DG PlayingNow Updater
What is DG PlayingNow Updater?
DG PlayingNow Updater puts a description of the currently playing song in your media player into one or all of the following places:
- Popup window (“toast” style)
- MSN Messenger “What I’m Listening To” area
- Your blog
- To a file (for email signatures etc)
Currently, the following platforms have been tested on:
Blogs: WordPress (v1.5, v2.0)
Media Players: J. River Media Center (v10, v11, v11.1), iTunes v6
MSN Messenger 7.5
Screenshots
Pop-up “toast”
WordPress plug-in
MSN Messenger “What I’m Listening To”
Download
Download the latest release which included both DG PlayingNow Updater and the WordPress plug-in.
Download v0.1.1.5 ALPHA – DGPlayingNow_0.1.1.5.zip
NOTE: This includes an upgrade to the WordPress plug-in (a plugin re-install will be required – simply copy .php files, deactivate, reactivate, modify post key, done!)
Installation
Install DG PlayingNow Updater
After you’ve downloaded DG PlayingNow Updater unzip it to any folder you wish and then simply double click on it. There is no need for an installation routine. Simple isn’t it?
Also, DG PlayingNow Updater is dependent on Microsoft .NET framework 1.1. Chances are, you already have it (and maybe didn’t even know it). If it’s not alread installed, you can download it from here.
Install WordPress plug-in
The WordPress plug-in is what gives you the ability to publish your currently playing track to your blog.
It’s important to note that you don’t need to WordPress plug-in if you only wish to use DG PlayingNow Updater stand alone for the pop-ups and MSN Messenger functionality.
To install the WordPress plug-in:
- Copy dg-playingnow.php and dg-playingnow-update.php to your wordpress plugins directory (usually located at “/wordpress/wp-content/plugins”)
- Goto plugins in your WordPress admin panel and click activate beside “DG PlayingNow Updater”.
- Now, goto presentation in your WordPress admin panel and insert the following
<?php showDGPlayingNow(); ?>wherever you want the currently playing track to appear. - Finally, you need to ensure that you have secured the plugin. Edit dg-playingnow-update.php and modify the value of your post key. To do this, modify the following line of code
$postkey = "1234567890";to any value you wish. This will ensure others can’t post to your playing now.Remember the value that you change it to and key that value into the main DG Playing Now Updater app. This will ensure that that your app and blog are paired together. - That’s it, done!
To do
- Multiple media player support – Winamp, iTunes and Windows Media Player
- AJAX playing now on blog so it keeps refreshing automatically
- Display cover art in popup and wordpress blog
- Skinable popup
- Write playing now out to a file (text or image) for email sig etc. And possibly FTP upload of file.
- And anything else you think of. Any suggestions or requests leave a comment or contact me.
Revision history
v0.1.1.5 : 2006-01-05 :
- Added: WordPress 2.0 support
- Added: Minor changes to display options (such as <br>)
- Fixed: minor bugs
v0.1.1.4 : 2005-12-28 :
- Added: Copy to clipboard feature
- Added: Added tool tip
- Added: Added writing out to file {ApplicationPath}\PlayingNow.txt
v0.1.1.3 : 2005-12-26 :
- Added: Support for iTunes (tested with v6)
- Added: CoverArt display on Popup (JRMC only) (Experimental)
- Added: More display tags (%track, %artist, %album, %playcount, %duration, %rating, %genre, %notes, %trknumber, %year)
v0.1.1.2 : 2005-12-22
- Added JRMC 11/11.1 support + minor bug fixes
v0.1.1.1 : 2005-12-21
- Initial alpha release
-dg
This is a great app. Can’t wait for ITunes support, and wouldn’t it be great if it catered for Mac users as well.
Vincenze.
iTunes support you say?
iTunes support coming very soon, working on it at the moment.
Mac support, now that’s stretching the friendship
-dg
Very nice, wish it auto started with my player though.
