This is a systems analysis book about on-line radio. Systems analysis is a means to cross the gap between concepts and realisation or, in the context of software development, between requirements elicitation and modelling. The methods I discuss here can be applied to any number of technical fields, but are tuned towards the production of software. Creating an on-line radio station involves quite a bit of analogue studio techniques, not to mention social engineering, but it is foremost an exercise in software design and implementation.

The first chapters purport to provide some context. The 'case studies' describe some radio set-ups, some are simple grass-root ones, some are complex social media initiatives. All examples discussed here do have in common a will to gain experience and insights into media processes, and to share these experiences through non-profit organisations, producing open source software and publishing results in an accessible manner.

The chapter on project management is not specific to radio, but before setting about to build any intricate and bespoke system -such as a radio station- it is wise to give organisational challenges a thought. In fact, this is probably the most useful chapter in the book.

The next chapters are the architectural part of the book, describing the domain, the data flows and the interactions inside a radio station. Several complementary approaches are possible to describe a system: a system-of-systems, describes subsystems and their interactions. This is the approach used in 'the streaming system architecture'. The 'Data modelling' chapter describes entities, both human and machine, their interactions and responsibilities. This chapter introduces some useful domain discovery techniques.

The 'systems requirements' chapter is a catalogue of hardware-, software- and network-assets you will definitely need, unfortunately this catalogue is unbounded. Finally, there are some additional notes on audio in the context of on-line radio. I'm not an audio engineer, but there are some very basic things any radio maker should know.

The final chapters are the most concrete chapters in the book. The 'use cases' are a minimal set of requirements necessary for any radio project. You might want to implement these yourself, or you might want to use them to evaluate existing software. Finally, the 'workshops' are challenging, but will hopefully be useful to you as an online broadcaster.

1. Case studies
   1. Grassroot radio examples
   2. Reboot FM
   3. Open Broadcast
   4. Wortwelle
2. Managing a streaming project
   1. Feasibility assessment
   2. Planning
   3. Prototyping
3. The streaming system architecture
   1. The play-out system
   2. The scheduler
   3. Website interoperability
   4. Archiving
4. Data modelling
   1. Entity relationship modelling
   2. Data flows
      1. Context
      2. Data flows within the system
5. System requirements
   1. Overview
   2. Bandwidth
   3. Storage Space
   4. Audio hardware
   5. Operating system
   6. Streaming server
   7. Audio software
   8. Reporting
6. Audio
   1. Digital audio formats
   2. Encoding for streaming
   3. Playlist formats
   4. Metadata
7. Use Cases
   1. Authorization
      1. Register a user
      2. Assign role editor to a user
      3. Assign role DJ to a user
      4. Deactivate user
   2. Scheduler
      1. Creating a show
      2. Creating an emission
      3. Composing a playlist
      4. Importing a schedule
   3. Play-out
      1. Sound card configuration
      2. Route streams
      3. Monitor streaming server
      4. Route to external stream
   4. Integration
      1. Publish schedule on the web
      2. Publish audio file and playlist tags to the podcast
   5. Asset Management
      1. Record an emission
      2. Archive of broadcast
      3. Search archive by show name
      4. Browse the archive
      5. Mass import
      6. Upload individual files by linking instead of copying
      7. Upload a file
      8. Retrieve metadata from external service
8. Workshops
   1. Setting up a Streaming Server
   2. Writing playlist modules
9. Glossary
10. Bibliography
11. Acknowledgements