Streaming MoH From IHeart Radio?

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Hi all,

I have a user who would like to stream their favorite radio station from iHeart radio for their music on hold.

It this TECHNICALLY possible? If so, any pointers would be appreciated.

Is this LEGAL in the US?

Thanks in advance,

Mike.

3 thoughts on - Streaming MoH From IHeart Radio?

  • Hi Mike,

    Technically, it’s possible. It takes a bit of work to extract the right stream links from the playlist file, and some services hide this from sight, best they can.

    We tried to do a similar thing, streaming smoothjazz.com radio through Askerisk, as MOH.

    What we found was that the way Asterisk works (or worked originally, when we tested), it tries to open a new socket for each MOH “session”, and they’d see multiple sessions from our IP address, and eventually block the IP.

    What we did to alleviate this, was install a locally controlled Icecast server used as a “relay”, which pulls 1 stream from them, and allows us to pull multiple streams (relays) from the server… never been blocked since.

    As far as the legality is concerned, technically ANY music for “public consumption” requires a performance license of some kind. However, as long as they’e not a huge company, and just using for hold music, or internal office music… should be fine.

    Good luck!

    *Glenn Geller*

    *VDO-Ph International*

  • If you have in musiconhold.conf cachertclasses=yes then it will only pull one stream. Below is what you can try:

    musiconhold.conf
    [general]
    cachertclasses=yes ; use 1 instance of moh class for all users who are using it, preferchannelclass=no ; Needed so that we use what’s set in Music