Cumulus player issues

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Fred Stiening

This is of interest to only a few people directly – Cumulus is in the process of switching their streaming, and it’s a lot of work to fix by hand 🙂

This is a typical player URL now:

http://widget.newsinc.com/_cfvp/radio_player.html?freewheel=90110&sitesection=egkzelfm_rad&vid=23369528&cid=1252

One of the testers informed me that these links started breaking – the ad would play, but the stream would not start.      Comparing the stream at the web site with the URL I have, what is different is the vid.   cid seems to be the station identifier, – vid I’m not so sure – Version ID?  Video ID?  VisitorID?

The stream still plays without the vid with the ad intact) so I’ve done a mass change to ignore the vid number

http://widget.newsinc.com/_cfvp/radio_player.html?freewheel=90110&sitesection=egkzelfm_rad&ignore=23369528&cid=1252

rather than hand editing 500 URLS.

Let me know if you have any issues with that Cumulus player.   It could be the vid is intended to make sure the player is launched from the Cumulus web site rather than indirectly.    If that’s what it turns out to be, I can easily just send you to their web sites and let you find the “Listen Now” buttons 🙂

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4 Responses to Cumulus player issues

  1. Art Stone says:
    June 21, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    Well, that was the WRONG thing to do 🙂

    vid seems to be the station identifier and the rest is the fluff. Without a valid vid, the player plays a station called 99X

    So now I’m stuck. If this will be a constant “feature” with changing vid numbers, I either have to just dump people to the station web site or come up with some elaborate way to fetch the vid when it changes and update it. I don’t like that option for several reasons. If I was packing for Chicago, there is no doubt I would just force people to the station web site. I may end up doing that eventually in any case.

    Time to do more research.

  2. popsmayhem says:
    June 21, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    I love how some of the stations now stream from VLC player.

    I have had trouble with the cumulus player in the past
    but now whatever I am listening to i look for it to be able
    to stream in VLC player..

  3. Art Stone says:
    June 21, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    It looks like this is a random thing with no easy technical solution.

    For now, please just use the ! “It’s broken” link and report things as you find them. Once I have a sense of the size, I’ll decide what to do, which might include asking Cumulus for guidance. They could say “Hey, don’t link to us at all!”.

  4. Art Stone says:
    June 21, 2012 at 7:42 pm

    I surrender. Most of the Cumulus streams have changed, and the vid number is large enough to make me think it changes frequently.

    What this means for you is that clicking the listen button will open the station’s web site, and you’ll have to find the Listen Live button on the page (it’s usually in the upper right corner)

    Note that the former Citadel/ABC stations never migrated to the old Cumulus platform and are not affected. Once Cumulus is finished migrating to the new iHeartRadio / Triton Media platform, I’ll look again at this, assuming I have the time and interest.

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