Abstract:

Radio is a powerful communication medium which celebrates humanity in all its diversity and provides a vivid platform for democratic discourse. It can be the floor for people to speak out and a way for all to be represented and heard. Radio can capture, highlight and serve the diversity in society and constitute an inclusive multicultural canvas via various programs, content, ideas and viewpoints. Especially in university/college environments, radio stations can play a very important role in informing, bringing together and fostering the whole academic community by enabling communication and dialogue among different cultural and scientific groups. Via the enthusiasm of youthful contributors, college radio stations can provide an artistic perspective to the - usually demanding and stressful - everyday academic activities and a channel of fruitful communication between academia and society. Furthermore, a college radio station can significantly help in brightening campus life, keeping the academic community informed for issues of internal or global interest as well as in spreading various information fast within the campus.

However, setting up and maintaining a college radio station usually requires sophisticated equipment which is expensive and may need specialized technical knowledge and skills to built and run. In addition, it may be particularly time-consuming and cost-inefficient (or even impossible due to special operating conditions) for students who take up the role of producers to physically reach or move between different locations within a campus.

Motivated by these observations, we present an all-in-one e-radio platform which supports all e-radio services including live streaming of music and voice as well as mixing functionalities not requiring console equipment. Furthermore, our e-radio platform supports music and playlist management, user registration and live chat. It is lightweight and requires minimum producer equipment, namely a microphone, an internet-connected laptop or desktop computer and access to a university server. Apart from the academic community which has been our main focus, amateur or professional radio producers can also exploit our e-radio platform and benefit from avoiding the need to purchase, set-up and fine-tune multiple software components as well as from decreasing functional costs and time overhead. In spite of several e-radio solutions currently available, to the best of our knowledge no other solution similar to our all-in-one internet radio has been suggested combining streaming, live-mixing, playlist and user management and live chat while featuring the user friendliness of a web application. Our all-in-one e-radio platform has been developed using state-of-the-art web technologies including HTML, Javascript and CSS as well as Node.JS.

Keywords:

All-in-one e-radio platform, college radio station, web-based, HTML, Javascript, CSS, Node, JS.