Possible to add song title, artist and other metadata for Open Network Stream playback?

[ninekit]

I am a happy Wiim mini owner and thank you for this excellent product. I am huge fan of internet radio and using the Open Network Stream big time. It will be great if title, artist as well as other metadata can be displayed on the Wiim home app.

Thank you very much.

 

[kinglota]

Joined just to add this request! I listen to a lot of SomaFM, and it would be great to have artist and title.

 

[Brantome]

Guess it depends on the stream and what protocol they use to send that info

 

[canard]

example on aac streams( icecast) , no artist metadata, etc.
(but also not indicated that compressed aac etc...but is not that annoying )

 

[d6jg]

Having some experience in this area I can tell you that only a handful of Internet Radio services offer full metadata. Most only offer "title - artist" as one piece of data which is injected and re-injected into the stream when tracks change.

There were (are) two main Internet Radio server software types and these are slightly different in what they offer as far as "in stream" updates are concerned.

Shoutcast - offers "title - artist" and through a back door but now firmly established method allows cover art by updating a station icon URL field that is contained in the stream. Shoutcast supports MP3 and AAC but NOT Flac or more correctly Ogg-Flac.

The other type is Icecast which supports more Codec types (including Ogg-Flac) but only offers "title - artist"

However these are in stream methods and if a station offers an API it is possible for full metadata to be extracted. The problem is that by definition virtually all API's are slightly different and not all Internet Radio stations have one. The "open network stream" option in WiiM is only ever going to support in stream updates if they are available.

A different approach to get cover art is to have a local client (piece of software in the WiiM App) that does some looking up to the internet for you and grabs what it believes to be suitable cover art however for this to work properly you need not only title and artist but also album which is not contained in the basic info provided by the in stream updates.

Overall the answer is that it is unlikely that WiiM will be able to do this.

However if you were to install LMS somewhere on your network and use the clever plugin to make the WiiM behave as a LMS player and another plugin which provides full metadata to dozens of Internet Radio stations you'd get your wish. You'd also get full BBC Sounds and a load more. Just saying.

EDIT - As far as I know LMS is the only music server software that has this facility. Roon doesn't support Internet Radio at all IIRC.

 

[Brantome]

EDIT - As far as I know LMS is the only music server software that has this facility. Roon doesn't support Internet Radio at all IIRC.

I seem to recall that the Roon Community forum was one of the first places I encountered a list of hi quality internet radio stations so it's unlikely it didn't support such. They seem to have formalised it a bit as per this link https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/live-radio

 

[Brantome]

Roon runs a special curated and often updated radio stations list. I do not use it, but I know it exists.

as above

 

[d6jg]

I stand corrected.
What is the metadata support like?

 

[Brantome]

I stand corrected.
What is the metadata support like?

Don't know, I don't use Roon I just recall what I mentioned above

 

[WiiM Support]

Joined just to add this request! I listen to a lot of SomaFM, and it would be great to have artist and title.

Hi Kinglota, ninekit,

Thank you for your insights regarding radio metadata. Could you please check if SomaFM or other stations in TuneIn Radio are working for you? We do support metadata for TuneIn's radios.

If you're unable to find your preferred radio station there, kindly share the radio URL with us. Our engineers will investigate whether we can support metadata for radios with those specific URLs. Your assistance is greatly appreciated!

 

[svdarren]

Hi Kinglota, ninekit,

Thank you for your insights regarding radio metadata. Could you please check if SomaFM or other stations in TuneIn Radio are working for you? We do support metadata for TuneIn's radios.

If you're unable to find your preferred radio station there, kindly share the radio URL with us. Our engineers will investigate whether we can support metadata for radios with those specific URLs. Your assistance is greatly appreciated!

I also joined to add to the request!

I would like to listen to PS Audio's Octave Radio. It's a new service and not listed in TuneIn, iHeartRadio, or any of the other free app I've tried. TuneIn has removed the option to add a custom URL. The Open Network Stream feature works, and I like that I can try experimental stuff without someone like TuneIn in the middle, but I don't get metadata. Octave Radio supports Album art and artist/track info.

EDIT: TuneIn still has the custom URL feature, they just moved it without updating any docs. TuneIn metadata seems to not work with the custom URL.

 

[kinglota]

Hi, sorry for the late reply! Tunein has the metadata for the SomaFM stations it carries (which are only a subset of all of them). However, I also have added the channels by direct URL in the "open network stream" for when Tunein is having issues, which only shows the channel title, no artists or titles. I know the metadata is there, since the same URL in Poweramp has everything. For example, SomaFM The In Sound's URL is https://ice2.somafm.com/insound-128-mp3. The Wiim built-in streamer only shows the URL when playing, while Poweramp shows track and artist.

 

[svdarren]

Hi, sorry for the late reply! Tunein has the metadata for the SomaFM stations it carries (which are only a subset of all of them). However, I also have added the channels by direct URL in the "open network stream" for when Tunein is having issues, which only shows the channel title, no artists or titles. I know the metadata is there, since the same URL in Poweramp has everything. For example, SomaFM The In Sound's URL is https://ice2.somafm.com/insound-128-mp3. The Wiim built-in streamer only shows the URL when playing, while Poweramp shows track and artist.

That's helpful for understanding my case as well. The station I want isn't on TuneIn and doesn't have metadata with either the Open Network Stream feature nor with the TuneIn custom URL feature. I used the SomaFM URLs to confirm that their stations (which are listed with metadata) won't show metadata when using TuneIn's custom URL feature.

TL;DR: WiiM support of TuneIn metadata isn't enough for small stations that aren't listed in the app.

 

[kinglota]

To clarify, the URL example is Soma's, not TuneIn's, so it's more a Wiim issue than Tunein-specific.

 

[svdarren]

To clarify, the URL example is Soma's, not TuneIn's, so it's more a Wiim issue than Tunein-specific.

Understood. @WiiM Support had previously asked if the TuneIn version works, and I wanted to add another reason why TuneIn is not always a viable option.