SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

http://soma.fm is a good recommendation for those of you in Last.fm sorrow. ;)

A question, though. Going to one of its channels e.g. http://somafm.com/play/lush opens the Media Player and starts streaming automatically. However, I can't get any metatag shown in the Fremantle media player I'm trying out. The result is:

205.188.214
(unknown artist) / (unknown song)

Before filing a bug I want to know whether the tag handling in the stream is correct and if there is any media player out there able to process it correctly. Any help trying out players with the very same URL posted above is appreciated. Thanks!

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

Amarok 1.4.10 says "Artemis - Sync Or Swim (Breakshop Studios Mix) - Dj F :: http://205.188.214.184:8420" when adding that stream to my playlist.

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

SomaFM is a must: they really help me to survive my xmas(es?) with the holyday channel xmax in frisco :).
If anyone have any news about tags please keep posting here:
I was planing to write a python frontend just for somafm (and access to their history logs).
Don't forget to support them

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

I get a .pls when I visit your link.

[playlist]
numberofentries=2
File1=http://205.188.214.184:8420
Title1=(#1) SomaFM: Lush (128k mp3): Sensuous and mellow vocals, mostly female, with an electronic influence.
Length1=-1
File2=http://voxsc1.somafm.com:8800
Title2=(#2) SomaFM: Lush (128k mp3): Sensuous and mellow vocals, mostly female, with an electronic influence.
Length2=-1
Version=2

So I fired up mpg123:

I did this a few times. You don't get the ICY-META right away. It takes a few seconds.

Then I went to http://205.188.214.184:8420/admin because I thought that was how to get the admin interface (which contains a lot of useful information about the server). What I got was at least the version:

I used libmpg123 because I remember this worked with MP3 radio (Shoutcast) for ages. It uses its own library.

I could not get mpg321 to work. I wanted to use a lightweight client because its easier to locate the problem (if exists) then. If you look up, you'd see what the web server streams as meta data and how this should be used in a music player.

(Personally, I don't listen to music stations a lot but I recognize the impact of such. SomaFM is nice, with a wide variety for electronic music lovers! However, LastFM (while I did not use this actively either) was something different. It was a platform for networking, for stumbling upon, with social networking capabilities. I collect certain electronic music, and LastFM has found me people who are also in that genre/style, while just using Google no less! So in many regards SomaFM or online radio is not really a replacement. There are other projects which fill/compete LastFM role (lets use them instead?), but they'd also cost the managers who run the platform money; it is difficult to run such for free, or only with ads.)

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

Weird. Last week clicking the link would at least open the media player and stream. Now it only shows me the pls object in the browser. Did something change in soma.fm?

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

Media Player on 5.2008.43-7 identifies the stream as, "Lush: Mostly female vocals with an electronic influence. [SomaFM]" It also displays the artist and track names as songs play. iTunes 8.1 on Mac OS does the same.

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

From here it works like it should both on the server side and the client sides I tested.

If you open http://somafm.com/play/lush with a desktop browser (Opera, Firefox) in GNOME it will tell you the default application to open the .pls file with. By default this is Totem. This application will then add both URLs (so #1 and #2) in the playlist. Rhythmbox, which you can also decide to use to listen to internet radio, has a seperate entry for the radio stations the user wants to listen to to which these URLs (again, both) are added and can be maintained. Allowing management and keeping them seperate is useful. Think of it: it is great to have your internet radio stations in your Media Player application on your mobile device. BTW, it'll play the http:// link fine including showing correct metadata artist and track.

Here on Diablo it works with Media Player (I never used this application before but it looks nice). However it doesn't show the metadata in the title bar above. It says 'Now playing'. Above the 2 playlists it says either: 'Playing: Lush: Mostly female vocals with an ele...' or it says: 'Playing: Carmen Rizzo - Easy Way Out (Featuri...'. It says either 1 of these 2, and switches every once in a while between these 2. Ofcourse when a new track is played it will show that track. Right now it has become 'Playing: Afterlife - Falling' which fits. You will notice what did not fit. From what I see here, with this version, metadata (internet radio station name, artist name, track name) is correct. I do get disconnected sometimes, but maybe that is my internet connectivity.

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

uhm, this thread begin to became like a list of which player on the tablet can manage the mp3 tags: could be usefull for a more general approach (ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2 etc. etc) but still if it just can figure out how manage the somafm streams is already a success :D.

<random rant>
Lets 'link' a player to send the current tags to the ovi accounts and we can have a tablet user musical social network (connected with the nokia music store?). Being evil like apple: let buy the song directly from the player (1 tap) and give part of the money to somafm (that would work better on cellphones using the contract or the prepaied credit money).
</random rant>

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

Thats the thing. Nobody was talking about ID3! The internet radio DJ software (the DSP of SHOUTcast, IceCast, etc) reads the metadata (ID3v1, ID3v2, or some other format) and tells this to the internet radio server software (SHOUTcast, IceCast, etc itself) which then uses ICY-META to let the media players know this information. The media player doesn't get the MP3 and read the ID3 metadata for there is no ID3 metadata. All the media player has to do is heads up when it receives a ICY-META from the internet radio server software. Normally, media player receives this right after first connect, and when DSP announces it succesfully to server.

Re: SomaFM and visible meta tags
 

Thank you for being so evil. Anything else you want to wave in our faces?

How about, "While I was watching a 720p video on the RX-51 device I'm trying out, I found that the HDMI out wasn't working entirely correctly..."

And there are your Karmic rewards for your evil deeds.

;)