Summary

A 24/7 radio music player designed to showcase different styles of music and help promote different artists by putting their best music on the platform. The client (Ben Smith) had wanted a service that could do things that standard streaming services couldn’t.

The desire was to create a service that catered to artists and beginners while still making it accessible to listeners. A unique experience that takes the idea of a music player and pushes it one step further and turning it into a special moment that brings listeners closer to the artists.

Development Process

During Year 11, I worked on YSAP.FM for my VCE Software Development 3/4 Unit’s final project. Initially contacting the client, we held a meeting to discuss the aims and intentions of the service, then proceeded with data collection such as surveys and reviews of other existing services. A Software Requirement Specification was written up, describing the functional and non-functional requirements of the service in question, as well as the architecture of the system and which components are needed to make it work.

After establishing the client’s desired results, I created three mockups of the site and presented it to the client, who approved of the design. I then proceeded to create the site, which had the backend hosted on an Amazon EC2 instance, with static assets hosted on an S3 bucket. The site was then presented to the client, who was very happy with the result.

This project was the first time I had made a working full-stack application hosted on the cloud. I learned a lot about how to operate with cloud services, how to broadcast audio using Icecast, how to draw mockups and convert them to real websites, and how to architect and plan a software solution as taught by the subject.

The project has been taken down to focus on other works and to save costs. An alternative solution was provided to the client that more directly connects with the WSAP community and is more cost effective.

Functional Requirements

The functional requirements of the site as described in the Software Requirement Specification (SRS):

• Play music from a specified radio channel
• Change volume of playback
• View track description and album cover of current track
• Change radio channel that is being listened to
• Sign up to service
• Log in to service using third party authentication such as Google or SoundCloud
• Log out of service
• Submit music to the service
• Constantly organise tracks into a 24/7 queue that flows between songs