Feature request: We radio DJs often want to tell listeners some quick song or artist info (e.g., where’s band from or, if a cover, who did the original). We can leave Spinitron to fire up a Google or Wikipedia search. But it’d be valuable and crazy cool to have that info right inside Spinitron.
Since Spinitron already provides the IRSC#, a MusicBrainz API lookup would be easy. For example, here’s a recording of “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zep:
https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/isrc/USAT20703874?inc=work-rels
From that, we pull the Work ID:
https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/work/1269b977-73c5-3f6f-a223-7d0e8d56bf8a?inc=url-rels
That returns the song’s Genius (lyrics), SecondHandSongs (covers), SongFacts, and Wikipedia entries: https://genius.com/Led-zeppelin-when-the-levee-breaks-lyrics
Which Spinitron could display as links, from which DJs could harvest juicy tidbits like:
- Original: Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie (1929)
- Based on The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
- The opening two-bar drum break is one of the most widely sampled pieces of music ever, in songs by Eminem, Dr. Dre to New Age artist Mike Oldfield, and a Micheal Stipe/Neenah cherry tune.
- John Bonham’s drums were recorded in a stairwell at Headley Grange with the microphones planted three stories up.
Band info is also a quick query away, which returns MB’s Artist ID, from which we get artist links to AllMusic, BBC, Discogs, Last.fm, WhoSampled, their social media, and other music services:
https://beta.musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist?query=“Led%20Zeppelin”&fmt=json
https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/artist/678d88b2-87b0-403b-b63d-5da7465aecc3?inc=url-rels&fmt=json
Lots of work, Tom, I know. And you’ve got plenty of other more-pressing projects. But if you ever consider this, I’d be glad to help: doing MusicBrainz API research or kicking out the basic code, which you could then improve.