Streampad Blog

Introducing the Streampad API

Dan Kantor — 2009-10-21T15:59:00 00:00

For a while now, Streampad has had an unofficial API. Unofficial in the sense that developers would look at the source code, hack on it, email me, hack some more and then build something cool. Well, the days of unofficial are officially over! I am very proud to unveil the Streampad API.

There are actually two APIs:

Embed API
The first one is the Embed API. You can find it here - http://www.streampad.com/embed-api. This API allows developers to customize the look and feel of Streampad as well as choose which features to include and exclude by setting options.

Javascript API
The second one is the Javascript API. You can find it here - http://www.streampad.com/javascript-api. This API allows developers to control the Streampad player via Javascript. Developers can play and queue songs, play and pause the player, receive events and perform other useful functions.

We would love any and all feedback on these. What works, what doesn't, what else you would like to see. Thanks!

Scrobble Those Tracks! Streampad Now Supports Last.fm

Dan Kantor — 2009-08-13T17:11:00 00:00

For all you last.fm fans out there, we have some good news! You can now scrobble tracks that you listen to right inside of Streampad. To get started, click on the little person icon on the right side of the player. That will open up the profile drawer. Click on the Last.fm section.

Click on the "Log in to Last.fm" button. This will open up a permissions window on Last.fm.

After clicking "Yes, allow access", close the window. It is important that you close the window as that will notify Streampad to log you in.

Once you are logged in, Streampad will scrobble your tracks and show you your last 10 songs. Please note that tracks will only scrobble if they have artist and song names. So remember to tag your files if you are a publisher.

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.

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.

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.

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 Now Remembers Where You Set It

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 use 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.