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👻👻 Flippin' spook, Tucker!

@ben @BBCRD Fedi already has more than one unofficial "Now Playing on 6Music" bot. For example @JBsWhatsOn6

While I'm sure that an official version would be nice it probably shouldn't be BBC R&D's highest priority for the Fediverse right now.

3 comments
👻👻 Flippin' spook, Tucker!

@ben @BBCRD @JBsWhatsOn6 Actually I've thought about this some more.

It really really shouldn't be the BBC's job to provide "Now Playing" bots for its radio or television programmes.

What the BBC should be doing is making sure that the necessary data is easily available via RSS or a well documented API, and then letting other people build the services based on that.

Decentralise the data rather than nagging a giant corporation to provide a specific service.

#OpenData #BBC #6Music #Data #RSS

John B

@losttourist @ben @BBCRD @JBsWhatsOn6 At least the BBC stations do post whats-playing to last.fm, then bots can use the API there. And RSS is available from Mastodon; just add /rss to the username eg dizl.de/@JBsWhatsOn6.rss and load that in your favourite RSS reader!

👻👻 Flippin' spook, Tucker!

@johnb_rox @ben @BBCRD @JBsWhatsOn6 The Mastodon account whose RSS feed you linked is not a BBC account and in theory could be subject to a BBC cease-and-desist request although I doubt they'd ever do that.

But really it should be the BBC themselves, as the source of the information, who ought to be providing an RSS feed or other way to officially obtain the data.

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