ShoutcastUtils

On www.shoutcast.com you can find a large number of webradio stations. The website contains an input box to search the stations for a title, artist or genre. This search can be done within this Unit in your program.

For example, the user can search for "Amy MacDonald" in your player and will get a list of stations playing her songs right now. Note that the hit rate is far away from 100%, as the database is not always up to date.

Third-party components

The Indys, version 10.

Delphi 2009

The shoutcast search seems to be limited to ASCII. On Delphi 2009 the search results differ from those of previous versions when using non-ASCII characters in the search phrase. Try a search for "Die Ärzte" on the website - no results. But a search for "rzte" will give you probably a few hits.

Delphi-skills

Knowledge and understanding of threads and messages are needed. Contacting shoutcast and downloading the station list is done in a seperate thread, which is synchronized with the VCL-thread via SendMessage.

License, restrictions

MPL 1.1 or LGPL 2.1 with the following restriction.

The usage of the Shoutcast API is not allowed in commercial products unless you enter an agreement with Nullsoft.

The Unit should not be used to download many .pls-files at one time (e.g. to store a local copy of all the shoutcast-stations). The user of such a software will be (temporarily) banned from shoutcast.