NPR Launches Its Ambitious Music Site
NPR has launched its rather ambitious music site, after a long time in development: NPR Music is being launched along with 12 member stations, and will have on-air and online content gathered from NPR and the participating stations as well as original content, including interviews, reviews, blogs and live performances. The site covers all the music genres that are found on public radio, including Rock, Folk, Jazz, World and Classical, reports FMQB. Additional stations and producers will join in the coming months.
Also launching is a new NPR media player, which allows users to create a playlist for video and audio (dating from May 2005 to present) on the site and makes recommendations for related content depending on a user’s selections. Lots more details here and in FAQs here.
Posted In: Entertainment, Music, npr, npr music
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Comments (8)
Nov 5, 2007 11:03 PM
Yech! Another proprietary player? That’s a big thumbs-down from me.
I did check out the site, and some of the content certainly seems promising, though.
Nov 6, 2007 12:30 PM
@Rossum
Well, at least the player is flash based, which means that it can be played on linux, right?
Dec 11, 2007 2:13 AM
NPR’s new NPR Media Player SUCKS TO THE MAX!!!
Previously, users had the choice of either Real Player OR Windows Media Player, AND ALSO of launching either of those two players in “Stand-Alone Mode”—all of which worked very well with dial-up, 56-k modem connections!
By COMPLETELY ELIMINATING those former options and unilaterally substituting their new “NPR Media Player”, participating NPR programs have, at one fell swoop, RENDERED ALL OF THEIR AUDIO FILES AND ARCHIVES COMPLETELY INACCESSIBLE TO USERS WITH 56k DIALK-UP MODEM CONNECTIONS!!!
(All you now get are split-second sound-bites, “punctuated”(sic) by long, (multi-minute!) periods of “buffering”—or rather long stretches of buffering, punctuated every few minutes by a split-second of audio.)
Jan 5, 2008 1:09 PM
NRP Player sucks. An awful, clunky, unusable interface. They took a huge step backward forcing this proprietary crap on their audience, and I’m listening to a lot less NPR because of it. Why don’t they go ahead and make their own radios as well?
Jan 29, 2008 1:36 PM
I actually think that it is a big improvement. Having an online player that can remember what I was last listening to is much better than their previous effort using two extremely crappy formats. And further, most of their current catalog is available in MP3 now.
It needs a lot of work, and a Firefox extension would be nice, but it’s a huge improvement.
Mar 2, 2008 9:31 AM
I live overseas and the only way for me to listen to NPR is online. As Algebra mentioned above, the previous player choices worked fine. Now my only option is to use their new inferior player. It spends more time buffering than it does playing. Often it will get stuck in buffer-mode and never resume playing. Now it pisses me off and I therefore spend less time listening to NPR. A shame, really.
Sep 29, 2008 11:37 PM
http://thin.npr.org/
This is the answer for bypassing the NPR Player. That stupid player is the worst joke. It always konks out on me. Keep thinking it’s going to get better, but consistently awful.
Apr 4, 2009 8:43 PM
I too live overseas and really don’t like the NPR player. I’ve written to them twice, and they always write back with an expression of regret that I do not like their player. But, they don’t change anything. My station (WAMU) offers Windows Media, MP3 and RP format but its only live….