"Public" Linking

[orangelamp]

First, and foremost, the obligatory thanks to Sindre for developing this wonderful bit of software.

Now, my feature request (seems easy enough)

I'd like "public" linking. I'd like to be able to send someone a link from via email/IM and let them stream/download from the server directly.

an example, I'm listening to an album that I think is great. The file would be too large to email to my (not so tech savvy) dad. it'd be nice if I could just put a link in an email and have him able to listen to/download it. He has an account to my site, but navigating through everything to get to it is just too much for his feeble mind, and a link would be a great workaround.

This may be a big old ugly can of worms (my apologies if it is).

Thanks again to all the developers on this team, it's really great, and I use it every day.

[jigsaw]

Hi orangelamp

Not sure how hard the public linking is, but in the meanwhile you might appreciate the possibility to send your dad a link to the album of which you are listening?

You can find the link behind the artist+album link in the "Now playing" menu or in the playlists. It looks like this:
http://<SUBSONIC_SERVER>/subsonic/main.view?pathUtf8Hex=72656d6f74655f6d656469612f6e65772f436f6c626965204361696c6c6174202d20436f636f

This link will send your dad straight to the album of the specified artist.

[orangelamp]

well, that's a step closer, but you still have to be logged in to open the link.

there's still too many steps to make it "Dad Proof" (Log in, then go back to the email, then click that link)

I'd like to see something that is dead simple. a youtube link is one click. I can send that to my grandfather, and he'd figure it out.

I guess the trouble is, that I want to be able to have anonymous access to certain things on the server ("Hey dad, listen to this album"), but I don't want the whole site to be bareassed to the internet for pilfering or malevolence. (this is why we login in the first place).

So, thankyou for your reply Jigsaw, that was a helpful, good start.

[jigsaw]

Well, basically the difference between youtube and subsonic is that everything is available for anybody given that you get the link. Subsonic is secured by a login as you pointed out. I guess you could choose to remove the login or include the credentials in the link but then the person clicking on the link would be logged in and free to browse the rest of the server.

Compare your request to say Spotify, this is the same thing, you may get a link to one specific song, but you need to log in to get to it. And to correct you on one point, you do not have to first log in and then click on the link. I just tested this and when I click on the link I get the login-prompt but am directed to the correct album after putting in my credentials.

I just don't think you can get both one-click non-authorized streams AND security at the same time.

Maybe a way of easily setting up a non-authorized stream which a non-user could be able to attach to would be a solution? Like a radio basically

[foo]

This could be picasa style public linking, subsonic would create a random link for the song and that link could be shared.

Then the link could automatically timeout after some defined time or maybe after it's been played x times. The user could also manually remove publicly shared links.

[squipple]

What if it didn't open the server pages at all, it just provided a save dialog.
Or better yet, it could generate a page with just the player and a playlist in it, where the link didn't have access to the full server or navigation, only access to streaming or downloading what was on that playlist.