Ongoing Music Adapter Lite

Important Notice - "Ongoing Music Adapter Lite" is no longer available on the market.

1/31/10 - I have been informed that I cannot continue to publish my applications in their current state. Please bear with me as I work through the proper channels to get these applications re-published. Thank you for all your support.

Video Howto

Changes

Version 1.3.0 - 4/14/09

• Added a link to the Howto video and an advertisement for the Pro version.
• Fixed service connection leaked errors that were filling the logs.

Version 1.2.0

• Renamed application in order to properly replace the prior package signing failure. I learned my lesson about package signing.

Version 1.1.0

• Updated signing certificate used to publish the application, so an uninstallation followed by an installation is required. This wasn't intended to happen, but I messed up.
• Updated icon.
• Possibly fix a problem where the audio playback service could terminate before playback started.

Version 1.0.0

• Initial release.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What does this application do?
   1. The "Ongoing Music Adapter" only adds one new behavior when combined with the Android music player. When you click on MP3, WMV, and similar sort of links, you can choose to use the "Ongoing Music Adapter" instead of "Music" to play the file. The application will then perform a "trick" to get the music playing in background and will then show the music application playing it. The "trick" permits you to keep listening to the music even if you move away from the music player. This is the only feature this application adds. Thus, it is called the "Ongoing Music Adapter" because it is merely an adapter to the existing Android music player that lets you play content from the browser in the background.
   2. Since this application acts as an intermediary between the standard Android browser and music applications, it cannot play any different formats or handle any different sites. The only thing the application does is work around the music application to get the music playing in the background. In other words, this application does not do any of the music playing. It simply exploits certain observations made while studying how the browser and music applications communicate with one another in order to get playback started.
   3. I believe the description I put for the application was misleading and caused people to believe that this application could play streams like Shoutcast or various Flash streams. However, that is not the purpose of this program. When I ride the bus, I usually visit this web site which is just a list of MP3 links. I realized that once I started playing the files that I could no longer do anything else on the phone or else the playback would stop. I did find that I could download the whole file and then start Music manually and start playing. However, it was painful to have to download larger files and wait till they were finished. Thus, I began studying the Android music application to see if I could get around this behavior. As a result, I have developed this application to hopefully reduce the pain for what seems to be an unexpected miscalculation by the music application developers.
   4. Thus, the "Ongoing Music Adapter" addresses a very small problem of clicking on web links to play audio in the background. If you would like to play podcasts or stream Shoutcast, there are numerous excellent programs, that I have no intention of replacing, because those alternatives are already excellent. I just wanted to listen to some mp3s on the bus and then browse the web.
2. Do I download music to this application?
   1. No, you do not download music to this application, since it is merely a gateway between the Android browser and the music application.
3. How do I pause playback?
   1. When you click on a link, the "Ongoing Music Adapter" will display some status messages like "Starting..." and then "Opening stream..." After that though, it should display the familiar Android player with a pause button to pause playback. You should also see the play icon appearing in your notifications area. Simply click on the notification to get back to the player and click on the pause button. This behavior is just the way the Android music player works and is not controlled by this application.
   2. Playback of music without showing a notification is unexpected behavior and is a bug. If you did not see the Android player show up, did you uninstall the Android "Music" application? That is most likely the issue then.
   3. Another annoying thing about the Android music player is once you pause the music, you cannot go to any other application or else the notification icon disappears. I hope there is a solution I can work out for this mishap.
4. Can you get it to work with YouTube?
   1. YouTube is a closed source application, so I will not be able to get videos to play in the background. Please write to Google and ask for the feature.
5. Can you get this site to work?
   1. If it does not with the Android music application, then it will not work even with this adapter, since this application is merely an agent between the browser and the music application.
   2. http://www.pulse87.com
      1. The "Listen Live" link seems to be an ASX document that contains other links inside of it. See item #3 in this list.
   3. http://www.datpiff.com
      1. Seems to just use Flash to play the music, so I would wait for Flash to come out for the G1.
   4. http://209.85.88.198/WLFJ_HD-2.asx
      1. ASX files seem to contain other links inside of them. However, even the links inside those are not playable. It seems there are other players on the market that can play these files though, so I would try out the other players.
   5. http://www.soundclick.com
      1. This is another Flash site. Hold on tight and wait for G1 Flash.
   6. http://www.playlist.com
      1. Wait for G1 Flash.