Welcome to Feed.fm

Updated Nov 8th, 2024

How Feed.fm Works

Feed.fm is a Unified Music System designed to help you legally source and stream the best music into your app whenever and wherever you want it as standalone radio or a soundtrack to your content. As a content soundtrack, Feed.fm’s dual stream functionality lets your users control the volume of the music independently from the video content’s audio stream (typically a voiceover). There’s three parts to the Unified Music System (UMS): streaming, curation, and compliance.

Streaming

Feed.fm offers shuffle-style, non-interactive radio experiences to your users through our music API and client SDKs. The term Non-Interactive generally means that the end user has no awareness or control over the order in which songs are played. This adheres to the statutory nature of our music licenses.

Despite the title non-interactive, there are still plenty of interactions that are allowed. For instance:

• Provide a menu of available station choices to your users (we call this a Music Menu). This can be as simple as a list of stations or a more robust experience that allows users to browse stations by category.

• Dual Stream Audio: independent volume control of the music from Feed.fm and the audio inherent in your video content.

• Transport controls: Play, Pause, Skip*, Like/Dislike*: capture end user preferences and send them to Feed.fm’s curation team for station feedback.

*Only available in the US, unavailable for Simulcast style streaming.

Curation

We curate and deliver music through stations, a concept that we use to organize songs by genre, theme or any other special purpose (think: radio station). There are two types of stations to choose from, which are outlined in your contract: Pre-Curated and Custom stations. Pre-Curated stations are designed entirely by our expert curation team and optimized for engagement regularly. Custom stations are built collaboratively between you and Feed.fm’s curators, tailored to the precise needs of your content.

You can check out all the stations available to your app in the Customer Portal. The Customer Portal is your home base, where you’ll find your API credentials, your list of stations, analytics, and various other information pertaining to your app. Navigate to the Stations tab to preview the station that your app pulls music from via our SDKs.

Stations can contain music from 3 different pre-cleared catalogs, each providing different territory rights. Your available music catalogs are defined in your contract. This ultimately determines the music available to serve in your stations. Below is a breakdown of the different available catalogs.

Catalog	Description
Select Catalog	Licensed for playback to users in specific territories (US, CA, MX, and AU).
Global Catalog	Music from top indie labels that are also pre-cleared for worldwide streaming.
Feed Originals	Functional music for fitness, sports, health and wellness brands. Wholly owned by Feed Media Group.

Compliance

Feed.fm ensures that your use of music is legal under local regulations. You don’t have to worry about playing the right music in the right territory, our SDK takes care of that for you. We also ensure that rights holders are paid each time their song is played from Feed.fm to your end users. We regularly remit payments on your behalf to rights holders according to the territory that your users stream music from.

Integrating with Feed.fm

API Credentials

Your API credentials are available in the Customer Portal. Each app environment has a unique set of API credentials (a token and secret value) that is passed to the SDK to connect a client to your music stations.

App Environments

When you sign up for Feed.fm, we create a development and production environment for your product. We refer to these environments Apps, as they map directly to the application in which the music streams through. You decide which of the available stations to include in your app.

warning

Make sure not to use your development API keys in your production app. This ensures that we can accurately report song plays to you as well as rightsholders. Accidentally using your development app’s API key in production will result in lost song play analytics reporting.

UI Requirements

The following metadata must be displayed in association with music playing within one click from the user experience.

At the start of a new song, metadata must be displayed for 5 seconds.

• Artist Name
• Song Title
• Album Title
• “Powered by Feed.fm" or our logo

tip

Consider the following UX patterns to save space:

• Progressive Disclosure: show the only the song title or artist and allow users to click for more info
• Popover: show a music icon and allow users to click for more info
• Marquee: text scrolls horizontally and in a loop

The following legal disclaimer must also be present in your application.

“There is no affiliation, connection, association or endorsement of the products, goods or services displayed on this page by the copyright owners, featured recording artists and authors of the sound recordings (and the musical works embodied therein) transmitted through the Feed.fm player.”