Add support for Podcasts/audiobooks

[dpomnean]

I would like to see a podcast category, like you can find in the Spotify Integration entity.

[erkr]

Moved to discussions, raise your votes!

[Rjaap]

I would like too see this also. Btw, great addon!

[manbeast76]

I also would like to see this.

[n8detar]

Expanding on this, being able to add other sources for podcasts, or podcasts directly would be extremely nice. I know this project is for music, but many of the features, like starting playback again after a notification, would be really nice for podcasts as well.

[sefininio]

I'd like to see podcasts as well. Awesome addon!!!

[TheGroundZero]

The ability to add a URL to a feed would be nice.
Could maybe be integrated together with the Feedreader integration to automatically download latest episode or add its URL to a playlist.

[cdrfun]

I don't know if we should separate "Spotify Podcast" and Podcast, maybe @erkr has an opinion on that?
For podcasts, an option to add gpodder.net as source would be awesome. Also, OPML support would be favorable.

[marcelveldt]

If I'm going to add podcast/audiobook support it will be implemented as a first class citizen so next to mediatypes artist, album, track, radio and playlist there will be a "podcast" media type which can be provided by providers like spotify but also others.

Strictly taken even 2 new media types as you will need to identify both the podcast itself and its episodes.

[DutchJaFO]

Audiobooks would probably need to be an additonal category as well, although in theory they could be treated as Podcasts/episode.

At the very least we would have to disable the 'crossfade' feature whenever podcasts/audiobooks are played as that will make the experience sub-optimal (to say the least).

[WebfinityDesign]

Adding gpodder.net in theory would be a very nice feature but gpodder.net is broken most of the time. The server is at the max of the capacity. In August they said they were working on it, but the problem still exists. Looks like they gave up on it

[fyksen]

The gpodder service is not great. But the protocol seems solid.
Nextcloud has a addon calles gpodder sync:
https://github.com/thrillfall/nextcloud-gpodder

Antennapod, kde podcast app and some other podcast apps already supports it. This would be an awesome fit for this project! 🥰

[Thyraz]

If I'm going to add podcast/audiobook support it will be implemented as a first class citizen so next to mediatypes artist, album, track, radio and playlist there will be a "podcast" media type which can be provided by providers like spotify but also others.

Strictly taken even 2 new media types as you will need to identify both the podcast itself and its episodes.

@marcelveldt yes, this 2 layer approach is also what I would have in mind.

Based on the pocast / audiobook type it might also be necessary to add entries manually like it's also possible in the radio UI?
For some things like Spotify podcasts it might be possible to add them automatically, as you can follow shows here.

But audiobook series are often simple albums sorted under a single artist.
So adding them by https://open.spotify.com/intl-xx/artist/XYZ would be nice.
Also adding podcasts using classic rss feeds this way.

Saving the current listening position server-side for both, audiobooks and podcasts would be awesome too, so you can continue from any device.
Together with the request to allow the browser as a player target to play audio from Music Assistant e.g. in the car using your phone completes this story. 🙂

[hillbicks]

I'm just getting started with music assistant, so first of all thanks for creating this addon!

I'm a bit confused though. Is this discussion solely for creating the category button? Because right now, I can't find the podcasts when I'm searching for them, which is a bit strange to be honest. I would expect it to show all the content that is on spotify. I just searched for a couple of podcasts and couldn't find them.

[erkr]

Hi @hillbicks
Podcasts are not available in MA (yet). Discussions are valuable to poll general interest and discuss how to implement them.
Next major MA release will for example natively support Samba network shares and multiple accounts per music provider (based on a lot of requests)
Best Eric

[hillbicks]

@erkr : Thanks for the quick reply. At least now I know that it is not something on my end.

Multi user support sounds very good as well.

Again, thanks for the answer and your work on this. Will keep an eye out for these features.

[erkr]

Again, thanks for the answer and your work on this. Will keep an eye out for these features.

I'm just helping out with moderating issues and testing. Credits are on Marcel, thx

[WebfinityDesign]

I would also like to have podcasts/audiobooks in MA. It's nice to have have all the audio in one place and also use it in some automations

[mattsteg]

I'd like to endorse this request as well.

