Disc Jockey

Introduction

A disc jockey or DJ is a person who selects and plays prerecorded music for an audience.

In Second Life Disc Jockeys (or DJs) are people who play music for events. DJs are usually well respected and often well know because a good DJ can make an event a lot of fun, especially if they have a great library of music and takes requests.

Music (or any audio) is played in second life by configuring the Music URL in the Media tab of your land settings. Right-click you land and select "About Land..." In the "About Land" window that pops up, select the "Media" tab. You can fill this in with your favorite music URL (for example http://160.79.128.40:7686 for oldies rock).

This URL points to a media server which broadcasts music digitally via the internet. Note, this music is sent directly to your computer, it is not handled at all by the Second Life servers.

Before you can be a DJ you need to have a media server that people can connect to. Fortunately there are several free software utilities that can do this for you. Basically you will need:

1. A media server - which actually broadcasts the music
2. A source client - which lets you select the music from several sources and sends it to the server.

The are many ways to set up you broadcast environment, but only one is described here in detail. Note: it can be frustrating to set up a broadcast environment because often these utilities are documented poorly, and they can be quite complex to configure properly.

Example Broadcast Environment

Ingredients

1. Icecast - server
2. WinAmp - media player
3. OddCast - source client plugin for WinAmp
4. Music - files or CD you can play via WinAmp
5. Computer 1 - for broadcasting
6. Computer 2 - to test that you are broadcasting

This example uses Windows XP for Computer 1 and Windows Vista Ultimate 64 for Computer 2, but other combinations are possible.

Setting Up the Server

Install the latest version of IceCast on Computer 1.

Change the following passwords in the icecast.xml file:

<authentication>
    <source-password>hackme</source-password>
    <relay-password>hackme</relay-password>

    <admin-user>admin</admin-user>
    <admin-password>hackme</admin-password>
</authentication>

for example (but select you own passwords)

<authentication>
    <source-password>Play4Me</source-password>
    <relay-password>Play4Me</relay-password>

    <admin-user>admin</admin-user>
    <admin-password>IamKing45</admin-password>
</authentication>

While this was not strictly necessary, it is always good practice to change passwords to your own secret versions.