Rip and Rate Radio
From CSE330 Wiki
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[edit] Purpose
To enhance the dj-less autorotation system of Washington University's radio station, kwur (www.kwur.com), to create an on line interface for easy reviewing of albums after using custom, automated ripping script of new album releases by djs.
[edit] Preface
KWUR uses a daemon called megatron (written in PHP) to play music when DJ's don't have a show as well as automatically record shows when DJ's sign on. Megatron resides in Unicron, KWUR's main server. Unicron is comprised of a 1.5TB RAID6 array with AMD hardware and it uses lighttpd to host a webserver exclusive to the DJ's within KWUR. On kwurs intranet are 3 diskless kiosk thin clients that all boot off a nfs share provided by Unicron. When running init scripts, they will first mount a filesystem to RAM and then proceed to boot. Various directories are available to the network through Unicron and one of the kiosks sports multiple CDROM drives which can be used to archive new releases and albums KWUR wishes to digitize for megatron's use.
[edit] Objective
The object of this project is to utilize the resources of kwur and what we have learned so far in CSE330S in order to write scripts for the archival station and present albums online for reviewing. The features below plan to be implemented.
[edit] Features
Ripping
- Rip cds with Perl script and send id tagged files to temporary folder which can be handed to the Megatron-IN datapipe so that music can be efficiently archived to a mysql database as well as to the digital audio stacks for rebroadcasting purposes.
- Uses multiple online databases to find best track information on music being archived
- Because KWUR receives music mostly unknown to the public, users have an option to submit CD Track data to CDDB, contributing to its growth as well as general knowledge of the artist.
Rating
- Users will be able to rate albums through comments and overall album feel conveyed by a thumbs up/down system to show general sentiment. This can tie in with current single song approvals collection through www.kwur.com music ticker to expand intelligence of robot when selecting music to play during non-live hours.
Bonus features yet to be implemented:
- Automatic management of auto-rotator albums through album crosslinking and track rating system. As trends in albums/tracks sway, Megatron can selectively play content as dictated by popular opinion.
- DJ's can send show "style" requests to megatron. What this means is that they can be given the opportunity to tell megatron to play certain genres/tracks of music from the database. This request will be parsed into an xml show file for megatron to read during off-live hours.
- If megatron detects an incoming album has already been added, it will discard adding the album to the database and send it do a temporary directory monitored by executive personnel for a double-check.
- Private website will have albums available for listening - this feature has legal issues we're unsure of considering streaming media through a flash applet. However, reviewers usually listen to hard copies of the album they check out from the station stacks for review.
[edit] Design Process
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[edit] Relevant links
CPAN modules for...
requesting a website
grabbing html data
grabbing track lengths
accessing mySQL
CDDB get script
Other shiz:
Online flash player that can display album artwork from sf.net
[edit] Project Members
Micah Herstand
David Schainker (dschainker at the gmail)
