Atomic station switching
Selecting a station replaces the live item and its ordered fallback as one operation. Two stations cannot play simultaneously.
Product experience
What the Alpha can do
The player combines five distinct station experiences in one native Android application without flattening their differences or replacing them with a WebView.
01 · Listening
Playback belongs to the service
A single Media3 player and MediaSession own the live stream beyond the Activity lifecycle. The UI connects through a domain-facing controller, so playback survives navigation and backgrounding without coupling Compose to ExoPlayer.
System integration
Notification, lock-screen, headset, Bluetooth, audio-focus, and play/pause controls stay synchronized through MediaSession.
Network recovery
An offline terminal failure becomes an explicit waiting state. One automatic prepare occurs after validated connectivity returns; pause, stop, or switching cancels it.
Sleep Timer
Presets or a custom 1–720 minute duration run inside the playback service, publish a live countdown, survive service recreation, and stop the existing player at expiry.
02 · Discovery
Live context without invented metadata
Station responses are treated as evidence. The app displays fields the station actually provides, enriches artwork only from the selected station, and leaves unavailable values unavailable.
- Now playing: ICY title, station artwork, and current-track enrichment.
- Queue and History: bounded upcoming and recently played tracks with requester attribution where explicit.
- Library search: Title, Album, Artist, and Genre modes with station-order or play-state sorting.
- Favorites: number, name, album, artist, genre, year, length, and play-state sorting across lists as large as 1,500 tracks.
- Request availability: conservative Queue/recent-play checks repeated against fresh data before confirmation.
03 · Accounts and requests
Protected sessions remain independent
Each station has a separately visible session. Credentials remain transient during sign-in, returned cookies are encrypted with Android Keystore, and sign-out clears only the selected station.
Explicit request workflow
Search, album browsing, least-played and random suggestions lead to a separate confirmation step. State-changing requests are one-shot and never automatically retried.
- Fresh eligibility check before submission
- Station success, rejection, or indeterminate result
- Verified optional SST request message
Listener activity
Verified stations can expose memory-only recent request summaries, cooldown/readiness, and explicit membership evidence. Generic page wording never implies VIP or RIP status.
- No background polling
- Cleared on station sign-out
- Unsupported states remain explicit
04 · Community and safety
Participation is gated and user-controlled
Public community content is hidden until the adult age screen, current Terms, and a separate mature-content reveal are satisfied. Reporting and blocking are native actions, not buried browser destinations.
- Chat: bounded, station-scoped, memory-only messages with a 30-second minimum refresh interval.
- Report content or user: bounded evidence sent only after an explicit action through an authorized same-station Contact Us form.
- Local blocking: station-scoped identity filtering for Chat and requester attribution with a native management surface.
- Local mention alerts: opt-in exact-name matching, first-snapshot baseline, blocked-author filtering, duplicate suppression, private no-message-text notifications, and gated Chat navigation while Chat is actively refreshing.
- Terms and privacy: native access to the participation terms, privacy notice, and open-source licenses.
- Trusted station pages: exact same-station HTTPS links open in a browser Custom Tab without copying protected app sessions.
Station certification
Shared architecture, verified differences
Every station uses the same domain contracts and UI. Capability flags expose only behavior supported by evidence from that station.
| Station | Shared certified surface | Notable verified boundary |
|---|---|---|
| StreamingSoundtracks.com | Playback, metadata, Queue/History, account, Chat, Favorites, requests, pages | Request messages, last-ten request activity, VIP evidence |
| 1980s.FM | Playback, metadata, Queue/History, account, Chat, Favorites, requests, pages | Independent session and verified Games/Awards pages |
| Adagio.FM | Playback, classical metadata, Queue/History, account, Chat, Favorites, requests, pages | Classical field presentation without guessed values |
| Death.FM | Playback, sparse metadata, compact Queue/History, account, Chat, Favorites, requests, pages | RIP membership route instead of VIP wording |
| Entranced.FM | Playback, metadata, extended Queue/History, account, Chat, Favorites, requests, pages | Narrowly scoped legacy ICY punctuation normalization |
Honest Alpha boundaries
What is deliberately not shipped
Private Messages
Deferred after Inbox/Sent discovery and a reproduced profile-originated message that appeared to submit but was not delivered. It remains excluded until the legacy server path is repaired and verified.
Pre-Alpha listening and support
M25's dedicated Android output chooser and current-route state are complete without a relay or new endpoint. M26 adds a user-reviewed, fixed-allowlist support snapshot with explicit Android copy/share and no automatic transfer. Google Cast remains capability-gated.
Community notifications
M27.1's station controls and local Chat-mention detector are complete for actively observed Chat. Reliable closed-app push remains gated on an authorized event source; the same architecture will notify new Private Messages once M17 delivery is repaired and verified.
Station availability
The app depends on independently operated public station interfaces. Protocol or content changes can require renewed research and certification.