Why is the streaming music URL hidden?

I've always wondered this; it annoys me because I sometimes hear a really good stream somewhere and it's a pain to find out what the URL of the stream is.

There are other ways to get the stream URL, but it's a lot of work to just get the URL which should be available anyway.

Why is this information hidden? After all, your computer connects to a server to play the music; shouldn't you be able to know what you're connecting to?

-Zorin

Probably to keep people from pirating streams. Many streams--especially those whose use is specific to a given parcel in SL--have a connection limit, and don't want any of those connections "stolen" by outsiders. Our live DJ feed would be a good example...we pay for 30 live streams and want to make sure every one of those is going to someone actually in the club.

If you hear a good "commercial" stream on someone's land, wait for a "station identification" break and then Google that name. That's how I found out the connection info for Club 977 and .977 Hitz, for instance.

I think this was done to protect the venues that charge admission. If I was having live streaming event on my parcel and charging admission for access, I would not want anyone to be able to 'steal' the stream w/o paying cover.

*waves fist at Erbo for being too damn fast*

I can understand this. When I was running the server from my own machine, it would start crapping out at about 7 listeners. It was enough for the few people I was playing tunes for. If this info was public, I might all of a sudden have more listeners than my stream could handle which would make it bad for everyone. Shoutcast streams usually have a finite amount of listeners, and people who are actually at the event should not have to lose out because many others who are not there are listening to the stream.

What *I* would like to see, however, is the ability to see the track name when a non-live stream is being broadcast.

Edit: I should type faster.

Well, you actually had a somewhat different reason for blocking the music URL, based on whether people were paying to be at an event or not. I was thinking solely in terms of stream capacity on the server end, though that's probably a concern of yours as well. Chronic Skronski illustrated that point more vividly; he's using his own machine, and we use a Live365.com server, but the same principle applies.

EDIT: By the way, I'll be spinning tonight at the Cutlass Club, starting at 6:00, if you want to see this all in action.

*waves fist at Erbo for correcting me*

No, I was trying to give you full credit for your answer, which was also a valid point I hadn't considered.

Not anymore, I rented a stream.

Excuse me...I should have said "he was using his own machine." My mistake.

We actually tried that ourselves during early testing...I put an Icecast server on my home Linux gateway box and streamed it into the club. With only three listeners, I was seeing a noticeable slowdown in my SL performance, as a result of losing bandwidth on the cable modem connection. That's why we wound up going the Live365 route.

Althought the reasons given above are most likely correct, I always wondered this myself, and wished there a way to make them unhidden.

I play a rather interesting stream, and I get an IM at least once a week from people asking what it is, which I'm always happy to provide the streaming url for. It would be great if I could elect to make the stream visible.

As it is, I'll probably just put up a sign, "You're listening to .....""

Yes, being able to elect to provide the URL is a fine idea.

For our stations that we use in the club when not doing live feeds, I actually do something similar to this. The music changer I wrote retextures itself depending on what station it's changed to, and I have textures in it for every station in its configuration, so, when it's tuned to SKY.fm Eurodance or Radio Nigel, for instance, you'll actually see those logos on the changer. (In "override" mode, which we use when broadcasting live, the changer textures itself as a simple gray metal plate.)

For me, I have only a limited number of slots for listeners. I don't want someone else taking any of those slots up. The stream is intended only for people on my own land.

It's too bad changes such as this are not implemented as an option e.g. a checkbox to hide the stream if it's not supposed to be publicly accessible.

Two Words: God Mode.
Turns off the starring of the music and media URLs. It's muy handy for when I'm on the linux client but want to hear the local tunes.

I wish I had that much info to offer on my stream, or the scripting skills to do as you've done. I stream a rockabilly station run out of Tokyo, oddly enough. Listed on Shoutcast, where I found it after many searches by genre, it has a really good (comparitively) bitrate, and minimal buffering compared to most I tried. No commercials at all. I'd like to get more people listening to it (and have converted a couple dozen so far, woohoo! hotrod chicks unite!) and also list a donation URL if they have one, but I've never found one so far.

I think I'll go on another hunt to find that info, and just make one big clickable sign since I rarely if ever change the stream.

May have already been posted. But, you can find the URL stream in Debug Console. Hit Start/Stop music, and the stream URL will appear in the Debug Console window.

Oh, Elror, you're terrible.

LL started hiding stream URL's back in 1.6.0. Before that it was visable, which was before movie streams were added. Back then it was just audio. I think video had something to do with it. Anyway the only ways i can think of to grab the URl is using the debug menu consols or godmode... the consols don't let you copy them but you can stil see them.

I don't think it should be visible unless the land owner elects to make it so. People who run the server on their own machine as opposed to using a relay can really suffer if people grab their stream URL and play it from anywhere on the grid. I know I would have been pretty pissed off when I ran my own server if people who actually came to see one of my shows were unable to hear it because the streams were all being used by people who were not even there.

I hope this is removed from debug mode, and I hope the instructions on how to get the URL are not posted anywhere else.

It's been there since beta. I dougt LL would remove it. :/ I never turn on my SL streaming abilities to avoid that old problem where crossing parcels makes your radio switch stations repeatedly... But if i'm at a party i would like the host to give me the URL so i can use it in winamp... I like winamp much better then this 3 button jizz.

What would be best is to allow the use of external players. Maybe using SL as a proxy to the stream. The client, I mean.

I downloaded WinAmp4. I tried to use it. It didn't play music well, often stopping and stuff. It crashed a lot. Took forever to load. Crashed the PC a few times. I removed it and never looked back.

My stream is a low bitrate stream with no commercials or station breaks. I use low bitrate to minimize it's bandwidth use with SL.