Flash Audio Players with MySQL

I was talking to the co-owner of my Gaming Site >> GamingLoft.com and we sorta came up with the idea to make a audio portal for our site to get more visitors and to make the site more interactive.

At first we were thinking of using the basic windows media player to stream the audio but, that uses to much bandwidth than we'd like it to.

I talked to my friend about this and he said "Streaming Audio with Windows Media uses to much bandwidth, make a flash pre loader" ok so here i am, wondering if anyone can answer the following questions:

1) Is it possible to use mysql, php and a flash pre-loader to make a audio portal
2) Does this ^^ use less bandwidth than windows media?
3) Is this ^^ easy or hard to do?

New:
4. Would this require a Dedicated server?
5. What would this require?

Thx for your help!

1) Is it possible to use mysql, php and a flash pre-loader to make a audio portal
Definitely possible, best way is to load in the audio using Flash's native XML parsing.

2) Does this ^^ use less bandwidth than windows media?
Well, not really. All depends how you compress the audio before hand. I'd recommend using Normalizer (Unix application) to normalize all the audio so users aren't forever increasing and decreasing the volume based on the audio's volume.

3) Is this ^^ easy or hard to do?
Relatively easy. Load in the audio using an XML file as mentioned, or even just an argument on the embedded flash, then attach it to a Flash loader object.

With number 2, although you can compress the audio, the real reason people choose Flash and not Windows Media Player is down to usability. Flash is much more widely available and can be customised a lot more to suit the website.

New Question:

4. Would this require a Dedicated server?

5. What would this require?