December 01, 2023

Cue by AudioTheme.com Plugin

Delightful and reliable audio playlists.

Cue makes it easy to create and manage beautiful, fully responsive audio playlists. Primarily built with music in mind, Cue can also be used for podcasts, sermons or to showcase voice over samples.

There’s no need to fiddle with XML, JSON, or FTP. Just upload audio files with the familiar WordPress Media Manager, then insert them into a playlist with the click of a button. Cue fetches metadata from uploaded files to automatically complete the title, artist, and length for each track.

It works on desktop, tablets, and other mobile devices.

View a working demo at https://audiotheme.com/view/cue/.

Features

Create unlimited playlists.
Embed a player in any post, page, or sidebar using a shortcode or widget.
Reorder tracks with a simple drag and drop interface.
Seamlessly integrates with WordPress’ media manager to select audio and images.
Automatically fetches title, artist, and length from the metadata if it’s available.
Completely responsive to work on any device that supports your audio format.
Link to external sources like Amazon S3 or other CDNs.
Customize the player background image.
Use custom artwork for each track.

Level up with Cue Pro
Cue Pro is a premium add-on with a number of useful features. It includes:
Insights into how visitors interact with your audio.
Purchase and download links for each track.
New themes to change the appearance of the player.
Playlist sharing to allow fans to embed your players on their own sites.
Popup functionality so visitors can continue listening while browsing your site.
Cue Pro purchases include email-based priority support and help support development of the free version of Cue.

About AudioTheme

Cue is built by the team at AudioTheme. We’re a small, independent team of designers, developers and musicians focused on creating and supporting professional, world-class WordPress themes and plugins for bands and musicians.

Cue was originally integrated in our commercial platform, but we wanted everyone to have the ability to easily create beautiful playlists, so we released it free for general use. It powers the unique players in all of our premium music themes, as well as CueBar, a site-wide, continuous audio player made for WordPress.

We care about our work and stand by it. We’d love to have your support and the opportunity to earn your loyalty.

Support Policy

We’ll do our best to keep this plugin up to date, fix bugs and implement features when possible, but technical support can only be provided for active AudioTheme customers. If you enjoy this plugin and would like to support its development, you can:

Visit AudioTheme and tell your friends!
Leave a review and let everyone know how much you love it.
Follow @AudioTheme on Twitter.
Help out on the support forums.
Contribute on GitHub.

Installation

Install Cue like any other plugin. Check out the codex if you have any questions.

Usage

After installing and activating Cue, a new menu item labelled Playlists will be available in your admin panel. Create a new playlist and add tracks by uploading or selecting existing audio files to add (remote sources can be used as well). Track details are populated automatically using tags in the audio file, but the details may also be managed manually.

Shortcode

To display a playlist in a post, page or CPT, insert the [cue] shortcode into the editor and specify the playlist id as an attribute.

When editing a playlist, the shortcode is available for copying in a meta box just under the Publish button.

Integration for inserting shortcodes in an editor is also included in the Media Manager modal. Click the Add Media button when editing a post or page, then choose the Insert from Cue option to select your playlist and insert it into the editor.

Widget

Visit Appearance → Widgets and add the Playlist widget to a sidebar. Enter a widget title if desired and select the playlist you want to display. That’s it!

Template Tag

For more fine-grained control over where the playlist appears, a template tag is available.

<?php cue_playlist( $id ); ?>

Screenshots

The interface to add, edit and rearrange a playlist's tracks.
A playlist in a content area, embedded with a shortcode.
Playlist display on small screens and sidebar widgets.

FAQ

How do I disable the track list?

Add a show_playlist attribute to your [cue] shortcode and set the value to 0. Something like this should do it:

[cue id="1" show_playlist="0"]

Why do my playlists get truncated when they’re saved?

We’ve heard reports that this may happen around 70 tracks on some hosts, but it could occur with fewer tracks. First off, 70 tracks seems a bit excessive and may introduce other performance issues, so we recommend limiting the tracks to a more reasonable number.

The root cause of this is a PHP configuration setting called max_input_vars, which is typically set to 1000 by default. You will most likely need to contact your host to increase that limit if you need to save more tracks.

Why can’t I see the “Add Tracks” button in the admin panel?

