Feature request: export metadata of currently playing song

[Groschi]

Hi.
The background of my request is that i plan to start an Indie Rock show on a small german webradio and i would love to use Mixxx in my broadcasting setup because that's what i'm used to and i like this "live"-workflow that happens if you do almost everything by hand (compared with usual broadcasting-software).
Now there's a strange thing in german law: In their licensing for smaller webradio stations the german performance rights organisation (GEMA) and copyright collective (GVL) force online broadcasters to provide valid metainformation (at least "artist - title") in their stream and that's the reason i can't work with my beloved mixxx at the moment.
One way of doing it would be if mixxx could output the data of the currently playing song to a txt- or html-file, then a tool like EDCast is able to read and update the title-information. Even printing it to mixxx's titlebar would help, because EDCast is able to read it too. For example, the title info could switch to the song in the other deck as soon as the current one stops playing.

But maybe somebody already knows a workaround for this?
For the start, it looks like i'm gonna use SAM broadcaster as the tool of my choice, since that's what the other guys at the station are using too. But still... (*burstintotears*) i want to use mixxx someday....

[rryan]

Hi Groschi,

The shoutcast/icecast support that will be in the upcoming 1.8.0 release (January 2010) automatically sets the shoutcast metadata based on the current song. It sets the stream's song metadata to 'Artist - Title' -- so maybe this will do what you want? Shoutcast is working in trunk right now so if you try compiling from source you can use that feature today.

Good luck!
RJ Ryan

[Groschi]

Hey, that's great news. Building the thing from scratch is a bit too high for an average windows-guy like me, so i'll wait for the final release.
Still, i don't really know if it's helpful for my purposes. It would be if mixx will also support additional input from the soundcard's line in (or mic-in). If i still need to mix Mixx's output and my voice using additional software, the title-infos will get lost on the way again.

[robot16251]

*Bump*

Hi, is there any (efficient) way to retrieve now-playing info?

Since I'm not broadcasting with the built-in streamer I need to grab "%artist% - %title%" by other means.
I see two possibilities which both aren't ideal:
*) Read the database
Only next track in sequence is instantly available (INSERT INTO "sqlite_sequence" VALUES('library',55);) afaik; not the current playing.
I'd need to keep track of all playcounts and extract last incremented via library table which seems to come with a lot of overhead for large libraries since this would be looping in ~ 10 second interval.
[s]*) Stream to localhost and grab metadata from that[/s] Tried that - doesn't work. Most often only the first track's metadata is dispatched to icecast2 without further updates.

I've read about a new logging feature in 1.11 beta. Will this be logging the now-playing track or only tracks which have already been played?
I'm on Win7 x86; would it be tricky to tweak the app itself (e.g. write a file with that info) or write a plugin?

Perhaps I'm missing something and there is a more direct way to accomplish this?
Appreciate any ideas!