[Dunkelschunkel]

Are there any updates relating podcasts?
Integration would be fabulous

[marcelveldt]

That is not scheduled for the 2.0 release, it will be one of the features that comes after that (e.g. 2.1 release)

[Dunkelschunkel]

Thank you Jul 10, 2023 4:58:05 PM Marcel van der Veldt ***@***.***>:

…

That is not scheduled for the 2.0 release, it will be one of the features that comes after that (e.g. 2.1 release) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub[#429 (reply in thread)], or unsubscribe[https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AT5ZC5NOJFB7V3XTBGHDKUTXPQJ73ANCNFSM5ZJ427UA]. You are receiving this because you commented.[Tracking image][https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AT5ZC5KXFEMU5H65T5WTJJTXPQJ73A5CNFSM5ZJ427UKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFWFCGS43DOVZXG2LPNZBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOABQ34QI.gif]

[SurreyMichael]

Would love podcast access.

I use PocketCasts app as Spotify was really problematic playing podcasts on my Sonos speakers (PocketCasts works really well), so really interested how playing podcasts via music assistant will turn out.

[orangesunny]

I would love to see PocketCasts integration! There is no reason to create anything from scratch, as most users probably track their podcasts in some app already. PocketCasts are getting more open since they became part of Automatic, but could be tricky for intergation, though. Apps are open-sourced, but there is currently no API, only Tasker integration on Android. 😢

[djtecha]

This would be an awesome feature for my partner. Only thing holding them back.

[Blackhex]

Integration of https://podcastaddict.com/app or other podcasts management app would be awesome.

[Erudition]

Is there a way to play a podcast given the URL of the media file?

[OzGav]

I don’t believe so.

[marcelveldt]

Yes, you can add it as a track or radio station manually but it wont be recognized as podcast yet

[DarkFox]

If you're using Home Assistant, you can add a Scrape sensor that gets the latest episode. Just add the feed url, and then these options in the sensor config:

selector: enclosure:nth-of-type(1)
index: 0
attribute: url

Then you can use the sensor state in a mass.play_media service call.

It's not perfect, but it works well enough for my morning news podcasts.

[Erudition]

Thanks, I did something similar a few months ago. Good enough for now

[b-abadie]

I've been crawling the web for a way to play podcasts (the classic RSS type, not the pseudo-podcast available through a proprietary service) on my Sonos speakers. The closest I've been is the gpodder integration of HA, but gpodder.net is broken (long-term overloaded).

A cool feature of MA would be to add RSS podcasts, automatically or manually downloading episodes, tracking "played" status, etc.
A very cool feature would be to sync all this with a custom gpodder endpoint (I'm thinking https://github.com/thrillfall/nextcloud-gpodder for instance).

Thank you for all your work !

[LukasDJacobs]

For the moment I use AntennaPod (OpenSource, Android, great podcast player!) in combination with an app called AirMusic (which does cost money, but it's a relatively cheap one time payment). It works reasonably well so far and I use it daily, but I'm still hoping for native Sonos support on AntennaPod. That would just be a smoother experience. There's an open issue for that, but nobody implemented it yet, so kinda like the situation here

[Jab2870]

First off, thanks for all the work that has already gone into this amazing tool.

I would just like to chime in a bit and say that support for audiobook sources and podcast sources would be amazing. All my audiobooks and podcasts are currently in Audiobookshelf.

If I could use musicassistant to play audiobooks from there, and for them to stay in sync, I'd be over the moon. Audiobookshelf has pretty comprehensive documentation for it's api, and it's also self hosted so I would think would be a pretty good place to start.

Regardless, thanks again for all the work you've put into this.

[lhassell]

Just here to echo this. As a self-hosted solution, I feel like Audiobookshelf deserves to be included as it fits with the ethos of Home Assistant.

