At WSUM, we are currently using a double install of Drupal with the station module. The first install is installed at our ISP [dreamhost] for public consumption. The second install is on our in-studio server. The difference between WSUM's dual install and KPSU's dual install is in the hosting of the archived audio files. At KPSU, Drewish has set up the archive hosting on the studio machine in anticipation of bandwidth and storage issues with the ISP. Since Dreamhost offers free hosting for non-profits as well as good storage and transfer limits, WSUM rips the audio with the studio install and then posts the complete file to the ISP for import. This avoids the need for public access to the studio install and allows us to set a longer retention limit for the local audio archives than the 2 week legal limit. This setup has led to consideration of additional purpose to the studio install.
Since there is no public access to our studio install, this interface has been IP restricted to the studio only. The local install is set for 6 weeks of archive retention and utilizes our mass storage for retention of the files. Since this link to the mass storage already exists, I would like to extend the local install to be the interface for hosts to contribute audio to the permanent station archive. This is where the getid3 function of the audio module comes in handy because fields can be used to get mandatory info on contribution which will then be written right into the id3 tags of the file. This just makes life easier when media players catalog the mass storage media. Good metadata is one of the hardest things to enforce with close to 200 hosts. This strategy would also enable taxonomy tagging of contributed media.
The local install of Drupal also makes previous suggestions more accessible to custom extensions. WSUM is still seeking to extend the station module to handle the reporting requirements for SoundExchange. It seems appropriate to use a local install as the point of entry for the playlist data due to the install being IP restricted.