Unfortunately, it’s fairly common for plugins to introduce issues that may prevent other plugins from functioning correctly. If you’re not seeing the Add Tracks button on the Edit Playlist screen, determine if there’s a conflict with another plugin first.

Cue also requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser, so be sure it’s not disabled.

How can I protect my audio files?

Anything that’s publicly visible online can be downloaded or recorded, so it’s not really possible to protect your audio files.

Your best bet is to upload a lower quality file for online streaming. This also has the benefit of reducing bandwidth on mobile devices and making the audio load more quickly on slower networks.

Which audio format works best?

Browsers, devices, and platforms have varying levels of support for different audio formats, but at this time, MP3 provides the best compatibility across platforms.

Cue uses the MediaElement.js library bundled with WordPress, which attempts to smooth out inconsistencies across browsers, so you may have some success with other formats like AAC or Ogg.

Mozilla Developer Network maintains a browser compatibility chart here.

Can I make the player start automatically?

No.

It’s for your own good.

And the good of humanity.

Aside from that, mobile platforms like iOS and Android make it impossible to start playing audio automatically.

Does Cue work with SoundCloud?

Not at this time. SoundCloud URLs don’t point directly at audio files, so support would require integrating with their API and complying with their attribution and branding requirements. If there is enough demand, we might consider adding support in a future release.

Changelog

2.4.4 – December 1, 2023

Added lodash as a dependency for the playlist block to fix compatibility with the latest release of WordPress.

2.4.3 – August 2, 2023

Prevented warnings and errors in PHP 8+.

2.4.2 – August 3, 2021

Updated block editor integration for compatibility with WordPress 5.8.
Disabled the legacy widget when using the new widget editor.

2.4.1 – December 14, 2020

Fixed deprecated jQuery warnings in WordPress 5.6.
Updated jquery.cue.js to version 1.2.5.
Excluded the playlist CPT from search results.

2.4.0 – June 8, 2020

Added support to insert playlists in the block editor.
Prevented a PHP notice when using the playlist widget outside of a sidebar.

2.3.3 – May 11, 2018

Updated the Gamajo Template Loader dependency to version 1.3.0.
Removed some unused CSS rules.

2.3.2 – May 7, 2018

Removed AudioTheme branding from the player.

2.3.1 – March 23, 2018

Fixed an issue preventing the volume slider from reflecting the current volume.
Fixed an issue causing the play/pause button to disappear after a playlist had ended.
Improved compatibility with styles in some themes.
Introduced cue_display_track_fields_before and cue_display_track_fields_after actions.

2.3.0 – October 23, 2017

Improved support for the new version of MediaElement.js in WordPress 4.9+.
Removed the bundled version of Genericons in favor of Dashicons for displaying icons in the admin panel.
Updated jquery.cue.js to 1.2.3.
Switched from Browserify to webpack to bundle JavaScript modules. Prevents a global require() method from being defined, which caused conflicts with some external modules.

2.2.1 – October 2, 2016

Fixed a bug causing player assignments to be reset when saving a playlist.

2.2.0 – September 29, 2016

Added a view to the Media Manager modal for inserting [cue] shortcodes into any editor.
Update jquery.cue.js to 1.1.9.
Prevented a debug notice when adding a new Playlist widget in the Customizer.
Renamed the AJAX action for retrieving a playlist’s tracks from wp_ajax_get_cue_playlist to wp_ajax_cue_get_playlist_tracks.

We’re in the planning stages for 3.0 which will include major internal changes and potentially a few style updates to take advantage of new features in WordPress and modern browsers. If you have customized Cue in any way or would like to request new features, please follow along on GitHub.

2.1.1 – August 12, 2016

Left align text in track lists.

2.1.0 – August 10, 2016

Added a feature for plugins to register custom themes for playlists.
Added a Customizer control to let plugins register custom themes for native audio players.
Introduced cue_playlist_top and cue_playlist_bottom actions.
Introduced the cue_parse_shortcode_head filter for embedding styles in the TinyMCE view.
Introduced the cue_playlist_thumbnail_size filter for changing the size of a playlist’s featured image (used for the background image).
Moved the MediaElement.js features array to $.fn.cuePlaylist.features to allow public access.
Added a no-touch or touch class to the playlist container to indicate touch support.
Added cuePermalink to the JavaScript player options.
Added cueEmbedLink to the JavaScript player options.
Fixed the blur effect on the background image in Webkit browsers.
Made minor CSS tweaks for better theme compatibility.
Set the playlist CPT public argument to true.
Added RTL language support.
Added missing text domains.