Standalone has its benefits too.
Solid wishy-washy opinion, eh?
But it does work just as it should once started.
Thanks for a nice tool.
I does start with Windows if that’s any benefit to you. Personally, I have my player running almost all of the time so not a problem for me.
Actually, you can create a batch file which launches both JRMC and DG PlayingNow Updater at the same time.
Also, I wanted to keep it out of being hooked into one particular player so as not to limit my options in the future.
-dg
Nice!
Would be even nicer to add coverart and other info, rating, playcount, etc.
keep up the good work!
Vincenze and M_Mickey,
Just released (v0.1.1.3) – iTunes support added, more tags added, cover art added.
-dg
Oh yeah! I’d love support for foobar2000, that would truly be lervly.
Does the plugin work with WordPress 2.0?
Coverart works fine! Thanx
How do we force linechange in output, i would like someting like this:
Artist
Album (year)
Song
Rating and playcount
Possible?
Claire,
Just tested in WordPress 2.0 and it doesn’t seem to work. I’ll have a look at it when I get a chance. Keep an eye on this page for updates.
M_Mickey,
Where do you want the output formatted like this? In the pop-up or in WordPress?
In wordpress – you can just put a <br/> wherever you want a break to appear and that should do the trick.
For the popup – you’re limited to the current size of the popup which is only three lines. If you want to put a line breaks in there it’s not too difficult to implement and I’ll introduce it in the next release (next few days).
Niklas,
Foobar2000 is not on the priority list but you never know, I might get around to it one day.
-dg
v0.1.1.5 Released:
- Added: WordPress 2.0 support
- Added: Minor changes to display options (such as <br>)
- Fixed: minor bugs
Sounds cool!
What about winamp support? Since it’s the most used music playin’ software since the DFX plugin’ exists :)
Keep me updated if there’s any way to get it work with winamp..
Cheers,
Adame
Latest build eats my ram like candy! 35-40mb during playback(no wordpress)
Request: Align text to the right.
Thanx again for working on this!
M_Mickey,
Mine teeters at around 22mb which, for me, is less than MSN Messenger, iPodder and a few other things. I do agree that I should try to bring this down a bit so I’ll look into it. Might be a dependency on needing to be hooked into JRMC that’s causing it, but I’ll look into it in the next few days. Also, I noticed it’s used up the same memory since v0.1.1.1. Can you test wether 0.1.1.5 chews up more than 0.1.1.4 on your system?
“eats my ram like candy”, I like that and am going to start using it :-)
Right align, coming up.
adame,
I’m working on Winamp and Windows Media Player, stay tuned.
-dg
And that is one of the best reasons not to use MSN messenger :)
Most im clients is better.
And JRMC does podcasting now.
Tried to downgrade to .14, and it helped a bit, but not alot.
Problem seems to be that the app keeps just adds info to memory without flushing. So it grows a little for each popup. Current record is 42mb!
You really should try to limit memory use, only firefox uses more ram on my laptop. I would say 10 mb should be the limit for this app, unless you add some funky functions. ?
I saw you checked out my last.fm ;)
Great Program, was just wondering if there could be a function to store your current settings (sorry if there is and ive missed it). It gets a bit annoying having to re-insert settings each time.
Sam,
It should be saving your settings when you exit. It saves them to the registry.
Try this.
1) Leave your media player closed
2) Open DG PlayingNow Updater
3) Set your settings
4) Right click on the system tray icon and click exit
5) Wait for it to totally close
6) Re-open – if your settings weren’t open your registry editor and goto “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DGPlayingNow” is there anyting there?
M_Mickey
I’m up to 56MB (after 4 days straight) – NEW WORLD RECORD!!!! YEAH!!!. I’m looking into it and will keep you posted. Can you do me a favour? Can you run it without the popup switched on, does it still continue to leak memory?
Also, your settings save after you exit don’t they?
Thanks.
-dg
Nice tool!
