Streampad Blog

The All-New Interface Video Show

Dan Kantor — 2009-06-24T11:35:00 00:00

We are very proud to announce the all new Interface video show. The Interface has lived for years inside Spinner as a series of blog posts and an accompanying video podcast. Over the years, The Interface has showcased up and coming artists including Amy Winehouse's first US appearance in 2007. While the blog format has served everyone well, we felt it was time to truly give The Interface the love it deserved.

The Interface now lives at http://www.spinner.com/interface. There you will find links to past episodes including Sigur Ros, Grizzly Bear, Neko Case and more. Over the coming weeks, we will add all the past episodes, hang in there. We love Spoon's 2007 performance as much as you do!

Once you click on an episode, you will be greeted with an all new widescreen video player. You can easily skip songs, view performance pics, read about the artist and leave your own comments. You can also subscribe to the Podcast within iTunes or any other media player.

We hope you enjoy the new format. As always, we welcome your feedback - we would love to make this even better!

Introducing 'Where It's At'

Dan Kantor — 2009-05-13T17:28:00 00:00

We are pleased to announce the latest addition to our family - Where It's At. Where It's At is the ultimate pop culture treasure map. Have you ever wanted to know where the hospital from Grey's Anatomy is really located? How about the real Hotel California? You can find all these historical pop culture spots and more on Where It's At.

Know something we don't? You can submit spots to us and get on the map.

Go ahead and explore. Have fun! We bet you'll find a spot you never knew existed.

Streampad New Features: Full Screen Mode and Real Time Buddylist

Dan Kantor — 2009-05-13T13:36:00 00:00

We just pushed some new features live on Streampad - full screen mode and real time buddylist.

Full Screen Mode

Let's say you are having a party. You have lots of friends over and you are all grooving out to a Streampad playlist. It would be really cool if you could show off that playlist on your monitor or big screen tv. Well, now you can! On the bottom right of Streampad, you should see a new full screen button. Click that and you will be taken into full screen mode. You can use your mouse to advance through tracks, pause or adjust the volume. Hit ESC or the close button on the upper right to exit full screen mode. You can also use keyboard shortcuts:

Play/Pause - SPACEBAR
Next Track - RIGHT ARROW
Previous Track - LEFT ARROW
Volume Up - UP ARROW
Volume Down - DOWN ARROW

Real Time Buddylist

Streampad now can show you who on your buddylist is listening to music - in real time! If you open up the 'Profile' drawer, in addition to seeing a 'HISTORY' tab, you will now see a 'BUDDIES' one as well. Clicking on it will show you who on your AIM buddylist is listening to music at that exact moment. You will see buddies that are listening in Streampad (as long as they have enabled the 'Update AIM status with current song') as well as buddies who have set their AIM status to show their current song on Winamp or iTunes with their AIM client.

The Boot - Now more social with Socialthing!

Dan Kantor — 2009-04-17T10:09:00 00:00

Yesterday we introduced a new and exciting product on The Boot. It is called Socialthing and allows you to connect with other people on the site as well as your buddylist. It sits unobtrusively at the bottom of the page, and offers features such as chat, IM and site updates.

Once you sign in, you will get access to your entire buddylist. You can send and receieve instand messages as well as easily send your buddies a link to the page you are on.

There is also a chat feature will will allow you to chat with other people that are on the site the same time as you. This is a great way to connect with other country music fans.

In addition, when you leave comments on the site, you will have the opportunity to share those comments with your buddylist. You can optionally send your comments to your buddy feed. This feed shows up in AIM for your buddies to see.

We hope you enjoy Socialthing and all the new features it brings to The Boot. We'd love to hear what you think about it.

New Streampad Site is Live!

Dan Kantor — 2009-04-13T09:26:00 00:00

The all new Streampad site is now live! We've made things even easier for you to put Streampad on your site. In addition to supporting Tumblr, we now have custom plugins for Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad. If your site is running on something else, don't worry, we have you covered too.

Streampad has always been customizable, but until now you had to have some basic web development skills to know what you were doing. That is no longer the case. We have rolled out an all new Customize feature right on the site. You can choose colors from a drop down as well as choose which features you want to include on your site. It's simple and fun!

We also rolled out a Who Has It section which features sites sporting Streampad. It is a great way to find new music. Click around and discover some of the best music sites on the web.

In addition, we now have a Developers page. At the moment, it is pretty basic, but we will soon be documenting all the events and ways you could mashup Streampad on your page.

We hope you enjoy the new site and we hope you enjoy Streampad. We are continuously adding new features and want to hear from you. Tell us what you love and tell us what you hate. We are comitted to making Streampad the easiest and best way to deliver music on your site.

