I was thinking about adding some music from other non RPGs titles to the mix, more variety of music ! (though I never used very often the radio page so it´s probable that it already has some of it).
Another thing that I was thinking for sometime was about having (or turning the Radio into) a general music player, where we could select any track from any CD OST that is avaiable here.
On this, so, to the first point: There's quite a bit already in there! There's stuff like Starfox, Zelda, Mario, Sonic, Smash Bros, Mega Man, Uncharted, Animal Crossing, Halo, Jet Set Radio, Metal Gear, Outrun... a lot. In total, on the radio rotation there are currently a total of 17,039 tracks totalling over 29 days of playtime if everything were played back to back(!). All of this is from my personal CD collection (hundreds of OSTs), and I'm constantly expanding it.
On a general music player, I want to explain why we can't do that, but also what e might be able to do instead:
- In order to do a general music player, the music files have to be stored somewhere. If we're storing MP3s server-side to serve to you, that brings up an interesting piracy question. We obviously work with companies like Square Enix and EA on Nova Crystallis and RPG Site, so it's challenging to do this. Internet radio itself isn't entirely above board - there's licensing fees involved, but for small fringe cases, like Mognet's Radio, companies are prepared to ignore it. If we start providing downloads, that's a problem. Direct streams edge closer to downloads, so we won't be offering that, as such. HOWEVER:
- First, I want to say I think there's an advantage to the radio format. There's an incredibly broad range of music in there, and if you tune in for FF, Kingdom Hearts and Chrono but then here a track from Dragon's Dogma or Mass Effect and decide to try those games as a result, that's a good thing. We like the radio format. It's ad-free, and it serves up a more random selection of music.
- However, we do have the ability allow requests. This would allow users to browse the entire catalogue of music in the radio database and put in requests (a limited amount per day or so) to hear a specific song. the song would be checked against the database rules - so you couldn't request a track that'd already been played in the last hour or so, etc - and then it'd play. Not just for you, but for everyone. Would this sort of thing be of interest as an addition to the stream?
