ACR Cloud is a Broadcast Music Fingerprinting service. It listens to your internet stream in real-time, detects the songs you are playing, and sends the song data through to a service such as MetaRadio WordPress. Think of it like a always-on version of Shazam.

This guide shows you how to setup ACR Cloud to display live now-playing song data on your WordPress site, with the help of MetaRadio.

From Version 1.6.0, you also have the option of sending data directly from ACRCloud to MetaRadio Standalone, allowing the data to be used in a wider variety of places such as RDS Encoders, DAB, HD Radio, Mobile Apps, Streaming Servers, and more.

ACR Cloud is a paid product from a third-party. Subscription to ACR Cloud is not included in the purchase price of MetaRadio.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you will need to install MetaRadio WordPress on your website.

You can download a free trial or purchase a license for “MetaRadio + WordPress Plugin“. When you try or purchase this plugin, you will be sent a ZIP file (WordPress Plugin) and an EXE file (MetaRadio Standalone).

MetaRadio for WordPress normally works hand-in-hand with MetaRadio Standalone – a desktop app used to connect to your playout system. However, if you are only using ACR Cloud for your website you do not need MetaRadio Standalone.

MetaRadio WordPress Plugin Installation

  1. Download the ZIP file you were sent when you purchased the MetaRadio WordPress Plugin
  2. Login to WordPress Admin
  3. In the main menu, navigate to Plugins > Add New
  4. Click the button “Upload Plugin” at the top of the screen
  5. Press the button “Choose File”
  6. Select the ZIP file from Step 1
  7. Press the “Install Now” button
  8. If your plugin uploaded successfully, you can now press the “Activate” button

MetaRadio WordPress Basic Plugin Configuration

Now that you’ve installed the plugin, we can move on to basic configuration.

  1. In the main WordPress Admin menu, navigate to MetaRadio > Settings
  2. Enter your MetaRadio WordPress license key into the “License Key” field
  3. Review the other settings, and press “Save Settings” at the bottom of the page

If your license was accepted, your license name and license expiry date will show at the top of the page.

MetaRadio WordPress Plugin – Station Setup

Now that you’ve got the basic settings setup, we can now configure our first radio station.

  1. In the main WordPress Admin menu, navigate to MetaRadio > Stations.
  2. Click the button “Add New Station”.
  3. Enter a name for your station, and make up a secure password (do not reuse an existing password, as it will be stored in plain text). A Short Name will be automatically generated, but you may wish to adjust it as required.
  4. Press the “Save Station” button at the bottom of the page
  5. Once saved, there is a new section on this page where you can enter a list of Stream URLs. If you wish to use the Streaming Radio Player feature in MetaRadio, please add your Icecast or Shoutcast Stream URLs into this page now, and press “Save Streams”

Make a note of the ‘Station Short Name’ and ‘Password/Key’. You’ll need to put these details into WordPress right at the end of this setup process.

Setup ACR Cloud Broadcast Monitoring

  1. Login to ACR Cloud Console
  2. Go to Broadcast Monitoring > Custom Streams
  3. Create a Custom Stream project and attach the bucket named ACRCloud Music as the following image shows

4. Click on the name of the project just created to enter the project page. Add the stream URL to the project as the following picture shows and choose the config you need.

Connecting WordPress to ACR Cloud Broadcast Monitoring

Now we need to connect ACR Cloud to MetaRadio WordPress

  1. Once you have selected your project, click Actions > Set Result Callback
  1. In the popup window, set ‘Post Type: FORM‘
  1. In the Result Callback URL, set the URL in this format: https://example.com/wp-json/metaradio/v1/trackinput2/stationid—-stationpassword/

You may notice the URL contains a username/password. These are separated by four dash symbols ( —-). These are the Station Short Name and Station Key you created earlier.

If your Domain name is example.com, your Station Short Name is ‘ant-fm’, and your Station Key is ‘abc123’, then the URL would be: https://example.com/wp-json/metaradio/v1/trackinput2/ant-fm—-abc123/

Once you’ve done this, save your changes.

Testing the Connection

Once you have done all this, song data should start appearing in WordPress. Go to WP Admin > MetaRadio > Track History to see the data appear.

You can now proceed to setup your player and shortcodes as needed. If you are a developer, you may also like to use the JSON API to fetch this data and use it in other, custom systems.

If you are using our Radio Website Platform, no further setup is needed – the data will automatically appear in the Global Player.