Ark player feedback

🗄 Stream Archive
61

Hi Judy. It’s working for me for a couple of random recent dates and times I tried. Can you direct me either to the links or dates and times you tried that filed?

62

Hey Tom -

So I tried a lot of different files now and I see that some work. It may just be files in the new year? The one I first tried was Democracy now on Friday. Here’s 5pm on Friday, it won’t open

When I try older files they seem to work - Thanks- Judy

63

Afaict, the archives for all stations stopped working for all program dates starting at midnight UTC at the start of the new year. I think we identified the problem and got the system working again for the new year.

It’s very strange.

We use software called FFmpeg to connect to the streams and write audio files (usually MP3 files) with copies of the stream audio. FFmpeg segments the stream audio into chunks of a preset duration, one chunk per file. FFmpeg names each file with its timestamp, for example the file for 21:00 UTC yesterday is named

WZBC-20210101T210000Z.mp3

The bug is kinda Y2Kish. After midnight UTC at the new year rang (in UK, Portugal, etc. where they are on UTC) FFmpeg started names the files with WZBC-2020
 instead of WZBC-2120


I tried restarting all the FFmpeg processes but that didn’t fix the names of files it was writing. So I wrote a script that renames the files from 2020 to 2021 as they are copied to the AWS S3 where they live for two weeks so Ark players can read them. And I wrote another one to rename about 17 thousand files that were already in S3.

That’s all now done and I think we’ve recovered everyone’s missing archives. But now we need a more permanent solution to our problem, i.e. fixing the problem in FFmpeg.

64

I have been listening to David Lynch for an hour now and I love it. There is no where else like KPoo. My ex husband worked for you in the in the 1980ies I think and you are always button one on my car radio. I have been sending you money to keep you around. 100.00 12/17/20 and 100.00 9/6 /20. Keep up the good weird work.

1 Like
65

Hi @MartyH. I’m please to learn you’re diggin’ the Ark, so to speak.

66

More feedback on the Ark archive player on mobile apps:

-Tried Ark archive player (playing from WRFI, Ithaca NY) on iPhone 7 iOS 14.3 using Safari. Every time the screen went to sleep, the archive player would stop. When you woke up the screen, you could restart the player, and it would work fine. Until the screen went to sleep again, and the archive player stopped.

-Then tried the Ark archive player (same station) on an Android Moto g6 using Android 9 and Chrome. Ark archive player worked fine, even when screen went to sleep. But then after about 5 minutes, the archive player stopped making noise. When I woke up the screen, the archive player still looked like it was playing (i.e. time was passing in the counter and the play button indicated it was playing), but no sound came out. Tried pause, unpause, but no success.

I saw reports of both of these behaviors above in the comments, so just confirming that this is still an issue.

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67

Thanks for the report Peter.

It is a sad and vexing matter. I have a concept for a new architecture and implementation of an archive service that I think can be made to work on mobile and can be legal too. But it’s quite a lot of work and all I’ve managed to do so far is run some experiments to validate the ideas. If anyone wants to contribute to the development, I’m happy to open the project to them.

1 Like
68

Hey Tom -

I was listening to some ZBC archives today and noticed the new ark player and followed the link to this forum. I’m a programmer and happy to contribute how ever I can. See my forum profile for github link.

69

@newtnik Hi Jon, Thanks for the offer. Can we try to set up a call so I can explain where things are and we can discuss what we could do together? My email is tom@spinitron.com

70

My iPhone 6s listening to kmuz archive on safari 5:50pm pacific time March 9.

The player stops playing on dark screen or if I leave spinitron pages to any other page or app.

This is not useful if it won’t play on dark screen!! Any tips on that? My other players work fine.

71

This is what I wanted to say too


72

There’s a tune called Beyond the Tagus River that was played on Veta’s program Bluegrass and Beyond where the art cover is not showned, Andre Dal is misspelled, it’s not possible to listen to the tune when you clik on it and doesn’t go to apple or spotify or any other when you click on the box. Why?

73

Hi Marc, thanks for joining the forum.

It’s a known problem. And we understand how big a drawback it is.

Let me give a rundown on where we are, how we got here and what might happen next.

Radio Free America (RFA) was providing a free two week archive that lots of Spinitron stations were using. We thought it was a pretty good service for $0 and easy for stations using Spinitron to try so we often mentioned it to stations. But it is in the nature of that kind of business that if they cease operations they will do so without warning and that worried us. We would feel bad if stations we had pointed their way were left hanging overnight.

When that happened we quickly moved to fill the gap. I figured we could quickly set up a system that connects to station’s webcast streams, automatically writes the digital audio data in the streams to audio files, stores those in the cloud and to provide a web-based archive player that uses those files to play back from an arbitrary point in the last two weeks.

