Fallback file input

When the contribution audio from the studio becomes unavailable, our platform plays a looped audio message to any existing connected listeners or new listeners. Once the contribution audio becomes available again, listeners are returned to the normal stream.

An audio message makes it clearer to end-users that the problem is not with their equipment or connectivity, reducing listener frustration during outages.

Default audio message

Our default audio message is:

"Stream currently offline, please try again later."

You can listen to this audio here: https://static.iono.fm/stream-offline-message.mp3

Audio looping

The audio message is looped in the background, and we cannot currently control where in the file or feed the audio will be when switching to it during an outage. For example, if a 10 minute fallback file is provided, the playback can be at any position in this file when the outage occurs.

Custom files

Customers can provide a custom file to use in the case of outages.

We recommend a short custom message that can be looped. In this case, we recommend appending 3 to 4 seconds of silence at the end of the file.

Customers can provide any MP3 or AAC encoded file up to a maximum of 30 minutes.

Customers can also provide a direct URL to the file hosted somewhere else.

Podcast channels

Customers can also specify one of their podcast channels hosted with us as the source. The fallback player will loop through the first 10 episodes, and will detect new episodes as they are published.

Setting up

Currently the configuration of this functionality is internal, please contact our support team to configure your custom file or podcast channel. We will make this functionality available directly in the stream admin interface in the future.