Free Pony Theory ~ Streaming playlists

Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 152

Someone asked about the option to stream an entire post. I like this idea because I always make my posts like I make mixtapes, they have a certain sequence. I also make sure that all the songs in my posts have the same volume so people can listen to the list without having to change their own volume.

In order to listen to the entire list people right now have two options:
1. download all the tracks
2. stream through the hypemachine

Unfortunately the hypemachine player doesn't work very well, it messes up the sequence and doesn't display all the tracks in the playlist. And downloading all the tracks is not very practical for everyone, maybe someone listening at work would prefer to stream. I also stream most songs on blogs if I have the option.

So I was thinking about using a language that makes it possible to listen to my playlists like they're supposed to. This can be done with SMIL, ASX, M3U, etc files. SMIL seems the most simple I guess. I will just put something like "stream playlist" in front of my playlist where people can click on and which opens the playlist file in their external mediaplayer.

Anyone have thoughts on this? What should be best?

Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 152

I have a m3u file for streaming my latest playlist here:
Stream playlist

What do you think Squashed? Would this suitable for using in selected posts?

Joined: 23 Sep 2006 Posts: 1088

Can you put the list in post? See if people like clicking it.

I still am worrying about legal aspect. because they are handling "streaming" as internet radio. ANd there is fee for that.

but we'll see. try posting it first. put it at the end of the post or something. you decide.

Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 152

Ok, so in my latest two posts I've started using .m3u files. I chose this format because all the major mediaplayers (Windows Mediaplayer, Realplayer, Winamp) seem to understand these files.

The most simple way to make a .m3u file is as follows:

1. Bookmark the "m3ugen" link that you see on the top of this page.
2. Write your post in WordPress.
3. When finished, scroll down to the Post Preview screen at the bottom of the Writing page.
4. Right click the header/title of your post and select the option to open it in a new window.
5. Open the m3u generator bookmark.

Now the m3u file is opened with your default mediaplayer. If that happens to be Windows Mediaplayer (as it is on my computer), simply select the option "save playlist as" and choose m3u as the preferred format. Now it's just a matter of hosting the .m3u file in your directory and linking to it in your post.

There is one catch though, if you want Realplayer to understand the file too, you have to delete the empty lines within the .m3u files manually with Notepad. Or at least this is the case with my Realplayer.

Let me know if this works for you or not.

Alternatively: I've made a small application in Excel that automatically builds the html code for my playlist (as in: the ordered list that you see in the actual post including all the label info and such). Because the actual code of the .m3u files is so simple (as you can see if you open such a file with Notepad) I've extended the Excel application so that it also makes the code for the .m3u file. If you're interested in this file, let me know and I will post it.

Joined: 30 Apr 2007 Posts: 152

The method as described above should do the trick, but here's the method I'm using myself.

This is a small excel application that automatically makes for you:
- html code for playlist
- code for m3u file

Here's what you need to do after opening the excel sheet:
1. Open "Input" tab and fill in the three yellow cells
2. Fill in the blue cells with mp3 info (either manually or copy from mp3 tag editor, see below)
3. Fill in the orange cells to define the order of the playlist
4. Open "playlist" or "m3u" tab and hit the generate button
5. Double click the blue cell and copy the code inside the cell by dragging over the text

To use the playlist html code, just paste the code into the html-editor in WordPress.

To use the m3u code:
1. Open Windows'Notepad and paste the code
2. Click "save as"
3. Enter the same filename (including .m3u extension) as in the yellow cell of "Input" tab
4. Upload the m3u file to your playlist directory on ftp-server

As I said, you can either manually enter the mp3 info in the Input-tab or copy it from a tag editor, based on the mp3-tags. Of course, the latter way is much faster. I use TagScanner to generate a list of the mp3-tag information and copy that list into the Input-tab. But there are probably zillions of mp3-tag listmakers. Choose whatever you feel comfortable with.

Notes:
1. Before you use the generator, first make sure the mp3 filenames are without spaces
2. Do not copy the blue cells itself (that contain the playlist and m3u codes) directly to WordPress or Notepad, always select and copy the code from within the blue cells
3. If you are using the listmaker of TagScanner, select the following columns in the export-settings: filename, artist, title, album, year.
4. Unfortunately mp3-tags do not have label information, you can add that information manually in the Input-tab or (as I do) enter the label information in the comment section of the mp3-tag and add the comment section to your selection of columns in the export-settings.

It works perfect for me, but maybe not for everyone, let me know if something is bothering you.