radio [new school]

the architecture for interactive radio broadcast solutions can be boiled
down into three major components: Content Programming Tools, an Internet Radio Transmitter, and Interactive Radio Tuners (Players).
The Content Programming Tools are the collection of software applications
used to capture and store, manage and schedule the music, information, and
advertisements in the radio broadcast. This component sequences and
provides the content to the Internet Radio Transmitter in the Standardized
Interactive Radio Format (SIRF).

The Internet Radio Transmitter includes the synchronization engine, content
cache, standardized and auditable play log, player access control, and
scalable hosting solution. It also channels active feedback from listeners
to the Content Programming Tools. The synchronization engine takes the
sequenced content generated by the Content Programming Tools and
instantiates the integrated, standardized live broadcast that can be
received by all SIRF-compliant Interactive Radio Tuners.

The Interactive Radio Tuners (Players) may take one of two general forms: a
dedicated client application or a SMIL presentation in a generalized media
player (such as RealPlayer). Dedicated client applications may be built on
top of a customized RealPlayer G2 SDK for Internet radio that makes the
additional data in the standard format available to the top-level client
and synchronizes its display with the audio. SMIL presentations simply lay
out the synchronized, SIRF-compliant live streams.

--www.realaudio.com