Automating Song Info to Ladiocast

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by volperic

Late night fiddling, don’t ask why– I was doing my photo editing and saw nothing on #ds106 radio, so set out to play somethimg from iTunes. For some reason, Nicecast no longer allows me to select an application as a source (Maybe because I installed Audio Hijack), so I switched by rig to Ladiocast, especially since the ds106 radio status page was not updating at all. Previously, I found I could manually push updates to the metadata via Ladiocast, but this seems manual and tedious.

I mused before searching

Not quite sure anymore what generates metadata on #ds106radio, NIcecast fails

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 31, 2013

Searching on “itunes metadata script ladiocast” I then easily found a nifty Applescript for Ladiocast Automation.

It’s pretty easy to see what it does; polls itunes for a new song, and if it is different from the last, it updates the meta data thingie in Ladiocast. The other feature I like is that it tests if iTunes has stopped playing, and if so, it plays a short playlist (as a signoff audio) and stops the stream. This means, you could set up a show as a playlist, let it rip, and go outside or sleep, and it will end gracefully (no snorecasts).

First I made a short recording to be the signoff, and added to a new itunes playlist “radio off”

Radio Signoff

I then looked at the script and decided to fiddle– it would be nice to add something to the meta data beyond the song title, like a #ds106radio tag, etc. So I modded the script to provide text input to add an option meta data prefix, and suffix.

set lastName to ""
set lastArtist to ""
set lastAlbum to ""
set currentState to ""

set thePrefix to the text returned of (display dialog "Starting text for stream e.g. '@cogdog playing'" default answer "")
if thePrefix is not "" then set thePrefix to thePrefix & " "

set theSuffix to the text returned of (display dialog "Ending text for stream, e.g. 'LIVE on #ds106radio'" default answer "")

if theSuffix is not "" then set theSuffix to theSuffix & " "

tell application "iTunes"
	repeat
		set currentState to player state
		if currentState is stopped then
			play playlist "radio off"
			delay 10
			tell application "LadioCast"
				disconnect 1
			end tell
			exit repeat
		else
			set trackName to name of current track
			set trackArtist to artist of current track
			set trackAlbum to album of current track
			
			if trackName is not lastName or trackArtist is not lastArtist or trackAlbum is not lastAlbum then
				set lastName to trackName
				set lastArtist to trackArtist
				set lastAlbum to trackAlbum
				
				tell application "LadioCast"
					set metadata song to thePrefix & "'" & trackArtist & " - " & trackName & "'" & theSuffix
				end tell
			end if
		end if
		delay 15
	end repeat
end tell

I saved it as well as a stand along app if you do not want to script fiddle. The idea is you would start a stream, run a playlist as audio, and then launch this app to manage the metadata pushing.

itunes ladiocast metadater (55k ZIP download)

When you start up the app, you can add the prefix and suffix (it is optional)