Radio

A lot of stream websites will include listener count information on their site. This is also a pertinant piece of information to include in the DCMA requirements. I have a few ideas about streaming server integration which I would like to suggest for comments.

After accidentally deleting half the OS and database for the KPSU archive server, I've been documenting the process of setting up station archive server under FreeBSD. So far, I've written up configuring the recording and encoding of audio from the soundcard with darkice, streaming the audio with icecast2, installing MySQL, Apache, and Drupal. Now I'm working on documenting the setup of StreamRipper and the station archive module.

If you're interested, take a look at: http://drewish.com/node/23

Here's some areas I'd like to see improved in the station module. They're not in any particular order and some are a bit pie in the sky. If people are interested in contributing code or money to get these done I'd love the help.

• More flexible archive - It should be able to record fraction-of-an-hour or multi-hour shows. I'd like to also have a max length setting so you could keep getting hour long recordings of a single show.
• Timezone support - Traditional broadcast stations don't really have to worry about timezones but web stream listeners may be anywhere. It'd be very helpful for a user's timezone settings to be honored and provide a mechanism for anonymous users to specify their timezone.
• Catalog module - We've got a catalog of all our albums in an Access database. It's a pain in the ass to update, hard to use, and it's not linked into the website. So when they create a play list, DJs have to retype the album and artists info. It'd be much nicer to just type in the album's catalog number and a track number. It'd also be handy for listeners who wanted to make requests. Update: I've gotten started on this in HEAD. Having jQuery installed by default makes this something I feel like I can finally take on.
• Amazon.com play list integration - How sweet would it be to allow listeners to click on the track listed in the play list and direct them to amazon.com where they can buy the album... and we can get a referral fee.
• Multi-week schedule - Some stations have a monthly schedule. The new schedule table schema makes this possible but the trick would be building the UI to view and edit the schedule and adding another page to view the month's schedule.
• Make the program node optional - I'd really like to open it up so that the admin can select what type of nodes are scheduled. So, if they don't like the stock program node, they can create their own in CCK. This kind of leads into... Update: Everything but allowing you to select the node type has been added in HEAD.
• Modular schedule - I've got some other projects that could use a web based schedule. Currently, DJs book our production room by the hour on a paper schedule. To find out if someone has got it reserved they have to either call down to the station or just show up and hope it's free. If the scheduled node isn't hard coded to be a program node, this could be just about anything.
• Install profile - Drupal's new install profile support would make it possible to build a radio station package that had audio, views, station modules setup by default. This would lower the initial setup bar significantly. Problems I see include: having to install the getID3 library, setting up cron, and installing StreamRipper.

What would you all like to see?