I noticed the other day that when I streamed a playlist, and then looked in my WinAMP/XMMS playlist window, all I saw was a bunch of songs that looked like:
1. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
2. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
3. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
...
Which was pretty annoying since I wanted to be able to see the names of the songs which were actually in the playlist. I also noticed that after the individual songs started streaming, the artist and title didn't show up either, I'd just get the URL scrolling across the display.
Contrasting this with Lincoln Stein's Apache::MP3, which actually puts reasonable artist and title information in the playlist window, as well as proper ID3 info when individual songs are playing, I did some research and some hacking, and figured out that you can pass metadata that will be displayed both in the playlist window (using .m3u file extensions) and when individual songs are streaming (by using IceCast icy- headers, although I think ID3v2 tags work too).
So I updated the MP3 Engine to make use of these features so that playlists are a little bit more user friendly, and useful:
1. Aerosmith - Fly Away From Here.mp3.stream.4846
2. Kris Kross - Jump.mp3.stream.4537
3. Tag Team - Whoomp! There It is.mp3.stream.2341
...
Now, if I could just figure out how to enable clients to seek through streamed MP3 files... ;)