful. Moving forward, the company’s short-term plans include adding video to most of its live DJ performances. It also plans to cover more events in the future, such as bringing live video feeds from clubs around the world at high bit rates.

Long-term plans include adding more channels and introducing a multi-formatted, premium subscription service. "That will most definitely offer even better quality of service and more entertainment to our viewers," says Shohat.

Digitally Imported Radio has doubled its audience each of its three years and currently reaches up to 10,000 concurrent listeners at peak hours across just five of its radio channels combined. Nearly a quarter of the audience is in Europe. The site is also consistently the most listened-to station on AOL's Shoutcast.com radio directory.