The stream is a second broadcast, not a copy of the first
Most stations stream by putting an encoder on the end of the air chain. The stream then carries the same log, the same spots, the same processing and the same loudness as the FM signal — which means it cannot be sold separately, cannot black out independently, cannot replace a national buy you do not hold digital rights to, and sounds like an FM chain in a pair of headphones, because it is one.
Every one of those is a revenue problem before it is a technical one. Your digital audience is measurable, addressable and worth more per thousand than your broadcast audience, and mirroring the air signal throws all of that away.
AirWaves treats the stream as a genuine second broadcast with its own automation, its own commercial inventory, its own processing chain and its own loudness targets — managed from the same platform, billed through the same traffic system, and reported in the same ledger.
Independent stream automation — the thing almost nothing else does
AirWaves runs two dynamic sequencers simultaneously. Your over-the-air signal and your online stream are separately automated chains, each with its own log and its own event triggers, firing at the same time without a second system or an operator watching a switch.
- Sell the stream separately at digital rates, to advertisers who want the digital audience specifically.
- Blackouts become one setting. Put the ball game on air and tell the stream to run the regular log — not a manual, error-prone, Saturday-afternoon procedure.
- Replace what you cannot carry. National spots without digital rights get swapped automatically rather than aired and apologised for.
- Different content entirely if you want it — a stream-only show, stream-only imaging, a second format on the web.
- Every placement tracked and billed through AirWaves Traffic alongside your on-air inventory, on one contract and one invoice.
VAST ad insertion and stream ad replacement
Monetising a stream requires speaking the language digital ad servers speak. AirWaves does, natively.
VAST pre-roll
Standards-compliant VAST pre-roll insertion on the live stream — a listener who presses play hears an ad you are paid for before the audio starts.
Stream ad replacement (SAR)
Swap designated spots in the live stream for different audio: handle national buys without digital rights, sell your web audience separately, or target a break.
Dynamic ad insertion
Targeted insertion against the stream and the site, separate from the over-air log, tracked and billed through the same traffic system.
Website banner billing
A banner ad on your station site is tracked automatically and routed through AirWaves Traffic — the only platform where a web banner bills through the same system as the on-air spot.
One invoice
Sell an advertiser once and monetise them everywhere — on air, in the stream, on the site, in the app — with every impression on a single contract.
Proof of performance
Digital placements land in the same as-aired and proof-of-performance reporting as broadcast spots.
Stream processing — LUFS and true peak, tuned for headphones
An FM processing chain exists to survive an FM transmitter: heavy density, aggressive clipping, loudness war logic. Push that same chain down a stream and it arrives fatiguing on headphones, clipped on a phone speaker, and non-compliant with the loudness targets every other platform on the listener’s device already respects.
The AirTools chain in AirWaves runs the shared front end — AGC, parametric EQ, adaptive auto-EQ, multiband compression, bass enhancement, exciter, stereo and tube stages — then splits into two separately tuned final stages: an air path with an FM loudness clipper, and a stream path governed by LUFS and true-peak limiting. Per-output loudness targets cover FM, HQ stream, mobile, podcast and DAB+, each hitting the level its destination expects.
The processing runs live in the engine, arms itself on startup, and applies per audio source rather than only to the master bus. There is no outboard rack and nothing to fail in it.
A player that follows the listener
Most embedded players stop when a listener clicks anything. That is a strange thing to accept, given that every click is a listener choosing to spend more time with your brand and the player punishes them for it.
- Persistent docked player that keeps playing across every page of your site — navigation never cuts the stream.
- Real-time now-playing read from metadata on the stream itself, so it never lags behind an ad break or drifts when something is fired manually.
- Automatic album art fetched per track, with the whole player fully styleable to your brand.
- Works everywhere — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Android and iOS.
- Listener engagement built in — requests, dedications, top-chart voting and listener texts arrive from the player and the app straight into the studio.
The same live audio, now-playing and engagement tools drive your mobile app, built in the platform’s drag-and-drop app builder, so the web listen and the app listen are one audience rather than two projects.
Listener data that goes somewhere useful
Streaming platforms are usually generous with charts and stingy with connections. AirWaves ties listening data to programming decisions, because both live on the same database.
