Broadcast Using This Tool (butt) is a free, open-source audio streaming client for macOS that lets you transmit live audio directly to Shoutcast and Icecast servers with minimal setup.
What is Broadcast Using This Tool?
Broadcast Using This Tool — universally known by its acronym butt — is a lightweight streaming encoder that takes audio from any connected microphone or soundcard and pushes it live to an internet radio server. Point it at your Shoutcast or Icecast endpoint, hit Record, and you are on the air. There is no subscription, no cloud dependency, and no account to create. The project has been actively maintained by developer Daniel Nöthen for well over a decade, and it shows in the stability.
Where most streaming software bundles a mixer, a scheduler, and half a dozen features you will never touch, butt strips things back to the essentials: input selection, server credentials, encoder settings, and a big green button. That restraint is precisely why I keep it installed alongside more elaborate tools — when I need to go live fast, butt is the one I reach for.
What does Broadcast Using This Tool do best?
Butt excels at dead-simple, reliable live audio streaming to self-hosted or third-party Shoutcast and Icecast servers. Its single-window interface handles MP3 and Ogg Vorbis encoding, stream metadata updates (song titles, artist info), and automatic reconnection if your connection drops — all without touching a terminal.
- Multiple server profiles: store credentials for several stations and switch between them in two clicks.
- Signal meter and live bitrate display: you can see at a glance whether your stream is healthy without leaving the app.
- Local recording: capture a simultaneous local archive of your broadcast in a separate file — handy for podcast repurposing.
- Timed start/stop: schedule a stream to begin and end automatically, useful for unattended broadcast slots.
- Apple Silicon native: the current release runs natively on M-series Macs, so encoding is effortless and the battery impact is negligible.
One thing butt does not do: it is not a mixer. You feed it a single input source. If you need to blend a microphone, music, and call-in audio before streaming, you will want to route through something like Rogue Amoeba's Loopback or the free BlackHole virtual audio driver first. Butt just takes whatever macOS hands it and sends it down the wire.
Is Broadcast Using This Tool free?
Yes — butt is completely free to download and use, with no feature tiers, no in-app purchases, and no nag screens. It is open-source software released under the GPL, so the full source code is available on the project's website for anyone who wants to inspect or build from it. You do still need your own Shoutcast or Icecast server (or a hosting service that provides one), but the client itself costs nothing.
Who should use Broadcast Using This Tool?
Butt is the right tool for internet radio hobbyists, community station volunteers, podcast pre-shows, and anyone who already runs or rents a streaming server and just needs a reliable encoder on the Mac end. If you are running a DIY Icecast station from a Raspberry Pi or paying a few dollars a month to a service like Shoutcast's hosted tier, butt will connect to it in under two minutes.
It is probably not the right fit if you need advanced scheduling, a built-in media library, or listener analytics — for that, look at Nicecast (discontinued but still running for many), RadioDJ on Windows, or a full-stack hosted solution like AzuraCast. Butt is happiest as the last leg of a chain: your audio routed, mixed, and ready, with butt doing the one job of getting it to your server reliably.
What are the best Broadcast Using This Tool alternatives?
The closest Mac-native alternative is Nicecast by Rogue Amoeba, which offers a more polished UI and tighter macOS integration, but it has been discontinued and no longer receives updates. Ladiocast is a free option with a basic mixer built in, though its development pace is slower. On the commercial side, SAM Broadcaster and RadioBoss are Windows-first and feel out of place on macOS. For most people running a personal or community station on a Mac, butt remains the pragmatic default: it just works, it is current, and it costs nothing.
How does Broadcast Using This Tool compare to Ladiocast?
Ladiocast includes a basic three-channel mixer, making it the better pick if you need to blend inputs inside a single app. Butt wins on stability, more frequent updates, encoder flexibility (both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis), and the local simultaneous recording feature. I have seen butt handle eight-hour continuous streams without a hiccup; my experience with Ladiocast on long unattended sessions has been less consistent. Unless you specifically need that built-in mixer, butt is the more dependable choice.