Upload a New Profile Picture

Dan Kantor — 2009-04-02T14:52:00 00:00

We are pleased to announce that you can now upload, crop and save your profile picture from your profile page. Your profile picture is your AIM icon. Previously, you could change your picture only through the AIM client application. Starting today, you can do it straight from the browser.

To get started, visit your profile page at http://music.aol.com/profile
Make sure you are logged in.

Right under your profile picture will be a link to "Edit Icon". After clicking that, a window will pop up which will allow you to select an image from your computer, crop it and then set it as your new profile picture. In addition to your profile picture, this will replace your AIM icon as well.

Please note that Flash 10 is required for this.

Streampad Wordpress plugin now available

Dan Kantor — 2009-03-31T17:35:00 00:00

We are proud to announce the general availability of our Streampad plugin for Wordpress! You can grab it here - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/streampad/

The plugin will search for all mp3 links in previous posts, as well as any new posts moving forward. You can also manually add mp3's.

We'd love to hear feedback on this and how we could improve it.

New Features - Listening History and AIM

Dan Kantor — 2009-03-26T11:39:00 00:00

We are very excited to announce two new major features for listening to music on our site.

Listening History

You are now able to keep track of what you listened to across AOL Music. Whether it be on CD Listening Party, Spinner Mp3 of the Day or anywhere else. On the bottom right of the Streampad player is a little profile button. Click it and you will see your history. You have to be signed in to access this feature.

Your History also appears on your profile page. You can make this public if you want and share what you listened to with the world.

Check out my profile - http://music.aol.com/profile/DanielKantor07/

AIM

In addition, we also added the ability to update your AIM status with what you are listening to. Just check the box "Update AIM status with current song" within Streampad and you will be able to show your entire buddylist what you are listening to.

We've got a new video player!

Dan Kantor — 2009-03-20T10:56:00 00:00

You may have noticed a shiny new video player on our video pages. This new and improved player is faster and more lighweight than our old one. It also supports an enhanced full screen mode. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

New Sign in Page

Dan Kantor — 2009-02-12T14:10:00 00:00

As you may have noticed, we changed the way you sign in to our pages. In the past, clicking the blue Sign In / Register button on the top right of the page would open a mini sign in box. We received lots of feedback from you complaining about some content or ads blocking this box. We listened to you and believe we came up with a better and easier solution to signing in. Clicking on the button will now take you to a new Sign in page. After Signing in, we take you back to the page you came from.

Signing into AOL Music allows you to leave comments, keep track of what you listened to as well as create your own profile page to show off your musical tastes. If you don't have an account (AOL and AIM accounts work), you can create one here. It is free and easy.

Announcing: Streampad Wordress Plugin Beta

Dan Kantor — 2009-02-11T15:58:00 00:00

We are happy to announce that we now have a Wordpress plugin for Streampad. We have been privately testing this for the last few weeks and we would now like to open it up to anyone that is interested in testing it out.

If you are interested, please leave a comment here. You will need at least Wordpress version 2.2.3

Enjoy!

Streampad - volume setting remembers where it was

Dan Kantor — 2009-01-28T16:32:00 00:00

Minor new feature in Streampad. When you set the volume, it will stay set from session to session, from blog to blog.

Artist, album, track and cover art now in Streampad!

Dan Kantor — 2009-01-23T10:16:00 00:00

We just pushed out a new feature that fills the playlist drawer with all the metadata it can get for your playlist. If your files are tagged properly, we should be able to display the track title, artist and album (with cover art) for your songs.

To open the playlist drawer, click on the playlist icon on the right side of the player:

After it opens, you should see some nice info!

Pump up the volume!

Dan Kantor — 2009-01-14T19:18:00 00:00

Just pushed an update to Streampad that adds a volume control. This was the number one request from CD Listening Party users and I am very happy to get it in there.

Bloggers - if for some reason, you don't want it, just put showvolumebutton = 'false'.

Streampad Updates

Dan Kantor — 2008-12-16T15:02:00 00:00

We pushed out some nice new updates to Streampad just now. The first is that you can now pop-out the player into a new window. This has been a long-standing request from lots of people, and I am happy to finally get it out there. You can find the pop-out button on the right side. To the left of that button, is a new playlist button. Click it, and a small drawer will open that reveals the playlist of songs, along with some metadata about the current song. We are working on getting better metadata in there, but for now you should be able to see song title, artist and album on a bunch of songs. Lastly, you can now show off what you are listening to on your profile page at http://music.aol.com/profile/. Check me out at http://music.aol.com/profile/DanielKantor07/. You'll need to be logged into AOL Music for this to work. You can log in with you AIM id. Soon, we'll have a flash badge that you can stick on your blog to show off what you are listening to. In the near future, you'll be able to log in right on the player itself. You'll also be able to keep a history of what you've listened to as well as see your top artists and songs. If you would rather not have the pop-out or playlist drawer, you can disable them. Check out the hacks page to see how. I hope you like the new additions. As always, please leave any feedback and requests in the comments section below.

