Stream Domains

Written by

Travis Bernard

A stream domain is an essential building block of a strong streaming platform.

What is a stream domain?

It's a permanent, self-hosted address for your stream, under your station's own domain name.

Example: listen.your-station.com
...instead of "123.12.34.123" — an IP address, that may change if you need to move to another server in the future.
...or "area1.some-stream-provider.com/your-stream-name" — an address straight from your stream provider, which may also change if you switch to a different service.

Why?

It helps you build your audience, and keep your listeners.

If your station already has a reasonable audience, then changing your stream address will always result in losing some listeners, and this should be avoided at all costs.

If you ever need to change your stream provider, then without a permanent stream domain, your listeners will need to update their bookmarks, or go to your website to figure out why the original stream is dead. Every instance of your old address out there "in the wild" will be broken.

But with your own stream domain, if your underlying stream address changes, then all you need to do is update your stream domain. Your listeners can continue using the permanent same address, and won't need to do anything to hear your new stream.

It prevents stream provider lock-in.

Again, since you can switch the domain itself to point to whatever other IP or domain you want, then you are not held back by the worry that changing your streaming provider will decimate your current audience.

It looks professional.

It's like a branded address for your stream!

How to create a stream domain

Basic steps:

Creating a subdomain like listen.my-station-name.com by using your domain host's DNS editor.
Point this subdomain to your original stream address. For example: 123.12.34.123 or my-stream.stream-provider.com
Your listeners will connect to your new subdomain address.

DNS Details

Domain to IP address

Example: Connecting listen.kxyz.org to 123.12.34.123

If you are stating with an IP address for your stream, like 251.87.130.124, then add an A NAME record to your main station's domain that points to this stream's IP address.

Domain to Domain

Example: Connecting listen.kxyz.org to kxyz.stream.creek.fm

To connect from your domain to another stream domain, then make the subdomain into a CNAME record that points to your stream's original domain.

What about the port number?

There is no way to change a port number just with DNS. The port number will be carried over from the base address.

Example

If you start with an IP address shaped like this: 123.12.34.123:8000
...then your domain will shaped like: listen.your-domain.org:8000

Can I redirect to Port 80 with DNS?

No. There is no "pure DNS" way to redirect, for example, port 8000 to port 80 — such as to "remove" the port at the end of the stream address.

(Using Port 80 makes the port number invisible, since port 80 that is the default port, that's just assumed by all browsers and "listening" programs, when there is no port specified.)

DNS Tutorials

Examples

Streams that use this domain technique: