Method for launching audio player on Android from web page for streaming media

Question

To link to SHOUTcast/HTTP internet radio streams, traditionally you would link to a playlist file, such as an M3U or PLS. From there, the browser would launch the audio pla

Answer 1

A solution for all Android! (tested on 2.1 and later)

It turns out that this is possible. For Android, rather than linking to a playlist like you do on other platforms, you simply link directly to the stream. (This seems to be what Reuben Scratton was getting at in his comment. I wish I had seen his comment earlier!)

The browser will connect to the stream, detect the Content-Type, and then decide to pass it off to the default media player if it can handle it. The media player will then buffer and begin playback.

Note that you have to do quite a bit of hacking on SHOUTcast if you want this to work, as Android requires a valid HTTP resource, which SHOUTcast does not provide. Also note that chunked encoding doesn't seem to work on Android 2.2 and earlier.

As a side note, if you don't feel like writing your own code for this, I have implemented streaming to Android in AudioPump, a streaming media server I am working on.