Re: [backstage] A sekrit from Virgin Radio

[James Cridland]

>>I'd be interested to know the technical set-up behind Virgin and the BBC's last.fm pages though (i.e. how the track data gets from the playout system to the last.fm page) – I'd gather it's not as simple as hooking up the last.fm player to whatever you use for your playout – I use the audioscrobbler plugin for Winamp but I'd gather your set-up(s) are somewhat more complex than mine!<<

We submit using a custom PHP script every half an hour. All the songs played are in a database written by our systems - for dickie_b_uk it's rather complicated, because most of the presenters still use CDs and not a playout system. (The others are all run off the playout system).

We spotted Q Radio - funnily enough, they were our neighbours for a short while. Possibly the Eurythmics have thrown them off the scent.

The data for dickie_b_uk is not complete, for a few good reasons; giving your entire music playlist away isn't the smartest thing to do if you want to avoid a competitor coming along and nicking the music playlist you have. Having said that, we've a "last played" page on our website, at http://www.virginradio.co.uk/music/we_play/just_played/ - similarly subtly incomplete. I'd like to claim it's on purpose, but that would be lying.

j

On 10/28/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:

Ah, wonderful! That'll probably soon put an end to the "what song was that" type thing as you can simply go and check the last.fm page. :-)

 

You'll be interested to note that Virgin Radio and BBC Radio networks are not the only ones on last.fm. Q Radio is also on there, although without not as much 'camouflage' as the BBC and, now, Virgin feeds as it has a great big "Q" logo on etc - the address is http://www.last.fm/user/qradio

 

Whatever they're using needs a bit of tweaking though, as if you look through the recent tracks list, some songs are repeated at least 2 or 3 times and some of the songs are not tagged properly - therefore resulting a few spelling errors (i.e. "Shinning light" by Ash), artist-title swap arounds and odd titles ("Wake me up when September comes" by Green Day) etc.

 

I'd be interested to know the technical set-up behind Virgin and the BBC's last.fm pages though (i.e. how the track data gets from the playout system to the last.fm page) – I'd gather it's not as simple as hooking up the last.fm player to whatever you use for your playout – I use the audioscrobbler plugin for Winamp but I'd gather your set-up(s) are somewhat more complex than mine!

 

R1 and R2 for a short time had a logo on theirs, but it seems to have disappeared.

 

I wonder if there are any other radio stations on there, besides the ones that have been mentioned?

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 28 October 2006 23:02
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: [backstage] A sekrit from Virgin Radio

 

In a similar vein to http://www.last.fm/user/sekrit etc, you might also like...
http://www.last.fm/user/dickie_b_uk
http://www.last.fm/user/dickie_b_vc
http://www.last.fm/user/dickie_b_vx
http://www.last.fm/user/dickie_b_gr
... mostly complete Virgin Radio station feeds, except the UK feed ("Virgin Radio") had a bug in it early on, so ignore the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams are made of this" which we didn't play 100 times. Hope they're useful for someone. And... sssh. We've not told many people yet.

Users here might also like http://www.virginradio.co.uk/music/news/ which is a user-contributed music news service, complete with RSS/JSS feeds. I don't think we've published terms of use for our RSS feeds, but 'be sensible' and we'll be happy.

Anyway. Hope someone finds all that useful.

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/about_us/tech_blog/

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http://james.cridland.net/contacting_me/