Maybe this is more for general discussion, but is really about plugins, assuming that there will effectively never be an issue with playing one's own music on a Squeezebox.
It may be easy for me to say, since I haven't yet written a plug-in (even though I plan to), but especially for 'non-commercial' purposes, there are dozens if not hundreds of potential music sources for the Squeezebox.
http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/...1?apicat=Music lists 172 music-related APIs available for developers. Many of these would not be appropriate, but sites such as 8tracks, iHeartRadio, Songza, SoundCloud, Dirble, Free Music Archive, SHOUTcast, exfm, etc. are all effectively available to smart Perl programmers to get working on the Squeezebox.
Despite some of the dire warnings about My Squeezebox going away and losing functionality, it seems like there is a way for most functionality to be replicated by the community, assuming there is a large enough subset that will stay interested and has the right programming skills (I hope I will be one of these - just need to find the time...).
Some services, such as Pandora, don't offer public APIs, so some services may not be replaceable, but there are a lot of other to choose from.
As long as the physical hardware (like my Squeezebox 3) still work, I'm guessing that there can be support for a long time.
--erik
It may be easy for me to say, since I haven't yet written a plug-in (even though I plan to), but especially for 'non-commercial' purposes, there are dozens if not hundreds of potential music sources for the Squeezebox.
http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/...1?apicat=Music lists 172 music-related APIs available for developers. Many of these would not be appropriate, but sites such as 8tracks, iHeartRadio, Songza, SoundCloud, Dirble, Free Music Archive, SHOUTcast, exfm, etc. are all effectively available to smart Perl programmers to get working on the Squeezebox.
Despite some of the dire warnings about My Squeezebox going away and losing functionality, it seems like there is a way for most functionality to be replicated by the community, assuming there is a large enough subset that will stay interested and has the right programming skills (I hope I will be one of these - just need to find the time...).
Some services, such as Pandora, don't offer public APIs, so some services may not be replaceable, but there are a lot of other to choose from.
As long as the physical hardware (like my Squeezebox 3) still work, I'm guessing that there can be support for a long time.
--erik