Skip to main content

Report that playback of a play has begun.

POST 
/play/:play_id/start

Call this the moment audio starts. It moves the play out of the client's play queue and into its play history, and reports the play for royalty purposes. A play may only be started once.

The response's can_skip and can_like tell the client whether the skip and like/dislike controls should be enabled for this play. Both are rights-derived: the answer comes from the licence the track is actually playing under in the listener's country, so it varies per track, not just per country - a track licensed under a permissive direct deal is skippable and likeable even where statutory radio licences forbid those controls:

  • on-demand rights always allow both, so the fields are true;
  • under radio rights, each field is true when a right the play survives on permits it; can_skip additionally respects a cap of 6 skips per station per 60 minutes of play history.

can_skip is advisory. The cap is re-evaluated when the skip is actually requested, so POST /play/{play_id}/skip can still be denied.

waiting_time and buffering_time are optional client-side playback metrics and are recorded for reporting only.

A successful call here invalidates any other play ids that have been created and not yet started. If multiple calls to POST /play return plays with ids, 1, 2, and 3, and a call to POST /play/2/start is made, then the plays with ids 1 and 3 should be considered invalid and should be thrown away.

Request​

Responses​

Playback was recorded as started.