WREK Play List

At this moment the headline on the WREK page is about their online playlist. This is a thing I’m highly proud of. When I was doing the automation system there, one of the things necessary to make it run was maintaining a database table keeping track of what things have been played. It was pretty trivial given that the table existed to create a web page that shows that information. A year or so later I hooked up a web interface to allow the live DJs to record their plays into the same table, which means that nowadays most of the spins are there, minus the evening specialty shows. I don’t know how much it is getting used but now listeners have this cool tool to go to when they hear a cool song (a likely occurrence on WREK). I know from being a DJ there, a large number of calls that you take are “Hey, I heard this monk chanting thing yesterday at 3 AM – what was that?” Giving folks the ability to do this for themselves not only frees up the DJ phone time a little, but with the lower barrier that means listeners can do it all the time and get better informed about the music they are enjoying. Infotopia! Don’t forget, you can also listen via streaming and subscribe to the RSS feed of newly programmed music. Whoo doggies!

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

One thought on “WREK Play List”

  1. Yeah, I finally got around to posting that. I’ve been wanting to trumpet it for a looooong time, especially after I realized that the now_playing_song.txt file could be used as a simple cell phone link.

    Warning: I’m targeting 31-Jul for pulling out of WREK, or at least starting to do so seriously, so these good things are going to become less frequent. I think the students will eventually rise up and wipe their own asses, but I think some rough days are coming first. I’m currently trying to document everything I do, including the things that I previously judged too damn complex to bother documenting, and it really is a lot. It’s just easy to maintain stuff when you built it or watched it being built.

    Finally, your link to the “online playlist” goes to the addlist. Doh.

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