Kung Tunes and SilverSpider Play List

April 23, 2005 - 1 Comment

As I am slowly switching to OS X, I am adapting to new tools, and working out ways to use my favorite tools on the new platform. I built SilverSpider Play List around the Now Playing plugin, which is a great tool, but sadly, it only works for Winamp on Windows. So, I downloaded Kung Tunes and figured out how to configure it for use with SSPL. In time, I will add instructions for many others options – in fact, if you have figured out how to use an alternate media player / plugin with the script, please let me know, and I will include it in the documentation.

Using Kung Tunes with SilverSpider Play List

  1. Download and install Kung Tunes
  2. Open the Kung Tunes Preferences
  3. On the Uploads tab make the following changes:
    1. Upload Method: HTTP
    2. URL: The URL to your playlist_builder.php file including a question mark at the end (example: www.silverspider.com/playlist/playlist_builder.php?)
    3. File Location: Your Preferences folder within your user directory (example: /Users/alex/Library/Preferences/)
    4. Name: trackinfo.txt
    5. Leave the FTP info as it is, as you won’t need it
  4. On the Uploads tab make the following changes:
    1. Timer: 0
    2. Auto-Start Timer: Checked
    3. Produce Info Track File at Every Track Change: checked
    4. Track List: 0
    5. Inactivity Messages: Up to you, but there is not any support for these messages in SSPL – I recommend you uncheck these
  5. No Changes to the Miscellaneous Tab
  6. Save your Preferences changes
  7. Test your changes by opening iTunes and playing a song (make sure Kung Tunes is running
  8. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you and I will review my instructions

Note: Kung Tunes appears to have issues with non-English character sets which can seriously impact some album displays (Björk anyone?). It is also prone to random crashes, so it isn’t perfect, but it is a start.

I would love to hear about any other plugins and media players that you would like to see supported by SilverSpider Play List.

What is SilverSpider Play List?

SilverSpider Play List is a set of PHP scripts that helps you add a recent music list to your Web site. Each time you listen to a song, your media player will send song information to your Web site which will gather the info, and with the help of Amazon, compile it into a list of entries, each containing the name of the song, the artist and the album cover.

The markup provided by SSPL is very clean, and each of the 12 markup formats relies upon CSS and valid XHTML to control layout and style.

More information can be found at the official site, and within my SilverSpider Play List category on this site.

Filed Under: SilverSpider Play List

SilverSpider Play List 1.2 Released

January 24, 2005 - 1 Comment

As I posted earlier, SilverSpider Play List 1.2 has some major new features, including the ability to specify images to be used for specific albums, auto-pruning of the play list file and the ability to override the Artist name when querying Amazon.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

One note, it will probably be a while before I release another version, as I have accepted a new job, and will be pretty busy for a while. But, please send your feedback and I will keep track of it for future revs.

Filed Under: SilverSpider Play List

SSPL 1.2 Coming Soon

January 17, 2005 - 1 Comment

Just a quick note to let people know of the upcoming release of SilverSpider Play List 1.2. Changes include:

  • User-specified album covers: SSPL will check to see if the current album name/artist name combination is listed in the Various Artists file, and if it is, it will use the images that are specified. Images (small, medium, large are all defined) are specified as URLS from any Web site, so you can use Images from Amazon, or post your own.
  • Keep the play list file to a reasonable size (hat tip to Sean for helping with the solution)
  • New config setting: $PlayListLength to define how many songs should be stored in the play list file
  • Moved the list of Various Artists from config file to separate the file
  • No longer needs closing comma, nor does it require escaping of special characters
  • Updated the in-line comments
  • Changed the format of the various artists file, allowing user to specify the artist override name. While most albums in the list will use ‘Various Artists’, the user could have one album use ‘Various Artists – Country’, and another album could use ‘Jazz Masters (Series)’
  • Added basic international Amazon query support, so users can choose to query the international Amazon sites instead of just the US .com site. This is still in a testing mode, and will be a beta feature within 1.2. Future versions should bring it up to speed. At this point, only one site will be queried, so SSPL will not check international domains if it cannot find an album on Amazon.com. Sorry.
    • us (default)
    • uk
    • de
    • fr (testing)
    • jp(testing)

I hope to have this released within a week.

Filed Under: SilverSpider Play List Tagged With: Music, php, SilverSpider Play List

SilverSpider Play List 1.1 Released

December 29, 2004 - Leave a Comment

Just a quick note to let everyone know that a new version of SilverSpider Play List is available.

Changes

The first big change is the ability to choose the size of the album cover, which was requested by two people on the same day! So, you can now use any of the following sizes:

  • Small (50 x 50)
  • Medium (130 x 130)
  • Large (300 x 300)

The second big change is the addition of six new formats, bringing the total to 12. These new six are variants on the same basic layout, the image is placed in it’s own div and is encased within a link. A second div contains the information (song name, album name and artist name), with the first listed item acting as a link.

I have also added examples of the output for every format within the documentation so you can see what it actually produces. A full version history is available within the documentation.

Upgrading

I had to make changes to the config file, so make sure you back yours up before you overwrite it. Also, with the introduction of the new sizes, you will need to create two new missing album cover graphics if you want to use the larger sizes.

Download SSPL 1.1 (64K zip)

As always, let me know if you have questions or suggestions. I will do my best to respond quickly, but I have friends and family in town for the next week, so please forgive me if it takes a bit more time.

Filed Under: SilverSpider Play List Tagged With: Music, php, SilverSpider Play List

SilverSpider Play List Users

December 8, 2004 - Leave a Comment

Just a quick post to keep track of all of the sites that are making use of SilverSpider Play List. Well, all of the sites I know of…

If you use SilverSpider Play List, and aren’t on the list, please let me know, and I’ll add you!

What is SilverSpider Play List?

SilverSpider Play List is a set of PHP scripts that helps you add a recent music list to your Web site. Each time you listen to a song, your media player will send song information to your Web site which will gather the info, and with the help of Amazon, compile it into a list of entries, each containing the name of the song, the artist and the album cover.

The markup provided by SSPL is very clean, and each of the six markup formats relies upon CSS and valid XHTML to control layout and style.

You can see it in action right here on this site.

Go Get it

Filed Under: SilverSpider Play List

SilverSpider PlayList 1.0

November 26, 2004 - 2 Comments

A quick note to announce the public release of SilverSpider Play List, a set of PHP scripts that helps you add a recent music list to your Web site. Each time you listen to a song, your media player will send song information to your Web site which will gather the info, and with the help of Amazon, compile it into a list of entries, each containing the name of the song, the artist and the album cover.

Filed Under: PHP & MySQL, SilverSpider Play List