I haven’t seen how to add cover art–maybe I’m missing something.
Also, I’ve notice that when there’s an amphersand (sp?) “&” in the artist name the program poops out. Perhaps in a future release you’ll get a chance to look into this (or…maybe I’m just nutz!) Anyway, love the plugin–the only iTunes display tool I could get to work!
Oh, and I too had the same problem w/ vanishing settings on close.
Hey Brandon,
Cover Art only works with JRMC at the moment.
Yeah, I’ve noticed a few characters which play up, will work on it for the next release.
Hee hee, noticed the plug-in on your blog. Very cool. Still don’t know why people take out the “powered by DG PlayingNow”. Still, you’re using the plug-in and that’s the important thing.
Interesting blog by the way.
-dg
The only reason I took it out was that it didn’t “go” with my sidebar…
I periodically give a ‘plug’ to all my plug-in authors…I’ll give you a heads up when I do!
Great plug-in!
It may be on your “to-do list” but I’d really like to see a feature where the WordPress portion can keep your last few played tracks once you’ve stopped listening to music. It just looks kind of dull when you’re not listening to anything, you know?
Perhaps if the WordPress plug-in doesn’t receive any new song info for several minutes it converts from “Now Playing” to “Recently Played Tracks”.
Really really great stuff though. Thank you for sharing this.
When i disable popups, memory use is stable.
Since this plugin already have some kind of cache? Why not enable it to submit to last.fm? And then just grab data from last.fm to use in your blog? they have lots of feeds:
http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices/
Plugin Protocol:
http://www.audioscrobbler.net/wiki/Protocol1.1
M_Mickey,
Thanks for the info, I noticed you’ve been active around the JRMC forums around last.fm. In summary, what are the problems with the JRMC plug-in?
All,
Working on a version with some fixes and some minor feature requests, bear with me.
-dg
The main problem with the audioscrobbler plugin for jrmc is that the developer is missing. And the plugin needs some updates:
1:
The plugin just needs to do a new handshake when it receives a “Bad Authorization” error (and cache the track that failed to submit).
This happens when you’re not playing audio for a while (20/30 minutes?), the session just times out, or when you start another player that does a handshake on startup (like ITunes with iscrobbler installed) invalidating the original session.
2:
Sometimes the plugin forgets the username/pw, it then crashes jrmc everytime it tries to submit data. There is a DIY fix/hack by zxsix that works well:
“I believe I have solved this disappearing login issue. I can’t fix the plugin, but I have a workaround.
Here’s what I found…..
When you go into the plugin settings and fill in your login/password info, or change the options and click the apply button, it saves to the audioscrobbler.ini file located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11\Library\audioscrobbler.ini
Now, I noticed that when starting up MC and pulling up the plugin settings again, the login/password is of course blank now. Turns out it was attempting to read, and not finding, the audioscrobbler.ini file because it was looking for it here:
E:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11\audioscrobbler.ini. (note the lack of the Library folder in the path).
So, here’s the fix. Substitute your own paths.
Go into MC and edit the audioscrobbler plugin settings.
Fill in your login info. Click the login and apply buttons.
Leave MC as is….
Using windows explorer, find your audioscrobbler.ini file in a path similar to above, in the Library folder.
Copy that audioscrobbler.ini down one level to the Media Center 11 folder and save it there.
Now close MC and restart.
Check to see if the login info is still there.
High-five me if it works.”
3:
No caching is done, if you close jrmc all submissions pending would be lost forever. And if you leave the player on the session will time out and your pending submissions is lost anyway. :(
So the current plugin for jrmc is both stupid and outdated!
It would be really cool to have a “universal” submission plugin like yours. One that would submit from whatever player beeing used. It would be perfect since your plugin is running all the time anyway.
Alot of jrmc users would be very happy !
You wil probably be listed on the plugin-list over at last.fm -> alot of new users:)
Love the script, very clever indeed but being on 98se no itunes for me i shall have a crack with that media center tho but possibly winamp support would be brilliant!
