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There is a lack of good tools for
Independent bands to create websites. The most important thing a band
can do is to showcase their music, and one of the best ways to do that
is to have a "radio" station available to people browsing the band's
website. The problem is, there is a lack of tools that do what is
necessary, with all of the good features that you'd expect to see. Even
paid players don't seem to have obvious features that a band would want
to put on their website, including the following:
1. The ability to give it
a list of
songs to play, rather than just a single song at a time. It should be
able to loop through this list randomly, or in the specific order
listed.
2. Each song should be
able to bring
up a picture (for example, an album cover) and the picture should go to
a link settable by the user (usually to an album page).
3. Each song should have
an optional "buy" link for direct linking to places that a user can use
to buy the song.
4. An authenticated
configuration screen, to set properties and settings, make playlists,
set colors and other properties.
The developers behind
this project is
actually an independent band itself. And as a band, Beatnik Turtle has
the same itch to scratch that any other bands would have to deal with.
Because of this, we're creating this radio player as not just something
to solve our own problems, but as a way to give something to other
independents that they can find useful. As a GPL'd project, we're
hoping that other bands, and other individuals with skills in these
areas, will help improve it.
For more info, see our sourceforge project.
Languages
This project will use
flash as the
MP3 player, and a PERL backend to perform an authenticated form screen
that administrators can use to make changes no matter where they are.
Flash Player
Specifications
The physical features of
the flash player should have the following capabilities:
1. Standard buttons,
including Play, Stop, Pause, next, previous.
2. A slider bar to track
how long the
song has gone, and how long it has to go. It should be able to be
grabbed and pulled to "fast forward" or "rewind".
3. Volume and a panning
controls.
4. A scrolling display to
show the song title, Ablum, and other messages.
5. A timer with the total
time for the song, and how much time is left.
6. A minimum of two
different player
skins. One for a frame at the bottom of the page, and a separate
standalone player that's the size of a small box.
The backend features of
the flash player should be as follows:
1. The flash player
itself should get its configuration from a config file to set the
colors, size, and other speficications.
2. The player should be
able to take
one of two arguments. It should either take a location for a playlist
file, or a location for a single song to begin playing the music on the
local computer.
Version 1 of the playlist
file should have the following format, as a comma separated text file.
<URL to an MP3 or M3U
file>,<picture to use for the song>,<link for the
picture>,<optional "buy it" link picture">,<optional "buy
it" link>
3. As the player plays
each mp3 file,
it should pick up the MP3 tags and display the title, artist, album,
and year in the appropriate parts of the player.
Backend
PERL Script Specifications
1. Allow authentication
so that logins will protect the configuration
2. Set up and configure
playlists.
Include a browse feature for images to use, and then a way to write
each field. This should be able to create and track many playlist files.
3. Set colors, and other
physical aspects of the player.
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