It entirely depends where you live. You can pay certain organizations for blanket rights to most songs and it’s extremely expensive.
Some options if you still want to broadcast are:
Use royalty free music/public domain
Go to Bandcamp/YouTube/Soundcloud and ask smaller artists permission to play their music on your station
Ask around your local scene and see if artists around your area give you permission to play their music.
Roll the dice and hope for obscurity to keep you safe
Currently I opted to put everything behind a password and only use it for myself. Once I’m more confident on building solid programming, I might look into starting a station for local and small artists with their permission.
Super interesting, but in setting up an internet radio station, how does one deal with artists rights? Is it illegal just to start broadcasting?
It entirely depends where you live. You can pay certain organizations for blanket rights to most songs and it’s extremely expensive.
Some options if you still want to broadcast are:
Currently I opted to put everything behind a password and only use it for myself. Once I’m more confident on building solid programming, I might look into starting a station for local and small artists with their permission.