LoudCity - Building Launch Files

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Custom Content - Files
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This document deals with Custom Player/Custom Content, which is available as an option on all new LoudCity plans.

Launch files, or playlist files, are great. Your station can support many kinds of players by creating and deploying play lists to your loudcity custom content area. Not only that, your play lists can tell the player to do things like:

-Connect to the Broadband stream
-Is The Broadband stream full? Then connect to the dialup stream

Below are examples for these popular playlist formats:

.PLS (Winamp, iTunes)
.ASX (Windows Media Player)
You can create playlist files with any text editor, like Notepad. After you create a playlist, upload it to your Custom Content folder at LoudCity and link to it from your custom paunch page.

We hope you find these samples helpful. You can also right-click and save your LoudCity-generated files and use them as a starting point for building your own.

PLS (WinAmp, iTunes)

For the most part, WinAmp will respond to .PLS files. iTunes and Real Player also will if configured to do so. Windows Media Player will, but generally speaking, WindowsMedia player can't play SHOUTcast streams this way. More on Windows Media Player support later.

Sample filename: myplaylist.pls
Sample URL: http://www.myserver/myplaylist.pls
Play List Contents:

[playlist]
numberofentries=2
File1=http://myBroadbandshoutcastserver:8080
Title1=My Station - www.mysite.com
Length1=-1
File2=http://myDialupshoutcastserver:8082
Title2=My Station - www.mysite.com
Length2=-1
Version=2

When the player loads this play list, it will first attempt to connect to the Broadband stream. If the Broadband stream is unavailable then the player will connect to the Dialup stream. (Note - iTunes does *not* support multiple entries and will only look at the first one. Winamp should roll over to the next server with no problems)

You can also put an intro track in the play list. This would be played when a listener first connects to your station ("You are listening to....My Station").

[playlist]
numberofentries=3
File1=http://mysite.com/intro.mp3
Title1=My Station - www.mysite.com
Length1=-1
File2=http://myBroadbandshoutcastserver:8080
Title2=My Station - www.mysite.com
Length2=-1
File3=http://myDialupshoutcastserver:8082
Title3=My Station - www.mysite.com
Length3=-1
Version=2

ASX (Windows Media Player)

.ASX files are a great way to get Windows Media Player to stream Windows Media streams, or SHOUTcast streams. Important: do not add the traditional /listen.pls to the end of your SHOUTcast URL. Windows Media Palyer doesn't like this.

Sample filename: broadband.asx
Sample URL: http://www.myserver/broadband.asx
Play List Contents:

<ASX VERSION="3.0">
<TITLE>My Station Title</TITLE>
<MOREINFO HREF="http://www.mysite.com" />
<ENTRY>
<TITLE>My Broadband Stream Title</TITLE>
<REF HREF="mms://WindowMediaServer/Broadband" />
</ENTRY>
<ENTRY>
<TITLE>My Dialup Stream Title</TITLE>
<REF HREF="mms://WindowMediaServer/Dialup" />
</ENTRY>
</ASX>

When the player loads this play list, it will first attempt to connect to the Broadband stream. If the Broadband stream is unavailable then the player will connect to the Dialup stream.