Did you ever see the film, Pump Up the Volume? In it, our hero (Christian Slater) riles up a sleepy town by starting a pirate radio station from his bedroom. Lots of us have probably fantasized many times about doing just that ("all of my favorite songs, all the time").

Finally the medium for doing just such a thing has emerged… the Internet. With the right software and access to some Internet server space, anyone can make a "broadcast" of audio available on the Internet. Basically, the broadcaster puts together a set of songs and plays them from her Internet server. She then makes the server available to other Internet users. At that point, anyone with software that will play Internet Audio Streams can "tune in". Most digital audio player software applications can play Internet Audio Streams.

The increasing availability and quality of Internet access has led to a massive proliferation of such broadcasts. Two software applications that allow you to broadcast are Shoutcast and Icecast.

Unlike regular AM and FM radio broadcasting, which is limited by FCC requirements controlling frequencies and power ranges, all that is required to broadcast on the Internet is streaming audio software and space on an Internet server. Most people with Internet access receive some personal server space for free along with their access. This freedom has allowed thousands of stations to spring up in cyberspace. The entire range of musical and talk genres are well represented on the Internet. If you want a stream of nothing but Aphex Twin, it's out there. If you want disco, classical, 80's pop, classic rock, jungle, ambient, house, hip-hop… it's all out there. And, most of the streams are completely commercial free.

So far, digital audio and MP3s sound too good to be true. Unfortunately, there are some legal issues that address the protection of copyrights on the Internet. Our next section deals with that fun topic.