[Icecast] Dynamic Playlist

[Mark Trimble]

Thanks Mike,

I'll look into the random/shuffle thing some more. It's not a big deal for
my NetJuke listeners, because for the most part they're defining their own
playlists. But for my peercast listeners, who don't have control over the
playlist they hear, it is a big deal. Every time I update/add to my
broadcast playlist (which is daily), the stream basically starts over. The
consequence of this is that no one ever gets very far into the playlist and
they get bored hearing the same stuff over again. 

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: mlrsmith at gmail.com [mailto:mlrsmith at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Michael
Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 8:09 AM
To: Mark Trimble
Cc: Rob Campbell; icecast at xiph.org
Subject: Re: [Icecast] Dynamic Playlist

>
> 1. Despite the 0 setting for my "restart-after-reread" parameter, 
> anytime I manually update my playlist file, my playlist starts over 
> again. Though "random", I know this is happening because I soon hear 
> tracks again that I've recently heard. Is there something I can do to 
> prevent this from happening?

First up: random is misnamed, as it's not intended to be truly random.
Instead, it shuffles the list: this means that normally, you can't hear the
same thing until it has reached the end of the shuffled list.

However, when the list is re-read, it's also re-shuffled.
restart-after-reread is correctly used, but does roughly nothing in this
case.

>
> 2. The "random" parameter doesn't seem to produce particularly random 
> selections, meaning that ices2 seems to work its way down my playlist 
> in a somewhat predictable fashion. Each time I restart ices2 I hear 
> (more or
> less) the same general sequence of tracks played. Is this to be expected?

The shuffle should be completely random. If it isn't... there's a bug
somewhere. Perhaps your system does have a very random rand() function?
Perhaps we should use a better RNG  in ices.

>
> 3. Does anyone know if there's a command line, MySQL-based playlist 
> manager for ices2? I'd love to be able to manage my playlists and ID3 
> tag info using a database interface. I'd also like to be able to 
> easily serve up customized playlist's through ices2 in a manner 
> similar to what I currently use NetJuke for, but to do this requires a
database. Any thoughts?
>

You can hook this into IceS2 using the 'script' playlist module, but I don't
know if anyone has written an appropriate script to speak to mysql. I
haven't, personally.

Mike