KCRW Now Playing Widget
KCRW, a public station out of Santa Monica, is one of my favorite online radio stations. Its available right inside of iTunes, or via a shoutcast stream.
They play an amazing range of music and its a great way to find new artists. They were also on of the first public stations to put their original content online as podcasts. The problem is that they don’t broadcast the track information over their live stream like other stations do, Radio Paradise comes to mind. You can go to their website to see what’s currently playing, or even open a floating pop up window that refreshes on intervals.
None of that suits me. So I made a widget that will pull the data they provide in their pop up, but stays safely in your Dashboard. Its pretty basic, but gets the job done. So next time you’re wondering who’s performing that great song, just call up Dashboard.
Graphics by Collin as usual.
[Download]
I’m testing out your KCRW widget right now. Thanks. I was wondering if you have experienced any problems listening to their stream? For the past month, I have been getting a “rebuffering” problem every few minutes. It seems to only be a problem with KCRW’s stream, but I haven’t found any other reports on it yet.
Comment by Justin — December 8, 2005 @ 3:19 am
Nope, its been fine for me. Check their other streams and see if they are all like that.
Comment by Jon — December 8, 2005 @ 10:03 pm
you rock! thanks for doing that!
Comment by kristina b — December 13, 2005 @ 11:13 am
Hi Jon - nice widget, thanks for making it! Is it possible to find a version that ties to their new stream through KCRWmusic.com (and the one now provided through the iTunes radio function)?
Comment by G — June 1, 2006 @ 11:32 pm
God–thanks!!!
You’re so far ahead of me technically. I wanted this but at this point I could have never figured out how to pull it off myself. Thanks to your generous geniusness, I now have it.
Comment by donna giles — August 30, 2006 @ 10:47 am
love the widget - thank you! looks like KCRW’s getting ready to go live with their new site and the widget isn’t streaming song data. any chance of an update? also, what about one for KCRWmusic.com?
Comment by bnims — September 12, 2006 @ 4:13 pm
ditto on bnims comment. i was stoked to find this but would love an update, and one that includes kcrwmusic!
also, there are no options on this thang cept to go to the webpage. how about something like size and color? maybe even buy this tune from itunes (not trying to get complicated… but to be helpful :^) )
thanks for doing this. you rock, just like kcrw!!!
Comment by lynn — September 14, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
I love KCRW. Love the KCRW Now Playing Widget…but I seem to only get the show and not the tune… when i select the widget it takes me to an incorrect KCRW webpage. Is there something I need to do?
Comment by Joseph Verhauz — September 20, 2006 @ 5:27 pm