I’m very excited to release to the world the latest version of MetaRadio – v1.2.0. This new release encompasses six months of incremental development, and the assistance of around a dozen beta testers.

As always, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial, and then purchase it online for a very low price.

All these changes have been driven by user suggestions. If you have any ideas for how MetaRadio could better serve you, please get in touch.

If you are an existing customer, you can always download the latest version from the download page – just make sure you use the same email address you used when purchasing MetaRadio.

WordPress Free Trial

The WordPress Plugin is now available as a free trial! Simply check the “WordPress Plugin” checkbox when requesting your free trial.

Pricing Changes

The WordPress plugin is now sold as a once-off purchase, along with a Standalone license. No recurring fees! This results in a cheaper product overall for our users, and easier budgeting.

New Systems: Rivendell & Wide Orbit

The big new feature is support for two new systems – Rivendell 3 & WideOrbit Radio Automation.

Rivendell support is via the new PyPAD feature. It simply needs a TCP connection to port 34289 on your Rivendell machine, and you’re good to go.

WideOrbit support is via the Now Playing Event Driver XML File output. MetaRadio supports the default XML format from WideOrbit, so all you need to do it setup an Event Driver to save this as a XML file whenever a new song starts playing.

Easier Datetime Setup

The biggest frustration with MetaRadio has always been setting it up correctly – and the biggest problem until today has been the localised date/time formats from automation systems.

To help address this, we’ve built-in the six most common formats into a nice handy drop-down field. Simply pick the appropriate one, and away you go!

Of course, you can still enter a custom format string if required.

WordPress Program Guide

You can now create a program guide for your station, and display it on your website. These three shortcodes are now available:

  • [metaradio_programnow station="1" field="title/presenter/time/url/timestart/timeend/imageurl"]
  • [metaradio_programlist station="" day="Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday"]
  • [metaradio_programgrid station="1"]

Other Changes

MetaRadio Standalone

  • Add support for some Nautel RDS Encoders
  • HTTP: Allow merging {TITLE} and {ARTIST} into the URL field.
  • ISRC Support for ZaraRadio in ID3 mode, plus add the {ISRC} merge code to many of the outputs
  • Fix some ‘Fallback Text’ field behaviour
  • Fix the ‘Minimum Duration Seconds’ field behaviour
  • Add new ‘HLS Restreamer’ output
  • Speed up the reception of data for many TCP-based automation systems
  • SS32: Account for some variances in the ‘Type E’ format

WordPress

  • Added a new ‘Track Edit’ screen, so you can alter/fix the automatic iTunes lookup
  • Song Finder – Added support for localised dates
  • Fixed a few PHP Notices