[dunxd]

I am excited to see this added in the future. My asks are:

• Support OPML for bringing in subscriptions from another app
• Option to stream podcasts rather than download - but at minimum it should be possible to automatically delete played episodes. I don't want to fill up storage on my HA/MA server with old episodes.
• Some way to sync played status with other apps - I listen to podcasts in my car using Podcast addict. If MA can remove podcasts from the queue that have been completed on another device that would be nice. I have no idea if this is even possible.
• If a partially listened to podcast from elsewhere could pick up playback from the last position, even better!
• Allow skip back and forward by a configurable number of seconds
  Maybe I am asking for the moon on a stick with some of these. Being able to handle podcast subscriptions at all would be huge.

[Tweedledeee]

+1 please make this happen!
I currently have all podcasts in Audiobookshelf as well - which is connected to Plex - which is picked up by MA..

[DavidOliMar]

Good afternoon, my name is David, I would be interested in you telling me if it is possible something else about how you have it implemented, I am very interested in this topic because I have been trying to integrate this into HomeAssistant for a long time. I hope that one day they will implement it in MusicAssistant ; )

[Tweedledeee]

Hello David,
i currently have it set up on an Unraid system (https://unraid.net/) this way:

• Plex running in a docker container (https://www.plex.tv/de/)
• Audiobookshelf running in docker container (https://www.audiobookshelf.org/)
• Home Assistant running as a Virtual Machine
• Music Assistant running inside HA

Audiobookshelf just pulls the podcasts and saves them into a specific folder.
Plex is monitoring this folder and adds the files automatically to the library - which is connected to Music Assistant.

Its not an ideal setup as the tagging of the files in Audiobookself / Plex is not perfect but it is currently the most comfortable way (i found) to get podcasts into MA.

I really hope as well, that Audiobookshelf (or something similiar) will be integrated to MA some day :)
And a way to filter for podcasts would be really nice - for example instead of the "Radio" button in the main menu

[DavidOliMar]

Tweedledee good night, sorry for taking so long to answer you but these days I'm on vacation and a little off the computer.

I think it's a very good idea as you have it implemented
I'm going to try to replicate it and test it.
Maybe I see the problem with the synchronization when listening to podcast on the mobile every day, I don't know how you have that implemented. I have seen that there is an application in Beta for iOS of Audiobookshelf but at the moment it is full and I can't access it.
I still hope that our request comes to fruition and can be implemented in the future in HomeAssistant

Kind Regards

[marcelveldt]

Podcast and Audiobook support will come to MA soon but first we are focusing on stability. We want to have a stable foundation before we start adding new features. So the past releases have all been about stability and speed fixes. Once we feel comfortable that things are in a good place, we have a whole bunch of cool new features waiting to be added. Just a bit of patience is what is needed.

[DavidOliMar]

Thank you very much for your answer Marcelveldt, I am very happy to read these words. Today I am very happy with MusicAssistant and it is the music server of all the SonoS in my house. I look forward to all the advances that can be made...

[seppeel]

@marcelveldt
Can you tell if this is targeted for 2.4 or is it planned for a later release?
thanks!

[marcelveldt]

If all goes well, 2.4 but that is not a 100% guarantee

[saeugetier]

I have experimented with RSS feeds for podcasts.

music-assistant/server#1732

[quadcom]

If simply modifying the providers is an easier approach, YTM has podcast subscriptions in it. They just are not listed in MA. Rather than reinventing the wheel how about looking into pulling the data from the providers already configured?

[marcelveldt]

the data needs a place to land - that place is not yet there (but will be soon). So the answer remains the same: have a little bit more patience please.

[hardwareadictos]

Could be nice to add Audio Book Shelf (a part from audiobooks it has podcasts libraries) and some projects like this one: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/gpoddersync

It allows users to self host podcast feed sync on OpenSOurce platforms like Nextcloud or AntennaPod

[seppeel]

I'm so excited and i just can't hide it.
music-assistant/server@d00ffbe

[balazsmark]

It would be a game-changer for lot of us.

[tylerlucas]

This one would be big! Hoping to see it soon

[freddeh]

Yes, this would be so awesome to listen to my morning podcast automatically, preferably by using my Spotify account

[Lowrider614]

+1 from my side. Kids would love to hear Maus zum Hören ober the big stereo

[DaWheelz]

This would be a great feature as I would be able to play the news podcast in the morning!