Playing remote audio files in Python?

Question

I'm looking for a solution to easily play remote .mp3 files. I have looked at "pyglet" module which works on local files, but it seems it can't handle remote files. I could temporary download the .mp3 file but that's not reccomended due to how large the .mp3 files could appear to be.

I rather want it to be for cross-platform instead of Windows-only etc.

Example, playing a audio file from:

http://example.com/sound.mp3

Just stream the file as it's downloads, my idea is a MP3 player in Python which opens Soundcloud songs.

Answer 1

You can use GStreamer with python bindings (requires PyGTK).

Then you can use this code:

import pygst
import gst

def on_tag(bus, msg):
    taglist = msg.parse_tag()
    print 'on_tag:'
    for key in taglist.keys():
        print '\t%s = %s' % (key, taglist[key])

#our stream to play
music_stream_uri = 'http://mp3channels.webradio.antenne.de/chillout'

#creates a playbin (plays media form an uri) 
player = gst.element_factory_make("playbin", "player")

#set the uri
player.set_property('uri', music_stream_uri)

#start playing
player.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING)

#listen for tags on the message bus; tag event might be called more than once
bus = player.get_bus()
bus.enable_sync_message_emission()
bus.add_signal_watch()
bus.connect('message::tag', on_tag)

#wait and let the music play
raw_input('Press enter to stop playing...')

GStreamer playbin Docs

UPDATE

Controlling the player:

def play():
    player.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING)

def pause():
    player.set_state(gst.STATE_PAUSED)

def stop():
    player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL)

def play_new_uri( new_uri ):
    player.set_state(gst.STATE_NULL)
    player.set_property('uri', new_uri )
    play()