Session and listener analytics show who is listening, for how long, and on what. Request and tune-out tracking feed directly back into the music scheduler — every request is a vote, every tune-out is a signal, and rotations reflect both. Audience Insights ranks the hottest tracks by day, week and month and surfaces request momentum. Revenue reporting for digital inventory sits in the same ledger as your broadcast revenue, so digital stops being a line item somebody estimates.
What to look for in radio streaming software
- Can the stream run its own log and its own ads? If it mirrors the air signal, you cannot sell it separately — which is most of the point.
- Does it do real VAST insertion? A pre-recorded sweeper is not ad insertion, and digital buyers know the difference.
- Is there a separate processing path for the stream? LUFS and true-peak targets, not an FM chain with a different bitrate.
- Does the player survive navigation? Every restart is a listener you lost for browsing your own website.
- Where does now-playing come from? Metadata read from the stream is right; metadata predicted from the log is right most of the time.
- Does the listening data reach programming? Charts nobody acts on are decoration.
- Does digital revenue land in the same ledger? Otherwise you are reconciling two businesses.
- Will it stream a station it does not control? A streaming platform that requires you to change automation first is not a streaming platform.
Stream and monetise a station driven by any automation
The streaming encoder, the processing chain, the VAST insertion layer, the persistent player, the website and app builders and the listener analytics all attach to an audio source and a station — not to a particular playout vendor. Feed them from RCS, WideOrbit, Zetta, Simian, ENCO, Rivendell, StationPlaylist or NexGen and you get separately processed, loudness-managed, ad-inserted streaming with full listener reporting, without changing a thing about what puts you on the air.
Radio streaming software, answered
Encoding is the easy part and has been commoditised for years. What separates streaming platforms now is whether the stream is a genuine second broadcast: whether it can run its own log and its own ads rather than mirroring the FM signal, whether it is processed and loudness-managed for headphones and phone speakers rather than inheriting an FM chain, whether you can monetise it with real ad insertion, whether the player keeps playing as a listener browses your site, and whether the listening data comes back somewhere useful. AirWaves does all of those in one platform.
Yes, and this is the core of it. AirWaves runs two dynamic sequencers at once, so the stream is a fully independent automated chain with its own log, its own events and its own commercial inventory. You can sell the stream separately at its own rates, replace national spots you do not hold digital rights to, run a blackout on air while the stream carries the regular log, and have every one of those placements tracked and billed through the same traffic system as your on-air inventory.
VAST is the standard advertising format digital ad servers speak. AirWaves inserts VAST pre-roll on the live stream, so a listener who presses play hears an ad you are paid for before the audio starts. Stream ad replacement (SAR) goes further: it swaps designated spots in the live stream for different audio, which is how you handle national buys without digital rights, sell your web audience separately, or geo-target a break. Both are managed in the platform and billed through AirWaves Traffic.
Yes, and it should. The AirTools processing chain runs AGC, parametric EQ, adaptive auto-EQ, multiband compression and bass enhancement, then splits into two separately tuned final stages: an air path with an FM loudness clipper, and a stream path governed by LUFS and true-peak. Per-output loudness targets cover FM, HQ stream, mobile, podcast and DAB+. An FM chain pushed down a stream sounds fatiguing on headphones and clips on phone speakers; a stream path tuned for its destination does not.
A docked player bar that keeps playing as the listener moves through every page of your site. Conventional embedded players restart or cut out on navigation, which means a listener who clicks anything stops listening — and every one of those is a lost quarter-hour. The AirWaves player survives navigation, shows real-time now-playing with automatically fetched album art, is fully styleable to your brand, and works across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Android and iOS.
It is read from real-time metadata on the stream itself rather than predicted from the log, so it never lags behind an ad break or drifts when something is fired manually. The same metadata feeds RDS, your website, your mobile app and third-party directories, so what a listener sees is what actually played.
Yes. The encoder, processing chain, VAST insertion, persistent player, website and app builders and listener analytics all attach to an audio source and a station, not to a playout vendor. Feed them from your existing automation and you get separately processed, ad-inserted streaming with full reporting without touching your air chain.
Explore the rest of the platform
Every AirWaves module shares one engine, one database and one login — and every one of them also runs standalone against the automation system you already own.
See AirWaves Streaming running your station
Book a walkthrough with an engineer who has actually run a radio station, or call 1-877-224-1656. No bots, no phone tree.