Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Links, Streams, Widgets, etc

A lot of people have been requesting Widgets for MySpace, Facebook, etc. I'd love to hear some feedback on what these widgets should include. It could be as simple as what's currently playing or it could actually be a player that you embed in your page, that starts playing when you go to your page.

I'm not sure how I feel about making the station start auto-playing when you land on a page- but if you want that, give me some feedback and let me know.

I was also thinking about something that showed what was playing on all the channels and sequenced through them - tickertape style - and then had a menu to jump directly to listen to one of the stations.

I'm also about to roll out 128k streams for Windows Media Player... and I'm wondering if that should be the default for Windows users when people click on the station logos? Or if we should still default to whatever app (iTunes, Winamp, etc) handles .pls files?

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Please stick to the current behavior of clicks - I can't imagine myself using WMP for somafm even though I'm on win.

October 11, 2007 9:57 AM  
Anonymous Richard Mitnick said...

Rusty-

Stay with the 128k mp3 streams you have. Read Paul Thurrot at
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/dm_core_music.asp

mp3 might not be technically the best, it is the best for all practicality. 128k is plenty. Look at the rest of Shoutcast and see who is doing what.

Also, Stephen Hill at HOS is headed away from WMA to mp3.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Best,

>>RSM

October 11, 2007 10:08 AM  
Blogger Rusty Hodge said...

I'm not talking about switching to WMA format streams for the 128k, I'm only talking about adding 128k MP3 links via WMP; and testing changing the behavior of clicking on the station logo button (and not the specific link versions) so that the station logo button launches a 128k MP3 stream in WMP.

The links for the various formats will still exist; just the default click for the station icon will change.

I'm a true believer in MP3 because of its ubiquity.

But I will be adding 128k WMA links that are actually 128k MP3 streams within an ASX container.

A lot of this is due to people at work who can't install software and only have WMP installed, and always ask how they can get 128k streams in WMP.

October 11, 2007 10:20 AM  
Blogger Chris B. said...

For what it's worth, I listen to the 128k MP3 stream via Winamp because the quality is top-notch, it clears our corporate firewall, and Winamp perpetually scrolls the artist and song name both on the player AND in the task bar.

For a widget, what you have in mind is great. Maybe you could offer a version that auto-opens and one that has a [play] button. Check out the stuff Last.fm offers - easy to install, simple interface, a couple of options available.

October 12, 2007 8:06 AM  

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