Audio Player and Playlists

Posted by jumoke on January 13, 2011 at 8:28am

I have started to build a drupal music site and i have spent so much time trying to figure what modules to use. I considered the unstable "Audio" module but decided since it is not updated. I want my users (local artists) to be able to upload their music and sometimes a whole album (which will include album art, lyrics). And then display a discography page like this MyPlay heavenly goodness here --> http://myplay.com/music/david-cook/david-cook

So far:
I have created 3 content types:
-Artist (with Content Profile module)
-Album: [reference_artist]
-Audio: [reference_album],[reference_artist], FileField for uploading audio

Now I have uploaded a few tracks to an album owned by an Artist. Now, I have started researching Players/Playlists modules to use in displaying the music uploaded so that when you are on the Artist's page and click on a track, it popups something similar to this (no music purchasing yet) --> http://myplay.com/music/david-cook/david-cook. I know most of that View is done with "Views" and I know I am still far from my destination now and still taking baby steps in this media thing..., especially getting the player/playlist thing to work before worrying about organizing the page. I have been reading this XSPF-Playlist module and also the SWF Tools module - and I am still very lost and don't even know if they are the right modules for me.

So, I am hoping someone here can help me make my baby steps quicker by lending me a few minutes of their time to share their Recipe/Ideas with me. I realize there are many Modules and topics opened about this, none actually provide a way to get this done other than "maybe(s)" and "what if(s)", so I pray this brings me or someone in my same dilemma some results. I will be forever thankful to you for any help you provide and will owe you a great deal. Please help me.

Comments

We are on the same boat...

Posted by shriji on January 19, 2011 at 6:14pm

Hi Excalibur,

You are not alone :-)

I have been strugling to achieve the same thing in my new drupal site. I dont have a live link to show you what I have done but following is link to what I currently have in my production:

http://www.brajdhamsewa.org/Satsang/SatsangByShriBabaMaharaj/MorningLect...

We are a small non-profit org and run this website to share 35000+ audio files, 70000+ pictures, and 1000+ videos all for free and everybody should be able to download all the contents. Audio part has been implemented in the current site but pictures and video part is still pending. I am planning to introduce that in my drupal version fo the site.

I have been working on the solution for past several months for mp3 player and playlist. I did come up one using FlashNode, SWFTools, and views modules in Drupal 6.20. This is what I found the best of all. And I was pretty much satisfied with it as it gave download option as well. I was about to release it but then I thought I should work on Drupal 7 as it is now offically released. But except views, none of the rest has D7 version yet, so I am back to square one :-(

But looks like you already found some solution. I really love the interface for playing the songs with a list of song below the player. It looks like a third party tool or custom made solution in flash. How did you do that?

I hope the info helps.

Thanks
Shriji

Thanks Shriji, That

Posted by jumoke on January 21, 2011 at 11:36pm

Thanks Shriji,
That DavidCook's myplay link i provided is not mine: I am trying to replicate that kind of view and functionality. I have come close enough on my site now, it's not up yet but i believe I will get there soon as I do have some progress.

So far,
I am using SWFTools, CCK and View. I use 1pixelout (comes with SWFTools module) to display the player on the site. I am using Views to display related content on an album page, the list of music displayed on the player and on the artist page as well.

Are you working on Drupal 7

Posted by shriji on January 23, 2011 at 5:02pm

Are you working on Drupal 7 or still Durpal 6.20?

I have implemented the same solution as you have but I want to move to D7....and I have not seen anything yet that can give us same functionality with bulk import (as I said have 50k+ files) that we get with flash node.

How are you handling bulk import with this solution?

Best Practice

Posted by MickC on January 20, 2011 at 9:57pm

I think this is an opportunity for us to come together as a community, share and define best practice. Drupal is so cool for music, but Audio functionality is core and should be a strength - I'm sure with some effort we can define the best 2-3 ways to set up audio for the most common use cases.

Like Excalibur I tried Audio but was put off by the apparent lack of support for its development, and went the CCK road e.g. http://musicosity.com/artists/manoovers. However audio nodes would have several advantages including voting, nodequeues, terms, views bulk operations, node reference linking to albums or setlists and so many other uses.

