Destinations
What Are Destinations?
Section titled “What Are Destinations?”Destinations are external services, outputs, and integrations where Now Playing sends your track information in addition to the visual overlay. While the overlay displays track data inside your stream video, destinations push that same data outward to Discord channels, local text files, smart lighting systems, MIDI hardware, custom APIs, and more.
Every time your track changes, Now Playing captures the updated track metadata and dispatches it to every active destination simultaneously. Each destination receives the same core set of fields: artist name, track title, album name, BPM, musical key, and album artwork URL. What each destination does with that data is entirely up to the integration. A Discord destination formats it into a chat message, a file output destination writes it to disk, and a MIDI Clock destination converts the BPM into a clock signal.
Sending to Multiple Destinations at Once
Section titled “Sending to Multiple Destinations at Once”All active destinations fire at the same time on every track change. You do not need to choose between them or configure any routing logic. Enabling a destination is enough. If you have Twitch Chat, Discord, and LumiaStream all active at once, a single track change posts to Twitch chat, sends a Discord message, and triggers your lighting effects simultaneously.
There is no practical limit on the number of destinations you can enable.
Supported Destinations
Section titled “Supported Destinations”| Destination | What It Does | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Twitch Chat | Posts track info as a chat message to your Twitch channel | Available |
| Discord | Sends track updates to a Discord channel via webhook | Available |
| LumiaStream | Triggers lighting effects in LumiaStream | Available |
| Ableton Link | Broadcasts BPM to Link-enabled apps on your local network | Available |
| File Output | Writes track info to local text files for OBS or third-party tools | Coming Soon |
| Webhooks | Posts track data as a JSON payload to any HTTP endpoint | Coming Soon |
| MIDI Clock | Sends MIDI clock pulses at the track’s BPM to sync external gear | Coming Soon |
How to Access Destinations
Section titled “How to Access Destinations”All destination configuration lives in the Connections section of the Now Playing dashboard:
- Open the dashboard at nowplayingapp.com and sign in.
- Click Connections in the left sidebar.
- Select the Destinations tab at the top of the page.
- You will see a card for each available destination.
Each card shows the current status of that destination (active, disabled, or coming soon). Click a card to open the configuration page for that destination. Settings vary by destination type. Refer to the individual setup guides in this section for details.
Enabling and Disabling Destinations
Section titled “Enabling and Disabling Destinations”Each destination has an on/off toggle that controls whether it fires on track changes. Disabling a destination does not delete its configuration. It simply pauses delivery. You can re-enable it at any time and it will resume using the same settings.
This is useful during testing: configure a destination fully, then disable it until you are ready to go live, or disable it temporarily while troubleshooting without losing your setup.
Template Variables
Section titled “Template Variables”Most text-based destinations (Discord, Twitch Chat) use a shared set of template variables that you embed in a format string. The variables are replaced with live track data on every update:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
{artist} | The artist or performer name |
{title} | The track title |
{album} | The album or release name |
{bpm} | The track’s BPM (beats per minute) |
{key} | The musical key (e.g., A min, C# maj) |
Not all tracks will have every field populated. If a field is missing, the
variable is replaced with an empty string. Design your format strings to read
naturally even if some fields are absent. For example, {artist} - {title}
works well when album data is missing.
What to Read Next
Section titled “What to Read Next”Each destination has its own detailed setup guide in this section. Start with the destinations most relevant to your workflow. Twitch Chat and Discord are the most popular choices for streamers who want chat engagement. LumiaStream is for users who want to drive smart lighting from their track changes. Ableton Link is for syncing BPM with other apps on your local network.