Alright, so today I figured I’d try streaming David Benoit’s “Every Step of the Way” album, start to finish. Full album streams sound simple, right? Play the music. But I found out there’s more to it if you wanna do it decently. Thought I’d write down the whole mess I went through.
First off, I grabbed my copy of the album. Not streaming links, my own file. I wanted good quality, you know? I noticed the tracks were all over the place in volume though. Some quiet, some loud. Really annoying. Figured I should even that out a bit before streaming, so the listener isn’t jumping for the volume knob. Looked around my audio software for something simple to “normalize” the loudness. Found a basic tool and ran it. Didn’t wanna overdo it and squash all the life out of the piano, just make it less jarful.
Next, actually setting up the stream. I usually stream games, so music felt kinda different. I use OBS. Added a new scene just for the album. Needed a nice background – didn’t want just a blank screen while the music played. Found a picture of David Benoit playing piano that looked kinda cool and not too busy. Stuck that in. Then I pulled in the audio player itself. Wanted to show the song name and time as it played. Spent way too long messing with some plugins to get that info showing nicely on screen without looking tacky. Felt like hitting my head against the wall for a bit. Got it working eventually, though it flickered weirdly at first.
Big question was: How do I play the whole album through OBS smoothly? Pasted all the song files into a playlist? Sounded simple. But then OBS choked. Tried using VLC source, pointed it at the playlist. Sometimes it stuttered bad or froze between tracks. Super frustrating! Finally just loaded them all into the media source in OBS in the right order and checked “loop” off. That seemed to work better. No gaps, no stutters. Felt good.
Before hitting go live, I checked my settings:
- Audio Bitrate: Pushed it up high-ish for the music quality. But worried about viewers’ internet. Lowered it a tiny bit from my first crazy idea. Found a balance.
- Output: Made sure the encoder was actually doing its job without killing my PC.
- Preview Check: Actually listened to the preview. Sounded fine. The on-screen display worked.
- Platform: Said it was a music stream, hoped the platform wouldn’t get mad.
Started the stream. Felt nervous, honestly. Was it gonna play? Was it gonna stutter? Was my audio setting wrong? Watched it like a hawk for the first few songs. Kept looking at the OBS stats to see if it was dropping frames or glitching. Seemed okay. Took a deep breath and actually listened. Man, that album flows nice. Reminded me why I wanted to share it. Let it play, just kept an eye out.
At the end? No big shock. Nothing exploded. No copyright strikes landed instantly. Music stopped, stream ended. Felt pretty satisfied, actually. Took more fussing than I expected just to play some songs one after another properly. Learned a bunch about how OBS handles playlists and displaying song info. Next time I do this? Probably still some tweaking needed, but way less worried about messing up. Just gotta press play and let Benoit do his thing.
