Chris Mendez (Page 1)

Radio: Preparing WAV files for cloud-based radio

Radio: Preparing WAV files for cloud-based radio

The team at USC Radio Labs [http://www.uscradiogroup.org/labs] has been working to solve a pretty exciting problem: converting 60k+ audio files from WAV format to something more internet-ready. For context, in the 1990s, many radio stations started moving towards automating their music programming. The benefits were clear:

Radio: From WAV to FLAC with ID3 using Echoprint

I'm currently learning about different ways to do music fingerprinting. In this article, I'm simply identifying how to do it using Echoprint. Here's how I did it. I used Ruby Rake to run command line scripts. You can certainly type these commands inside of Terminal but this method allows me

Radio: Prepare your podcast for iTunes distribution using AWS Elastic Transcoder

Amazon Web Services offers a suite of tools for podcast producers to distribute their audio online. There's CloudFront for caching, S3 for storage, Glacier for long-term storage, Elemental for real-time distributing, Tailor for server-side ad insertion. I thought it would be to fun to show how to use Elastic Transcoder

How to get a 30s preview from Apple's API

How to get a 30s preview from Apple's API

How to get 30 second previews of music using Apple's API.

How to publish an Mp3 to Icecast using NodeJS (Part 2 of 2)

How to publish an Mp3 to Icecast using NodeJS (Part 2 of 2)

How to publish an MP3 to Icecast for syndication using NodeJS.

AWS: How to create your first Alexa skill

How to create your first Alexa skill –with pictures!

Radio: Fetching album artwork using beets

You will need the requests library to capture album artwork from Fetch Art [http://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.3.17/plugins/fetchart.html]. pip install requests Install requests library for Python.We need imagemagick to do some image processing. I use Homebrew package manager to install imagemagick. Here's how

AWS: How to install Icecast on AWS EC2 (Part 1 of 2)

AWS: How to install Icecast on AWS EC2 (Part 1 of 2)

How to install Icecast for cloud-based streaming radio.

Interesting Music Projects

Here are a list of interesting music projects. Classifiers and Curators * Music Map [https://developers.musimap.net/] is attempting to create a database that organizes music into emotional categories. Geocaching * Track Dropper [https://vimeo.com/14712960] is a geo caching game that is really novel. Social Listening * &chill [https://andchill.

Radio: Backing up your Vinyl to the Cloud

Radio: Backing up your Vinyl to the Cloud

This is part 1 of a multi-part series on how to back up your vinyl to the cloud. I've tried my best to document the process but feel free to share any feedback you might have within the comments section. Side Note: You will notice that there are many different

What is ISRC?

ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Recording_Code] is pretty much like the audio equivalent of a GS1 US [https://www.gs1us.org/] for barcodes and product identification. According to GS1 US: > GS1 standards allow you to easily identify, manage, and share

Installing Adobe Media Server on EC2

Adobe Media Server 5.0 offers media publishers some new ways to deliver on-demand video and music to iOS devices through Apple's HTTP Live Streaming. This means that using AMS 5.0, you can publish Adobe HDS live, Apple HLS live, Adobe HDS on-demand with just-in-time packaging, and Apple HLS

Cloud-Based Radio Using Adobe Media Server

Adobe Flash may be dead, but Adobe Media Server carries a lot of compelling features. This entry aims to identify a few of those essential features so that you can use this information while shopping for a better solution. The Challenge of Cloud-Based Radio Here's a quote from Apple's documentation.

Streaming Mp3's using SoundManager2 + MediaElement

I've written about 8 or 9 streaming music players in the past six years, and considering how quickly client-side technology changes, I figure I'll have to write a few more before all browsers start fully supporting HTML5. But in the meantime, while researching how to develop a streaming player using

Radio: How to submit your podcast to iTunes and Spotify

Sometimes you need to self-host your own Podcast files and feed. Here's how using Amazon Web Services.

AWS: Understanding Alexa's Key Concepts

A glossary of Alexa terms you need to know before you start developing skills.

AWS Elemental

Amazon acquired a company called Elemental [https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/amazon-acquires-elemental-technologies-for-a-reported-500-million-in-cash/] back in 2015 and has now released a suite of products to help broadcasters (big and small) distribute and syndicate video online. Think of Elemental as Amazon's in-house solution to Adobe's defunct Flash Media Server [https://aws.

Awesome radio stations for software engineers

Awesome radio stations for software engineers

As a software engineer, I spend a lot of time discovering new tools to help me become more productive. One of the most valuable –yet not often mentioned– is music. Since I work in radio, I spend even more time thinking about music curation than the average person and yes,

How Classical KUSC uses data to make product decisions

The digital team at Classical KUSC [http://www.kusc.org] and Classical KDFC [http://www.kdfc.com] uses data regularly to help make product decisions. For our most recent app release, Classical KUSC iOS v5.0 [http://geni.us/kuscios], we used a combination of in-app surveys, customer support feedback

Distributing Music and Video Over the Web

There are a lot of ways to distribute music and video over the web, and it's often difficult to figure out which features (and service plans) are essential for you too, the content publisher, to consider. This confusion often content managers to make a choice based on brand or perception

Digital music: production, distribution, and consumption

I like this quote because it helps me understand the trade-off music will experience as it transitions from an analog medium to a digital one. > It could be argued, then, that as the formats music is stored on become less material and increasingly stripped of visual dimensions (album covers, reproduction

Cloud computing & song scrobbling on Last.fm

I'm extremely late to this whole Last.fm thing, but then again, I'm not sure if I've missed much. From what I can tell, Last.fm is a music discovery site that collects and maintains your "musical foot stream" while allowing you to share your information with the community. The

Helpful EQ'ing tricks from Andrew Garver

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Helpful EQ'ing tricks from Andrew Garver

Tips on how to EQ your mix or master from mastering engineer Andrew Garver.

Types of Digital Radio Apps

I've been working in radio for 7 years and over that time people, have asked me how many types of radio apps I can actually make. I tell that that I'm not making the same app over and over again. There are, in fact, many different types of radio apps.

Modify "SystemVersion.plist" within MacOS Sierra

Modify "SystemVersion.plist" within MacOS Sierra

I have an older version of Pro Tools that requires Mac OS v10.7+ but isn't capable of understanding x.10 is higher than x.7. The only thing left to do is change the OS' version number.