Web development smarty-pants peeps...

[BigRedJed]

...help! I have been out of that game for a long time, and haven't kept up with technology very well on the development side.

I have been searching for a browser-embedded audio player that will allow me to individually specify playlists (anywhere from one to a dozen songs -- or so). The user should be able to control playback. Basically, pretend each static page of a directory represents an individual musician, and I want to present representative songs from that musician in a playlist on that page, displaying song title, playing time, etc. Much like some of the ones you see these days on MySpace and elsewhere. Elegant, if possible, but still simple. I want to get away from individual Quicktime playback bars for each song.

I'm thinking there must be some existing, pre-packaged Flash gizmo that I can embed page-by-page, which will call MP3s or AAC files from a common folder. This wouldn't be served up on the web; it would all live on a local machine only.

I've searched online off and on for several days and I've exhausted my own patience. Does anyone know of something like this off the top of their head?

[LilSooner]

This should have been a PM to Rhino.

[BigRedJed]

Will do. Anybody else?

[yermom]

i kinda think i understand, maybe

i'm almost positive i've heard of PHP apps that will do this... what kinda "local machine" are we talking about?

[BigRedJed]

Remains to be seen. It would probably just be a basic machine, even a refurb, with a decent sound card. It would be a customer-use kiosk with hardened headphones and an Elo touch screen, presenting bio information on artists and then allowing users to launch songs by the respective artist.

There might be something out-of-the-box for the music retailing industry that would do it, so I need to look into that. I hadn't really thought about that when I posted this thread. I was only thinking about things from the perspective of my own comfort zone, which includes web development, so I naturally visualized it as a web browser presented in kiosk mode.

The main thing is that I don't want the machine to turn into an Internet browsing or solitaire-playing station for people if it's left unsupervised. I also don't want to rely on a media player that lets people browse all through whatever music is on the machine, without having to go through a carefully-controlled GUI that presents the information that I want presented, in the way in which I want it to be presented. In other words, I only want the music playable from the bio page of the respective artist.

[BigRedJed]

Also, I want to elimate keyboarding and physical mouse use from the user experience. Touch screen only.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

helpful hint -> there is zero web development in your requirements.

[BigRedJed]

Sweet! I love 20 questions! Is it bigger than a breadbox?

[soonerbrat]

micro manager.

[SoonerInKCMO]

Why don't you just steal one of the kiosks from the local Barnes & Noble music department?

[BigRedJed]

Looks like I might have answered my own question with Wimpy (http://www.wimpyplayer.com/spotlight/index.html).

Examples:

Ramones (http://www.ramones.com/) (this layout seems similar to what I started out looking for)
Earl Greyhound (http://earlgreyhound.com/wimpy/myWimpy.html)
Bruce Carroll (http://www.brucecarroll.com/default.aspx?pid=5) (text-based presentation rather than obvious player, the links could obviously be buttons instead)
Kate Luck-Hille (http://www.kateluckhille.com/index.php/music/) (I like the layout concept, though her music seems to be unavailable at the moment)
DJ Cor-E (http://www.djcor-e.com/mixes)
West Side Church, Seattle (http://www.westsidechurch.com/media-library) (set up much like Daytrotter)The thing seems to be infinitely customizable, and can accomodate just about any kind of layout I dream up, so I should be able to put big buttons on it for touch screen purposes. Looks like I can playlist using XML and not have to run PHP or ASP, so it can definitely run on a local.

JKM, I'm still interested in your riddle, but I guess this is one avenue I can pursue if you don't care to share further.

Thanks for the help, everybody.