Add support for Podcasts/audiobooks

[dpomnean]

I would like to see a podcast category, like you can find in the Spotify Integration entity.

[erkr]

Moved to discussions, raise your votes!

[Rjaap]

I would like too see this also. Btw, great addon!

[manbeast76]

I also would like to see this.

[n8detar]

Expanding on this, being able to add other sources for podcasts, or podcasts directly would be extremely nice. I know this project is for music, but many of the features, like starting playback again after a notification, would be really nice for podcasts as well.

[sefininio]

I'd like to see podcasts as well. Awesome addon!!!

[TheGroundZero]

The ability to add a URL to a feed would be nice.
Could maybe be integrated together with the Feedreader integration to automatically download latest episode or add its URL to a playlist.

[cdrfun]

I don't know if we should separate "Spotify Podcast" and Podcast, maybe @erkr has an opinion on that?
For podcasts, an option to add gpodder.net as source would be awesome. Also, OPML support would be favorable.

[marcelveldt]

If I'm going to add podcast/audiobook support it will be implemented as a first class citizen so next to mediatypes artist, album, track, radio and playlist there will be a "podcast" media type which can be provided by providers like spotify but also others.

Strictly taken even 2 new media types as you will need to identify both the podcast itself and its episodes.

[DutchJaFO]

Audiobooks would probably need to be an additonal category as well, although in theory they could be treated as Podcasts/episode.

At the very least we would have to disable the 'crossfade' feature whenever podcasts/audiobooks are played as that will make the experience sub-optimal (to say the least).

[WebfinityDesign]

Adding gpodder.net in theory would be a very nice feature but gpodder.net is broken most of the time. The server is at the max of the capacity. In August they said they were working on it, but the problem still exists. Looks like they gave up on it

[fyksen]

The gpodder service is not great. But the protocol seems solid.
Nextcloud has a addon calles gpodder sync:
https://github.com/thrillfall/nextcloud-gpodder

Antennapod, kde podcast app and some other podcast apps already supports it. This would be an awesome fit for this project! 🥰

[Thyraz]

If I'm going to add podcast/audiobook support it will be implemented as a first class citizen so next to mediatypes artist, album, track, radio and playlist there will be a "podcast" media type which can be provided by providers like spotify but also others.

Strictly taken even 2 new media types as you will need to identify both the podcast itself and its episodes.

@marcelveldt yes, this 2 layer approach is also what I would have in mind.

Based on the pocast / audiobook type it might also be necessary to add entries manually like it's also possible in the radio UI?
For some things like Spotify podcasts it might be possible to add them automatically, as you can follow shows here.

But audiobook series are often simple albums sorted under a single artist.
So adding them by https://open.spotify.com/intl-xx/artist/XYZ would be nice.
Also adding podcasts using classic rss feeds this way.

Saving the current listening position server-side for both, audiobooks and podcasts would be awesome too, so you can continue from any device.
Together with the request to allow the browser as a player target to play audio from Music Assistant e.g. in the car using your phone completes this story. 🙂

[hillbicks]

I'm just getting started with music assistant, so first of all thanks for creating this addon!

I'm a bit confused though. Is this discussion solely for creating the category button? Because right now, I can't find the podcasts when I'm searching for them, which is a bit strange to be honest. I would expect it to show all the content that is on spotify. I just searched for a couple of podcasts and couldn't find them.

[erkr]

Hi @hillbicks
Podcasts are not available in MA (yet). Discussions are valuable to poll general interest and discuss how to implement them.
Next major MA release will for example natively support Samba network shares and multiple accounts per music provider (based on a lot of requests)
Best Eric

[hillbicks]

@erkr : Thanks for the quick reply. At least now I know that it is not something on my end.

Multi user support sounds very good as well.

Again, thanks for the answer and your work on this. Will keep an eye out for these features.

[erkr]

Again, thanks for the answer and your work on this. Will keep an eye out for these features.

I'm just helping out with moderating issues and testing. Credits are on Marcel, thx

[WebfinityDesign]

I would also like to have podcasts/audiobooks in MA. It's nice to have have all the audio in one place and also use it in some automations

[mattsteg]

I'd like to endorse this request as well.

[Dunkelschunkel]

Are there any updates relating podcasts?
Integration would be fabulous

[marcelveldt]

That is not scheduled for the 2.0 release, it will be one of the features that comes after that (e.g. 2.1 release)

[Dunkelschunkel]

Thank you Jul 10, 2023 4:58:05 PM Marcel van der Veldt ***@***.***>:

…

That is not scheduled for the 2.0 release, it will be one of the features that comes after that (e.g. 2.1 release) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub[#429 (reply in thread)], or unsubscribe[https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AT5ZC5NOJFB7V3XTBGHDKUTXPQJ73ANCNFSM5ZJ427UA]. You are receiving this because you commented.[Tracking image][https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AT5ZC5KXFEMU5H65T5WTJJTXPQJ73A5CNFSM5ZJ427UKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFWFCGS43DOVZXG2LPNZBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOABQ34QI.gif]

[SurreyMichael]

Would love podcast access.

I use PocketCasts app as Spotify was really problematic playing podcasts on my Sonos speakers (PocketCasts works really well), so really interested how playing podcasts via music assistant will turn out.

[Blackhex]

Integration of https://podcastaddict.com/app or other podcasts management app would be awesome.

[Erudition]

Is there a way to play a podcast given the URL of the media file?

[OzGav]

I don’t believe so.

[marcelveldt]

Yes, you can add it as a track or radio station manually but it wont be recognized as podcast yet

[DarkFox]

If you're using Home Assistant, you can add a Scrape sensor that gets the latest episode. Just add the feed url, and then these options in the sensor config:

selector: enclosure:nth-of-type(1)
index: 0
attribute: url

Then you can use the sensor state in a mass.play_media service call.

It's not perfect, but it works well enough for my morning news podcasts.

[b-abadie]

I've been crawling the web for a way to play podcasts (the classic RSS type, not the pseudo-podcast available through a proprietary service) on my Sonos speakers. The closest I've been is the gpodder integration of HA, but gpodder.net is broken (long-term overloaded).

A cool feature of MA would be to add RSS podcasts, automatically or manually downloading episodes, tracking "played" status, etc.
A very cool feature would be to sync all this with a custom gpodder endpoint (I'm thinking https://github.com/thrillfall/nextcloud-gpodder for instance).

Thank you for all your work !

[LukasDJacobs]

For the moment I use AntennaPod (OpenSource, Android, great podcast player!) in combination with an app called AirMusic (which does cost money, but it's a relatively cheap one time payment). It works reasonably well so far and I use it daily, but I'm still hoping for native Sonos support on AntennaPod. That would just be a smoother experience. There's an open issue for that, but nobody implemented it yet, so kinda like the situation here