I had the idea to make something similar to google music (before their idea was public) but instead of just letting the user play the music they could also "publish" it and stream it. Then they could link their friends to their channel.
I was wanting the interface to be ran by JQuery and very basic. Allow for uploading of their music and then they can create a "to be played list" where the backend radio streamer plays right from the list. It should be noted the streaming upload is actually from my server, and not their comp (unless this is doable?) They could also record their voice over/sound effects from a flash "record" button that would just record their voice via mic on flash, make a mp3 file and add it to the "to be played" list.
So my question is this, what's the best way to accomplish this? Are there already similar open source JQuery projects that I could go from? What streaming back-end radio streamer is the best?
The last one I checked out was icecast and their was a specific version (not official) I had to get that would let me do both ogg and mp3, because normally the versions did one or the other. How would I give it ability to stop/skip to the next song and simulate that streaming live. Change up a internal playlist and send some sort of linux signal?
PS: things to note. I have average experience with javascript/Jquery. Limited with flash. above average with PHP. I have my own dedicated linux server so any open-source, freeware or relative cheap software is an option.
I used the jquery plugin called jplayer http://jplayer.org/ for a streaming music player and it worked really well - I would definitely recommend it. One cool thing is that if it's opened in a browser that doesn't support html5, it defaults back to flash.
Also, it's open source, so if you need more / different functionality you could always look at the source and build on it or get inspiration from it.