Now-playing metadata

When a station shares what it is playing, TuneSera shows the current song in the player and on the station page, so listeners always know what’s on.

How it works#

Many stations send the current artist and title along with their stream. TuneSera reads this information from your server and shows it in the sticky player and the On Air panel on station pages. It supports Icecast, SHOUTcast, ICY and Zeno streams.

Song titles only appear when the station’s stream actually sends them. Many stations don’t, and that is normal. The player then shows the station name instead.

Turn current-song metadata on or off#

1. Go to TuneSera → Settings → Metadata.
2. Use Fetch current-song metadata. It is on by default.
3. Click Save changes.

Pro options#

• Fetch track artwork: find cover art for the current song and show it in the player.
• Metadata refresh interval: how often the current song may refresh while someone is listening (60–3600 seconds).
• Metadata cache duration: how long song information is reused before it is fetched again.
• Use cached metadata during temporary failures: keep showing the last known song if the source is briefly unavailable, up to a maximum age you choose.

Pro: Track artwork and the refresh and cache controls are part of TuneSera Pro. Get TuneSera Pro

Click Clear metadata cache to fetch fresh song information straight away.

Privacy#

• Song information is requested by your server, not by visitors’ browsers. Visitor IP addresses are not sent.
• The station’s stream host (and Zeno, for Zeno stations) receives the stream address and your server’s IP address.
• With Fetch track artwork on, only the artist and song title are sent from your server to the iTunes Search API and Deezer to look up cover art.

Running a busy site? TuneSera limits how many metadata requests your server makes at once, and the cache means many listeners share one lookup.

Related articles#

• The sticky player
• No song title or artwork
• Station pages