Re: Android App for Icecast Administration

Hi Thomas,

> As this is historical data I don't see any reason why you'd try to get
> this through the web interface.

The use case is when there is an Icecast service, but there might not be
shell access to that server. So we have a stats interface in Airtime
that only needs the admin password to create a listener count graph
against time.

> Chances are, that there you'd miss out
> on some seconds or even miss whole connections if they fall in between
> polling intervals.

Yes, that's a risk with the current system.

> Also the playlist logging might be interesting in that context as it
> will contain metadata, which some agencies seem to require.

Right, but we have detailed custom logging of playout in Airtime 2.5.x
so that side is taken care of. (In Canada, some stations have to play a
certain percentage of Canadian content, so that has to be logged).

On the listener side, we need the same level of detail. Because
royalties should be calculated on the geolocation of listeners, agencies
might collect money for listeners outside of their territory.

>> > This aggregate 'tuning' time is required for music royalty calculations
>> > in some countries.

> But that's surely something that's done on some time interval basis?
> monthly, quarterly or yearly?

Yes, usually you need to report at intervals, but in the meantime you
want to be able to predict those costs.

Ideally, you want to know the trends in listenership in real time - for
example, when I play a particular kind of music, do I get more stream
disconnections in a certain territory? In theory, we could return that
kind of metadata to the database of the playout system and use it to
tweak the playout.

It may be that we need to use something like
https://github.com/jonty-comp/iceking on the Icecast side and find
another way of getting this data to the users.

Cheers!

Daniel