And I was right, we got that up and running quickly. But we soon found that on mobile the web player would continue running only if the mobile device’s screen stays on and the browser tab it’s in stays in the foreground. This is, as you pointed out, a severe limitation and we started to work on fixing it as though it were a bug. But it eventually became clear that fixing this bug would require redesigning the whole system using different web-audio technology. That was going to take considerable time, way more than we had planned and more than stations who had lost RFA should have to wait. So we decided to offer what we had commercially at a low price with a clear notice about the limitation on mobile.

We were unable to quickly fix the mobile issue is because of a malign combination of legal and technical constraints. As a service provider we have to make it unfeasible for a user to download a copy of the station’s audio without resorting to obvious hacking and violation of the terms of service. So we segmented the audio into 5 minute chunks, each stored in one file. The audio player downloads these files on the fly and plays them back to back. To download, say, an hour of programming, a user would have to hack the system to download twelve such chunks and then stitch them together to have an hour of seamless audio.

And this is where the problem on mobile arises. The archive web player uses JavaScript running in a web browser to download the chunks and start playing them at the right time. When a browser tab goes into the background, or the user switches to a different app, or the screen turns off, the browser stops running the player’s JavaScript. There’s nothing we can do to prevent that.

I can see two ways out of this. One is to use long audio files, so long, maybe an hour or more, that the user doesn’t mind reopening the browser tab to restart the archive playback when it stops. We’re not prepared to do this for legal reasons. A station could reasonably operate such a service for themselves since I believe their liability would be acceptable. But it’s different for a commercial service provider like Spinitron. Litigation for us would likely be the end for Spinitron and our livelihood.

The other is to use a streaming video protocol such as DASH or HLS. I’ve done enough experiments with HLS to be fairly confident that it can be made to work. I can specify how such a system can work but I haven’t had time to build it.

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74

Hi Andre, thanks for asking your question on the forum.

I suspect the problem is what you said: Andre Dal is misspelled. That sort of data entry error can prevent Spinitron and the external services we connect to (Apple Music, Amazon, 
) from identifying the recording. That prevents us from finding the cover art, Apple from providing the 30 second preview, etc.

We have put more effort into features to avoid/correct this kind of data-entry error than into any of Spinitron’s other features. Auto-completion, suggestions, Did-you-mean? search among other other tools and nudges. But if, after all that, Spinitron still cannot connect a spin to a recording in a trusted reference database, we do not force a correction on the DJ.

I suggest you ask the DJ that played the song to make the correction. I’m happy to help or even do it myself but I need the DJ’s request.

So you’re a bluegrass banjo player in Portugal, eh? How cool is that! I’m enjoying this recording and video for the second time now. It’s lovely!

75

Tom, thank you so much for your kind words. I decided to do an instrumental bluegrass album because first, bluegrass is almost non-existent here in Portugal and I wanted to have something recorded so I could show people here what is bluegrass music and second, I have focal hand dystonia and my ability to play the banjo is slowly decreasing and I really wanted to record something before it was too late. I invited 15 musicians from 10 different countries. A real global bluegrass album. I asked the DJ to correct the name and she did. Everything is working except the box to amazon and spotify. Is there a way to check that?

76

The reason why the Amazon and Spotify buttons aren’t working isn’t obvious. I can treat that as a bug and investigate later.

I’ll send delay rays across the Atlantic aimed at whatever afflicts those hands. Best I can think of and worth a try ? : )

By coincidence, I acquired an acoustic guitar just last week with the aim of learning some bluegrass. I’ve played electric for 40 years but most of my skills are useful only in a band. I want to be able to play unaccompanied in social situations.

77

Tom, please do. It’s the first time I have a tune on spinitron and it would be great if the boxes all worked.

Hahaha. Yeah, I need some of that.

Bluegrass music works in every situation. I love it.

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78

I think the problem is that our primary database that includes ISRC doesn’t have your release yet. The latest version available is April 2. We used to get updates nearly every day before the plague but no updates for one or two weeks is typical now. When did your release first appear in services like Spotify, Apple and Amazon?

While I’d like to have those buttons working for you, TBH, they won’t make much difference to your exposure to audiences. If you are doing your own promotional work then Spinitron can be a great resource for you to get your music in the hands of music directors and individual DJs and therefore to get them playing it to their listeners. Given the unique and exotic hook of Bluegrass from Portugal (or some such) I think this might be very effective. Let me know if you’d like me to explain how it might work.

79

I think it’s that. The track was released on April 12, so much later than April 2.

About the other aspect you mentioned, I would really like to know more about how it works.

Thanks, Andre.

80

Hi André, the answer turned into a standalone guide: Using Spinitron in promotional work. Feel free to ask questions or add comments to that thread.