What the downside of going the node route? Too many nodes, performance impact?
What about a hybrid solution - separate audio node, but with an audio field, rather that attaching to the node itself?
Could we persuade the development community to converge on an agreed module set that are fit for purpose?

Let's start trading ideas, and suggest where we could start definitively recording best practice definitions - we'll be waiting a long time otherwise...

cheers,

MC, creating a CCK node with

Posted by zirafa on January 21, 2011 at 6:13am

MC, creating a CCK node with your own fields still allows you to include voting, nodequeue, terms, views, etc and everything else a standard node gets. Not sure what limitation you see with CCK, it is overall more flexible than a predefined Audio node.

I'm not sure what sort of answer you guys are looking for, but check out the ideas and work that Dub has already put into his discography work. CCK, Views, and Sound Manager 2 is pretty much the meat of it. There are some other very long threads discussing how to come to consensus and build a common set of reusable feature bundles as well. But for now, my suggestion is to try and use those three modules together and create a customized configuration to meet your needs.

CCK node - do you mean a node

Posted by MickC on January 21, 2011 at 10:29am

CCK node - do you mean a node with a CCK field for audio? That's what I have now, but on the Artist node, with an audio field allowing many values.
Is this best practice? Doubt it - it seemed efficient at the time so artists could simply add audio at the time of creating their profile. However voting would only work on the artist, not the track. So if the use case is to allow people to vote/rate audio tracks, bookmark etc, then it would need to be a separate Audio node with a audio CCK field. Is that how you do it?

I've followed all those threads, but they mostly talk about developments, distributions, or specific modules, however I'm not aware of a practical guide based on what's available today to build a great music site, covering various use cases. E.g. I believe Sony MyPlay is/was Drupal - how do they get the player looking like that? I've seen discussions on streaming, but the threads have some assumed knowledge I'm missing, or maybe it's the way the node/CCK combo that affects the way views works. I'd like to be able to automatically create a playlist that icecast could use, but maybe there's a better way.

It would be great if we could put into a wiki rather than threads which become hard to follow after a while - I've started one here if people think this is a good idea http://groups.drupal.org/node/120909

Thanks for responding - it's helpful for me, and hopefully for others too.

Yes, I mean creating a

Posted by zirafa on January 23, 2011 at 1:27pm

Yes, I mean creating a dedicated audio node type, for a single song, that stores information about that track using individual cck fields. These cck fields can be shared across other nodes to add more information. I would avoid using node reference, because in order to use a node reference it implies an order of operations (you can't add a node that doesn't exist). Work things out on a CCK field level, not on a node level. Possibly even share cck fields across nodes, then try and use views to filter relevant things together.

But that is just one approach. It is hard to generalize and create a single "best practice" because everyone has different priorities and assumptions. There are different tradeoffs so first decide what is most important, what are your assumptions, and then prioritize and make decisions based around that.

You are right though, we don't have a good repository of detailed walk-throughs, how-tos, and best recipes/practices for cooking up audio functionality. It would be very useful to see how people achieve their goals and how they configure their site to meet their end use case. Sharing that knowledge and experience will make it easier for newbies approaching things for the first time. Your wiki is a good idea I think.

I have gone the route of

Posted by jumoke on January 21, 2011 at 11:51pm

I have gone the route of making Audio a node of it's own with CCK filefield for the reasons you guys have mentioned: voting, lyrics and being able to create special Views on the tracks. MyPlay has it this way as well. May be heavy on the database but i believe this is the best way to get functionality out of this whole process. My site is so slow now and it's not even live yet and I have only uploaded a few tracks...lol :confused: So i have to figure how to disable some module and speed things up abit.

I am yet to try SoundManager2. I am using 1PixelOut now (it ships with the SWFTools module).

I will like to create a "how to" guide on the steps I have taken to achieve my site once the task of development the site done. And add to your wiki as well MickC.

I am at the point now where i

Posted by jumoke on January 21, 2011 at 11:52pm

I am at the point now where i need each user to be able create a playlist and add a track to their own personal playlist (to be accessible by them on their profile). What is the best way to handle playlists? Do you have any article i can read up on?

Take a look at the Nodequeue

Posted by zirafa on January 23, 2011 at 1:30pm

Take a look at the Nodequeue module and this comparison of node ordering modules.