When will you be providing a Mac version? This sounds great but what’s the point if no Mac version is available?
M_Mickey, thanks for all of the info. Theres heaps to go on there. I’ll have a go at coding something when I get a chance.
Astorg, there won’t be a mac version any time soon.
There are quite a few mac based apps which update wordpress from itunes, if that’s what you’re looking for.
-dg
Great plugin! :)
It was working fine for me the other day, but today it says “no music” on my blog, even though I have iTunes open and songs playing. I’ve tried opening iTunes first, then the Updater first, but it still says “no music”. The settings reset themself after I’d shut down once, but I’ve since changed them and I’ve got the right key, blog address, etc. When I right click on the Updater and choose “Update” it says “%track – %artist” on my blog.
What should I do?
Sounds great!
But it justs isnt working for me :-(
I dont know why? It Displays only this on Now playing “Listening to %track by %artist from %album”
Help!
Hey Ned,
The last release was a but unstable.
I’ve taken a break from developing it for a while.
I’d suggest you wait until i start working on it again. Not sure when i’ll resume dev on it at the moment.
-dg
delicategenius where can i get your DGPlayingNow_0.1.1.3.zip?
I have heard that its stable! and what about DGPlayingNow_0.1.1.4.zip?
Thank You!
I got even 0.1.1.3 version but it is not updating .. and if i click update …
“Listening to %track by %artist from %album” … same again
I’ve .NET 1.1 & 2 installed!
Plz help!
was wandering if the script could include support for streaming stations. Would be nice to see the title and artist.
I love the concept of this plugin! I can get it to work if I update manually on every track change, but who wants to do that? It seems like the original output for itunes is updating it after DG posts the MSN “I’m listening to” For example the track changes, MSN posts it as I want for about 1 second, then goes back to the way it was before I installed DG…Anyone else have this issue?
I use it at http://www.kommunist.dk and loving it :)
…And I can’t wait for the support of AJAX ;)
Will this support zoomplayer? I was hoping that it could post mp4 and avi as well
Found a small problem with it. It keeps the media center process running when the media center application has already exited. Any way to change it?
Very useful, thanks mate. Good luck 4 ur future apps. :)
is there anyway, it would publish to a xml file? w/ thumbnail? or to a txt only xml or mysql?
this is a really cool app.
i would love it, if every field would upload to mysql in a table. heheheee
thanks..
khang,
If you look in the same folder as DGPlayingNow.exe you will find that it generates a file called PlayingNow.txt. This is a simple text file with whatever your playing now string is.
Best you’re gonna get for the moment i’m afraid.
-dg
thanks. do you think that anytime in the future that it would be like something similiar to last.fm? which it uploads all the song’s info to a DB, and increment. time played, cd, title, artist, date, how many times it plays, and stuff like that. so we can do like a cool chart thing? or have your app as open source, or if you need help on programming? (hahahaaaaa) it’ll be cool features to add. heheheeee. so there’s be setting to upload to DB mysql.
peace out,
khang
Still waiting for that Ajax support.
Any news?
Great idea for a plugin. It doesn’t seem to detect JRMC12 as running, though. I’m guessing it’s a simple pathing issue. Any chance you’ll be able to address this?
Thanks!
Thanks for the plugin! Bookmarked it now and will add it to my blog soon :)
Any chance making this compatible with MSN 8 and J River 12?
Unlikely Leon, DG PlayingNow has been out of development for over a year now and I can’t see myself resuming it in the foreseeable future.
Hi Michael! I have to say that this is a really useful tool that i used some time ago, but now i have J River Media Center 12 and your program says: “Player not open”.
I beg you to fix that so i can continue using this little marvel. Thanks.
Well done!
DG PlayingNow Updater – Displays the song you are currently listening to on iTunes, MSN Messenger, or J. River Media Center