Direct sending of track meta-data to servers

[Stephen West]

I have been told by Station Playlist that their Studio Pro product will send track and artist meta-data directly to an Icecast server regadless of how the station is configured.

Can you please confirm that the Icecast servers at Internet-Radio.com will allow this?

Apparently is is a http: link and the Studio Pro software has to authenticate with id and password first.

I hope this makes sense.

 

[Support]

Hi Stephen,

We do provide you with the hostname, port, username and password for an Icecast server. Icecast will also display track / artist meta-data. But usually most encoders do not require the "http" part of the hostname / server IP. For example, a hostname with one of servers would just be "uk1.internet-radio.com".

So are they saying that the meta-data can be sent independently to the Icecast server from Station Playlist, even if another PC and encoder is connected to the server (As far as the set up discussion in your previous forum thread goes)?

 

[Stephen West]

Yes. That is what Station Playlist are saying. Regardless of what encoder is used and even if there is no connection between the playout system PC and the encoder PC, the SP Studio playout software can log into the Icecast server and send the meta data directly to the server. They implied that this can only be done with Icecast and not with Winamp. Does that make sense based on your knowledge?

 

[General Lighting]

Metadata is separate from the music and can be changed from elsewhere without disrupting the stream provided the software sends the right data to the Icecast server (including username and password otherwise anyone could monkey about with it).

I admit I hadn't delved to deeply into what protocols are used as with Icecast provided the software is correctly coded it works; Shoutcast can be more sensitive to flawed metadata to the point the server goes over and takes the stream with it - from memory it can be done with HTTP or by some other method as long as the server port is open (which it would be; otherwise no one can listen..)

Think of it as equivalent to being able to change RDS data on Band II broadcasting; I know us Brits aren't (or weren't) normally allowed to do that with the text because it could distract drivers; but you are allowed to put on the traffic announcement flag if there is traffic news and that could be coming from a totally different studio.

 

[Support]

Yes. That is what Station Playlist are saying. Regardless of what encoder is used and even if there is no connection between the playout system PC and the encoder PC, the SP Studio playout software can log into the Icecast server and send the meta data directly to the server. They implied that this can only be done with Icecast and not with Winamp. Does that make sense based on your knowledge?

Good stuff.

Yes, Winamp just acts as an encoder with the Shoutcast DSP plugin. Icecast itself is the streaming software installed on the radio server.