In the as3 last.fm api provided over at google code, there is no classes provided for the radio API, which appears to be a fairly recent addition to the last.fm API. The radio API requires 2 key steps. First step is the radio.tune method, where you submit the station URL. For example lastfm://artist/radiohead/similarartists will tune you in to a station which returns Radioheads similar artists. I wrote my own radio class (in a similar style of the other classes provided) which looks a bit like this:

package
{
import KeyValue;
 
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.net.URLRequestMethod;
import flash.net.navigateToURL;
import flash.net.URLVariables;
 
public class [...]

A large part of my application is the use of the last.fm API to generate customised music listening to replace the radio generated playlist. I have been making good use of actionscript 3 last.fm api over on google code. It has been a huge help in getting last.fm data in to Flash. However, it seems to be an early version, as certain methods are far from complete, including the auth method used to authenticate users.

I have rewritten parts of the auth method so that it is called correctly. Particularly the current requestToken() parameter was a little clunky as it involved [...]

I have been fiddling around with uk radio station metadata. I started my efforts with the radio station i spent my year on placement, Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin Radio). I have to hand it to Absolute Radio, they are deffinitely the frontrunners in terms of online radio streaming. They use icecast audio streaming, and provide on-demand metadata for their three stations. For example, they typically send the station name, station genre, a url and more importantly the currently playing track. This makes building an app for their station a joy, as you can connect to the server over a socket [...]

Well, my idea for my final project has shifted radically since my last musings. I originally was looking into peer to peer radio, however, i was never really comfortable with this idea, firstly as it was potentially beyond my skill and secondly it just didn’t POP enough. In the course of my dissertation research I covered many areas in which Internet culture has influenced the radio listener of today.

A topic that came up which really interested me was the effect of customised music (think last.fm, pandora and personal music players) on music discovery. Once upon a time this would have [...]

A large part of the code for our game over at mutantstudio.com is sending the calculations from MAX/MSP into Flash. To do this I have been using a max external called flashserver. This essentially allows for communication between Flash and MAX and vice versa. However, as this is quite an old external, there was only AS2 source code provided, which is no good as our game is fully AS3 based.

I have rewritten the code into AS3, with a simple function that splits the incoming string into an array and places each array item into a textbox. I have also provided [...]