Overview

Description

A music library your members can add to, and a live station page that shows what is on air right now. One application, because a community that has a radio station usually has an archive as well, and running two add-ons that do not know about each other is how you end up with neither.

The library

Releases live in categories you set up, each with artwork, an artist, a year, a genre and a track list. Members open a release and play a track straight from the page — no download, no separate player, no leaving the community.

• Tracks are playable by click or keyboard, and the list rolls on to the next one the way a record does.

• Releases are proper Invision Community content: search, tags, comments, reactions, follows, moderation, reports and the activity stream all work because it is built on the same foundation as your forums.

• Optionally start a discussion topic for every release.

Members can add music, on your terms

Four separate gates decide who may upload: the master switch, a per-group permission, the category, and your own moderation queue. Turn uploads off entirely and only staff add music — everything already added stays exactly where it is.

Tags are read from the files themselves

Upload an MP3, FLAC, M4A or OGG and the title, artist, track number, length and embedded cover art are filled in from the file. Whatever the member typed always wins; the file only fills the blanks.

No external tools, no shell access, no extra PHP extensions. The tag reader is part of the application. It does not shell out to ffprobe, it does not need getID3, and it works on shared hosting where you cannot install anything.

The station

Point Music at your stream and the station page shows what is playing right now — artwork, artist, title, the live listener count, and recently played.

• Works with AzuraCast, Icecast and SHOUTcast. AzuraCast needs no API key unless you have closed off its public endpoint.

• It knows the difference between a real DJ and the AutoDJ, and says so — a live badge with the presenter's name when somebody is actually on the decks.

• Recently played survives quiet spells. Icecast and SHOUTcast publish no history at all and AzuraCast often returns none, so Music keeps its own airplay log and shows that instead of an empty box.

• A Test button in the AdminCP asks your station and reports exactly what came back.

A player that follows people around your community

A small dock sits at the foot of every page with the station playing in it. Members can hide it, and it stays hidden.

Being straight with you about one thing. Invision Community loads a whole new page on every click, which stops any audio element on it. So the dock reconnects on the next page rather than pretending to play through the click — and there is a pop-out window for anyone who wants the music to genuinely keep going while they read. Both ship. Neither is oversold.

Built to leave running

• One check per interval, shared by everybody. Fifty members on the station page is one request to your radio server, not fifty.

• Every call to your station is capped at four seconds and every failure becomes a plain “not answering”.

• Uploads go through Invision Community's own file storage, so Amazon S3 and other storage methods work.

• The airplay log trims itself.

What you need

For the library, nothing at all — install it and it works. For the station, the address of an AzuraCast, Icecast or SHOUTcast server. The setup guide walks through all three, and the library is entirely usable without a station if you never intend to broadcast.