The big card at the top of your station’s Overview says whether anybody can hear anything, and holds the buttons that change it: going live, starting AutoDJ, turning the station off. The strip at the top of every dashboard page shows the same status, with a shortcut to the next thing you’d want to do.
Two Questions, Not One
The station page answers them separately, and keeping them apart is the key to reading it:
- Can anyone hear this station? That is power. A station only holds a broadcast server while it is switched on, which is why an off-air station has no stream, no listener count and no now-playing.
- What are they hearing? That is the source — you, live; or AutoDJ; or nothing yet.
Being live is not a bigger version of being on air. It is being on air with a person as the source.
What Each Status Means
| Status | What is true |
|---|---|
| Off air | No server, no stream. The player page shows the notify field. |
| Starting… | The server is coming up. A few seconds, normally. |
| Going live | The station is on and waiting for you to start your show. Listeners hear silence until you do. |
| Live / Live · Mic | A person is broadcasting, from the studio or an encoder. The second reads while your mic is open from this browser. |
| Show ended | Your show from this browser has just finished and the dashboard is checking what is on air now. Gone in a moment. |
| On air · AutoDJ | The station is running with nobody live: AutoDJ (Pro) is playing your music. The card says which playlist. |
| Silence | The station is running but playing silence — AutoDJ with nothing to play. Add tracks to AutoDJ’s playlist, or go live. |
| Checking | The dashboard has just opened and hasn’t heard from the station yet. It says nothing about what listeners hear. |
| No answer | The dashboard can’t reach the station right now and keeps trying. It clears on the next answer. |
| Not heard | The station is running and producing audio, but it is not getting out. Nobody can hear it. This one is ours to fix — if it does not clear by itself in a minute or two, email us. |
The Buttons
- Go live now opens the studio, where you check your mic and running order before you go on air from your browser. If AutoDJ is playing, it pauses until you finish.
- Start AutoDJ (Pro) switches the station on and plays your music with nobody live.
- Turn station off — it reads Stop AutoDJ while AutoDJ is playing, and asks first — stops everything. Anyone listening is cut off, and the player page shows the station as off air.
If you are live from another browser or computer, the card says You’re live from another browser and has no stop button. End the show from the studio in that browser: stopping it from here would only make that studio reconnect and start the station again.
Going Live Switches It On For You
You never have to press power first. Starting a broadcast starts the station as part of the same action, because there is no sense in which somebody wants to be live on a station that is switched off.
Stopping
Going off air ends the broadcast for everybody currently listening and releases the server. If an external encoder is connected, the app will say so and ask you to confirm before cutting it off, rather than quietly pulling the rug from under a show running in another application.
Stations also stop themselves after ten minutes of producing no audio with nobody attached — see my station went off air on its own.