[icecast] a new directory service

[Oddsock]

At 12:31 AM 9/17/2001, you wrote:

>First off, I think getting rid of # of listeners is a must.
while it seems to be a very popular desire to get rid of this metric all 
together, it is my opinion, that you cannot get rid of this metric 
entirely.  The reason why it is so hotly debated, is because it is 
important.  what is needed is a way to measure the popularity of a 
station.  What I want as a listener is the ability to find out which 
stations are professionally done and which are simply playlists of mp3s on 
shuffle play.  For mp3 streams, for me this was done through the listener 
counts.  Taking away this metric (or effectively eliminating it) is, in my 
opinion, not a good thing.

>Here's my current list of information that each directory entry would
>contain.  If you don't understand what 'auth' is, don't worry.  it's
>there to provide a modicum of security.  What else would you guys like
>to see or think should be there?
>
>
>DIRECTORY VALUES
>================
>
>url
>         the url to the stream
>         ex.: http://streams.vorbis.com:8000/downtempo.ogg
>
>type
>         type of the stream
>         ex.: audio/mpeg or application/ogg

yes!

>bitrate
>         bitrate of the stream in kilobits per second
>         ex.: 64

how about instead of bitrate, something more generic like "Quality".  This 
should be a number, which (in the case of application/ogg) might be 64 (as 
in kbps) or (in the case of audio/mpeg) might be 30 (as in FPS).  I would 
say, for most media types, it would be a bitrate, but not all.

>name
>         the name of the stream
>         ex.: Jack's Funky Beats
>
>genre
>         the genre of teh stream
>         ex.: downtempo or talk

I would agree with a statement that Genres should be freeform and not 
predetermined values.

>homepage
>         the homepage of the stream
>         ex.: http://streams.vorbis.com/
>
>email
>         email address of the streams maintainer
>         ex.: jack at xiph.org

is this necessary ? you don't want people scraping the directory for email 
addresses (this was done in the past with the SC list)

>description
>         short description of the stream
>         ex.: All the funkiest beats from the funkiest people.  Tune
>         in now for some great downtempo music.
>
>ttl
>         time to live.  number of minutes  an entry is valid for.  subsequent
>         directory changes will refresh this value.  when the value
>         reaches 0, this entry will be removed.
>         ex.: 5
>
>auth
>         authorization string.  this is a md5sum of of some
>         random data.
>         ex.: echo 'jack at xiph.org|Jack Moffitt|password' | md5sum
>

what happened to "Currently playing" ?  In addition to this, "last 3 songs" 
would also be very good.  would require a bit more storage on the server 
side, but not that much.

oddsock

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