Internet Radio Features wish list

[MRakestraw]

I will listen to Internet radio for weeks and then get a whim and start listening to my local library for weeks using Wacup (I am retired and spend a some time at home), I have been using a program specifically for internet radio listening called TapinRadio, Its pretty reliably but not to feature rich (I think they offer better options), I think I paid one time $20 (usd). I manipulate the fields in the "favorites" to show the fields that are important to me Genre, Bitrate, and if the station uses commercials or not, to me these are the most important fields primarily because I cant stand commercials.

My Suggestions for the Wacup Internet Radio capabilities:
1) Ability to set more than one Streaming URL,  not sure how important this is but I believe if one server has too many listeners it will reject your attempt to connect, Tapin will automatically check up to three streams.
2) Some ability to customize the user station (and downloaded stations) to sort on different fields including custom user fields.  I assume "user stations" do not get overwritten when the on-line database is downloaded...
3) Ability to export a "User Stations" file for backup purposes.
4) A great feature would be the ability to parse the bitrate of each station and be able to sort on it but probably not practical with an ever changing database ?
I have attached a view of a TI favorite.

I don't know where the internet radio on-line database comes from but maintaining and tracking a moving target does not sound like anything easy, many popular Internet Radio stations move around allot. When I loose a station I go to "https://www.internet-radio.com" to attempt to get a new URL. Tapin offers a downloaded station list also.

After my last install I still have not been able see any stations in the Wacup downloaded database, even after deleting the two recommended files to force a re-download. Also I have not found a way to store anything in the "User Stations". To test Wacup's internet radio capability I have been using File -> Play URL and then sending the station to bookmarks. see attached

I have resisted using services like Shoutcast because I have no control of the commercials & bitrate but I do appreciate the convenience, I do not fit their primary listening audience of phone users.

My 2 Cents worth

[dro]

from another thread earlier today:

I've still to get everything related to it working again after the site migration which means the db cache hasn't been updated for almost 2weeks. It's also not helped that both the shoutcast & TuneIn APIs aren't returning results correctly which is messing up what I do. Will try to get something sorted in the coming week.

Unchecking the filter old results will get things showing something again but like you note, it's a constantly moving target & I'm reliant on those services providing valid results & that the stations don't keep changing (I wish more of them would use DNS urls & not just IP addresses which makes it a complete pain from what I remember when working on SHOUTcast in a prior life.

Bitrate is able to be filtered when there are listings but it's incomplete due to a lack of information at times from the services currently polled (icecast, shoutcast & tunein).

User stations is still to be implemented & an import / export is what would be offered when it's added (is some technical reasons due to the database solution currently used for the main radio database which is why it's not yet been done).

Custom filtering is tricky as the information I'm currently showing is about as much as I can consistently get from the different sources. Also the main radio db is read-only since that's only ever going to be a database download vs what user stations should be (which could then have a user data field against it).

Supporting multiple items for a bookmark is an interesting idea though maybe doing it as a library playlist might be a better option (that's all that services like SHOUTcast basically do with their listen links) & having that local playlist set as a bookmark would allow you to get close to what's needed. I'll keep it in mind as doing it within the bookmarks view could be useful even if it's just a quicker way to make it into a playlist that can then be worked with via the library playlists view (so I don't duplicate the ui too much between instances).

-dro

[MRakestraw]

Thanks!

No Pressure...

[dro]

I've just pushed an updated database so when the client next does an update it should see some listings again. I've still more work to do with the update process but this'll suffice for another week or so.

-dro

[MRakestraw]

My Internet Radio stations loaded !