Good question

Posted by gusaus on May 18, 2011 at 5:46am

I've posed a similar question - any answers?

http://groups.drupal.org/node/145189

Gus Austin

"The audio module uses the

Posted by MickC on January 22, 2011 at 9:25pm

"The audio module uses the getID3 library to read and write ID3 meta-tag information to and from the audio file. Pages that display the most recent audio files submitted to the site, as well as the most recent audio files uploaded by individual users are also generated. Feeds from these pages are 'podcast friendly'."

Does anyone else use getID3? Seems useful - how does it work without Audio module? Can it work with just nodes and CCK?

Note I'm assuming by CCK we all mean the CCK Audio field right?

getID3 is integrated into the Audio module

Posted by thumb on January 22, 2011 at 9:32pm

I'm not aware of other modules that use the getID3 module. The Audio module was developed to use getID3 to read and write ID3 tags for audio nodes. I doubt that there's any direct integration between getID3 and CCK.

Looks like this functionality

Posted by zirafa on January 23, 2011 at 1:42pm

Looks like this functionality isn't ready quite yet for CCK fields but is actively being developed for D7. There is a use case for using it to read and autofill the metadata fields when creating a new audio file, but I think writing the metadata fields to ID3 tags of the file is a much more useful scenario.

Any updates?

Posted by mcdazz (not verified) on May 9, 2011 at 6:45am

Any updates? I'm trying to do something similar to the MyPlay site (mentioned in the first post) using swftools and the default generic mp3 player (not a playlist as such).

Basically, I have the following (only for testing purposes - more CCK fields etc would be added later):

Content Type: audio
Filefield: field_audio_file

I created a node-audio.tpl.php template file with the following:

<?php print swf($node->field_audio_file[0]['filepath']); ?>

Now, this works perfectly on a node with a single mp3 (haven't tried it using multiple mp3's).

The problem creeps in when I try to use Views with Style set to Table/Grid etc. This causes a "No player is configured to play a series mixed media files. Check the SWF Tools file handling settings on the configuration page." message, despite creating a Views Field template file.

Switching the Views Style to unformatted and Row Style to none gives me something similar to what I'm trying to achieve (basically just displaying the Node.

Another method I tested was creating a Panel (using Panels) and adding the individual nodes into the Panel - not something that is ideal for larger sites, but is ok for my purposes of displaying just a few mp3 files and allowing the mp3 files to be downloaded.

It'd be great if others could put forward ideas on how to go about creating something similar, or even how they would go about it.

Cheers,
Darren

A D7 Example

Posted by drupa11y on October 2, 2011 at 4:47pm

I just build this page with D7 for Makossa & Megablast: http://www.luvliterecordings.com

Additional files can be downloaded after the login, also the audio files.
If someone is interested I can post some more details with screenshots.

What I am currently looking for is a player like this with a playlist. I plan to invest more time on the music topic in the future.

looks great

Posted by yogarenzi on December 2, 2011 at 5:10pm

Mori, Your site looks great, and now I'm a fan of the band you're promoting. I'm not too clear on what you are looking for. You can also sell the music directly from your site with ubercart file downloads. I didn't notice where to register to become a user in order to download files.

A D6 Example

Posted by xaa on December 3, 2011 at 9:51am

hello,
here is another example of SWF Tools + the wordpress audio plugin (playlist).
www.casanoe.be

on the subpage www.casanoe.be/musique, we use the view accordion to display the songs + the lyrics.

A new module that supports

Posted by zirafa on December 3, 2011 at 10:10am

A new module that supports Media module playlists is in development:

http://www.drupal.org/project/mediaplaylist

Casanoe.be

Posted by composer_v on January 19, 2012 at 12:35am

Really nice music! :) Thanks.

soundcloud as a pop-up player?

Posted by viktor.mastoridis on May 8, 2012 at 9:43pm

Using the Soundcloud service one can easily create playlists (sets) that can be added to a drupal site with a single embed code.

However, 'extracting' the link from the embed the code and using it to create a pop-up within a WYSIWYG editor (using the window size from the embed code) can give you a nice pop-up player that plays a single song or a playlist.

My 2 cents.

Casanoe.be: excellent music:-)

PLS & M3U

Posted by Vemma-1 on January 21, 2014 at 5:55pm

Anyone still playing their radio stream files using DP-7.26? i need a player that will play PLS & M3U files. Thx.