2.0.1 – June 20, 2016

Fixed a bug where every other track would be skipped in Safari.
Updated jquery.cue.js to version 1.1.7. Disables playlist looping.
Updated the Gamajo Template Loader library to 1.2.0.

2.0.0 – May 23, 2016

Refactored the code to make it easier to maintain.
Introduced a public initialize() JavaScript method.
Disabled automatic looping when a playlist is finished playing.
Removed bundled language files in favor of WordPress.org language packs. Translate here.
Updated jquery.cue.js to version 1.1.6.

1.3.1 – February 17, 2016

Added a container argument to the cue_playlist() template tag to disable the container.
Added a pring_data argument to the cue_playlist() template tag to disable the JSON data.

1.3.0 – December 30, 2015

Added a volume bar to the default player.
Display a “(no title)” placeholder in the admin panel if a track doesn’t have a title.
Added some missing text domains to translation functions.
Added actions in the playlist template to make it easier to output additional details.
Updated jquery.cue.js to 1.1.4.
Updated the AudioTheme icon.

1.2.9 – April 8, 2015

Update the TinyMCE preview for WordPress 4.2.

1.2.8 – March 27, 2015

Added French translation.

1.2.7 – March 2, 2015

Fixed a broken link in the Customizer when there aren’t any published playlists.

1.2.6 – December 17, 2014

Added previews for the shortcode in the visual editor.
Fixed an error in the Customizer when there weren’t any published playlists.
Fixed the allowed file types when uploading.
Fixed the SVG blur filter when previewing in the Customizer.
Updated jquery.cue.js to 1.1.3

1.2.5 – November 19, 2014

Fixed bug that caused playlists in widgets to disappear.
Hide the previous and next track buttons when a playlist only has one track.

1.2.4 – November 14, 2014

Added a ‘show_playlist’ shortcode attribute to toggle the playlist visibility.
Absolutely positioned the SVG filter to remove it from the document flow and prevent it from creating empty space in some browsers.
Added a message in the Customizer for registered players if a playlist hasn’t been published yet.
Updated jquery.cue.js to 1.1.1

1.2.3 – September 19, 2014

Fixed the blur effect in Firefox.
Created a solution that should provide a blur alternative in IE.
Removed the blur script dependency in favor of an SVG filter.
Switched to inline styles to size audio elements instead of invalid attributes.

1.2.2 – August 18, 2014

Fixed the feature that allowed the background image to be used as the default track artwork.

1.2.1 – August 16, 2014

Fixed the background image based on the post thumbnail feature.

1.2.0 – August 14, 2014

Added Brazilian Portuguese translation.
Abstracted the core MediaElement.js functionality into a new jQuery plugin.
Improved responsiveness of the administration screen.
Added the third argument to the [cue] shortcode handler so it can be filtered.
Fixed the syntax for jQuery event triggers with multiple parameters.
Namespaced the window resize event.
Renamed /scripts and /styles assets directories to /js and /css.
Sanitized tracks in the AJAX save callback.
Allow an empty option to be selected for a player in the Customizer so it can be disabled.
Pass player ids and arguments through various hooks for context.
Prevent the playlist from displaying if it doesn’t have any tracks.

1.1.2 – July 30, 2014

Fixed a sorting issue that caused the order of tracks to not be saved correctly.

1.1.1 – May 8, 2014

Added a customizer section to allow playlists to be selected for players registered by themes.
Added a new property to tracks returned by get_cue_playlist_tracks() for easier use with jPlayer.
Added CSS to try to remove padding and margin on track lists in widgets.
Mimic the track JSON format used by core.

1.1.0 – February 20, 2014

Featured images are now used for the player background image if set.
Featured images will also be used as the default track artwork if it’s missing.
Added a feature to allow themes to register players that can be assigned playlists.
Added a default container div around playlists.
Updated the default template to remove the JSON settings script. It’s now inserted using a hook.
Refactored the structure of the codebase.
Removed extraneous filters for loading translation files.
Fixed a bug in the template loader to prevent general templates from overriding more specific ones.

1.0.1 – February 11, 2014

Fix a bug where multiple playlists on a page would all include the same tracks.

1.0.0 – February 4, 2014

Initial release.