All New AOL Radio Toolbar

Jake Goodrich — 2008-11-04T13:12:00 00:00

Hi folks,

The AOL Radio team just released the new radio toolbar today! This toolbar allows listeners to have instant, one-click access to AOL Radio no matter what website they are on. AOL Radio fans can also add their favorite stations to the toolbar by clicking on the 'add a station' button.

You can click here to download the toolbar.

New Artist News Module

Jake Goodrich — 2008-07-16T14:05:00 00:00

Hi folks,

We have just launched a brand new music news module on all of our artist pages. This module will search the web for the latest news on your favorite artist. Whether it is a blog post, online article, review or music website, now you can get all the latest straight from the artist's page.

You can narrow your search to three categories: All News, AOL Music News and Blogs.

We hope you all enjoy this new feature. As always, let us know what you think! Click here to send us feedback, or you can leave a comment on this blog. Thanks!

- Jake, AOL Music Product Guide

Start Creating Your Own Music Profile

Jake Goodrich — 2008-07-16T14:05:00 00:00

Hi Everybody,

We are very excited to announce that we have launched music profiles on AOL Music! This is just the first release. We will be adding new features throughout the year. You can check out the profile I've made here. (And yes I know my first concert is totally lame :), I was almost compelled to lie)

This release will allow you to build a basic profile. Features include:

1) Bio: This is free form. Describe yourself, what makes you tick, how your friends would sum you up. Whatever grabs your fancy.

2) Profile Picture, Location, Favorite Links: Pretty self-explanatory.

3) Music Facts: What was the first concert you went too? First album you owned? Let everyone know with this easy to use list, and then compare lists with your friends and other AOL Music users.

4) Playlists: View, edit and rate your own playlists and check out your friend's playlists directly from a profile page.

5) Profile Stats: Keep tabs on how many times your profile has been viewed.

Creating a profile is easy. In fact, if you have an AIM screen name, you just need to sign in to get started with your music profile. If you don't have an AIM screen name, you can register at aim.com, or click on 'register' in the global navigation. They are free and easy to get!

To view or edit your profile, simply sign in to the site using the sign-in link in the upper right hand corner. Once signed in, you can go to your profile dashboard where you can make your edits and view activity.

We hope that you all start personalizing your pages and adding your own flavor to AOL Music. Soon we will be adding more functionality to better connect you with your friends and the artists you like. As always, we love to hear from you all. Click here to send us any comments/issues that may arise. Thanks!

- Jake, AOL Music Product Guide

Tour Tracker Has Launched

Jake Goodrich — 2008-07-02T19:29:00 00:00

Hi folks,

We are very excited to let you all know that we have just launched our all new Tour Tracker site! Find out which artists and shows are in your area, where your favorite band is touring this summer, buy tickets and more! Check out some of the cool new features below:

1) Find out where your favorite bands and artists are playing, as well as which shows are going to be in your area, using the search bar. This search bar will also appear on all of the artist pages and main page of AOL Music.

2) Check out which shows are playing in your area over any time frame. Using Mapquest right on the page, you can locate each venue.

3) Go to your favorite band or artist's personal Tour Tracker page and you can get all of the updated info on their current tour, purchase tickets, find out what fans are saying and more. You can also check out videos, photos, and live news for all your favorite artists.

4) Using our Heat Index, track which upcoming shows, artists and tours are the hottest.

5) Check out comments and reviews of recent shows to get the scoop on what's hot and what's not. Know an artist that's amazing live? Spread the word. And soon we'll be offering more ways for you to share your experiences with other users.

Those are just some of the features that we are rolling out with. Stay tuned as we continue to add cool new features and tools to the site. As always, we love to hear your feedback! Click here to send us any comments/suggestions.

- Jake, AOL Music Product Guide

Adding Descriptions to Your Playlists

Jake Goodrich — 2008-06-30T16:30:00 00:00

Hi all,

Did you know that you can add descriptions to your playlists? Whether it is a story, description or how you are feeling at that moment; it's just another way that you can personalize playlists. Here's how to do it:

1) When looking at your list of playlists, click on the one you want to personalize.

2) In the upper right corner, click 'Edit Playlist Info.'

3) A flyout will appear, and you can add your description. Click OK and you are all set!

You're now ready to start describing your playlists! Let us know if you have any concerns or problems. Thanks!

- Jake, AOL Music Product Guide