Show what a radio station plays: song, cover and progress

[culmat]

Hi everybody,

I listen to FIP a lot. I love it because it has cool music on different stations but also because it provides meta data on its own now playing service: song title, artist and cover on every station, and when each song starts and ends, even upcoming tracks. I'm adding a FIP source and a few UI pieces so Music Assistant shows that as well as FIP's own player does. I hope you like the idea and I am looking forward to your feedback.

I'm opening the discussion because I already started opening single PRs and want to keep the big picture in one place here.

Merged

• Give the Raumfeld host 10 s and three tries before dropping the connection server#7171
• Add FIP provider with live song details for FIP and its webradios server#7182
• Tell Music Assistant FIP's streams are 48 kHz, so they are not resampled twice server#7197
• Keep the Raumfeld renderers' UPnP actions, so switching stations starts a second sooner server#7198
• Report no song position for a stream that gives its song's duration but no position server#7187
• Show how far into its song a radio stream is, when the stream knows mobile-app#1266
• Show song progress in radio stream when available frontend#3042

In review

• Add the FIP music provider music-assistant.io#1159: FIP docs page
• Show the artwork alone, full screen, from the fullscreen player frontend#3047: the artwork alone, full screen, from the fullscreen player
• Show the artwork alone, full screen, from the now playing screen mobile-app#1272: the artwork alone, full screen, from the now playing screen

Coming

• frontend: playing bars on a station's page while it plays, and the playing item highlighted in browse lists
• server: the Raumfeld app showing the song and cover of what Music Assistant streams

I would be happy about feedback on the following point.

FIP's own player lists what each station plays right now, and that's how I pick a station. I have it working on my own install: the station list and a station's page show the song on air with its cover, and the list follows the music while it's open, in the web app and the mobile app.

Station list	A station's page

I kept it out of #7182, because two things are missing in the core:

• Knowing when to ask. Polling itself is cheap: the service says when each song ends, so the provider asks once per song and station, a few more times only while the service is late. But nothing tells a provider that a list or a station's page is open, and pushing an update means sending MEDIA_ITEM_UPDATED for items that aren't in the library.
• Keeping it out of the library. If get_radio returns the song on air, a station added to the library keeps that song as its description and picture.

A small first step could solve both: a separate, unsaved now_playing field on a radio item, and clients that ask again while they show the list or the station, at the time the answer says it expires. The provider then asks Radio France only at song ends, and only while someone looks. A watch/lease API with server push would be the cleaner, generic follow-up, and could also serve #6113.

Would you want this in some form? I'm happy to work on it if there's a direction.

Related: #6113 asks for an external now playing source for any radio station; a source like FIP brings its own.

Best regards,
Matthias