Show HN: Tunebox, Dropbox + iPhone = cloud music service
itunes.apple.com
itunes.apple.com
There's a fair bit of tech below the surface in this app, for stuff like song discovery in the background and getting track metadata. Happy to answer questions about that stuff.
Edit:
Geekwire posted about it: http://www.geekwire.com/2011/tunebox-listen-music-dropbox-ac...
30s demo video here: http://yearofcode.com/tunebox
I'm also curious - how does it fetch metadata for songs? It looks like it all happens on demand from the app. I've got about 40GB of music in Dropbox so I imagine this might be a slow / API call intensive process.
My wishlist: I would like to download some albums for offline use and I would like to have the app index more than 1000 songs.
But don't take these suggestions as criticism. I love your app and it is already extremely useful!
Great work!
To work around the 1000 songs thing: tap the Browse tab, browse to folder with songs that weren't included. Wait a second, then go back to Artist/Albums/Songs, they will be there and the app will know about them unless you sign out (which makes it forget everything).
The limit is based on what the Dropbox API can return, but Tunebox itself is designed to be able to index a lot of music.
Kick ass.
Does anyone know how they handle lossless? It says in the FAQ they support FLAC, which all my music is encoded in. Google Music transcodes it. I can't seem to find what Audio Galaxy does. I'm assuming they do something similar, but they don't say to what or what bitrate.
For those w/Android who would like to use Tunebox -- I use:
1) Music folder within Dropbox, keeps all my music in synch even when switching computers (I use many different computers/laptops, and sometimes my phone isn't in reach but I'd like to listen to my tunes). I have the 50GB plan, my library uses about 20GB of it.
2) The super-uber-incredibly-awesome DropSync[1] Android app which syncs one folder from Dropbox in the lite version. Which is more than enough for me! New music, which I downloaded to my Dropbox on my computer some time earlier gets wirelessly synced for daily use with my phone as soon as I connect to a Wifi. So awesome!
Seriously, I feel like DropSync is the best-kept Android app secret ever. Use it, if you use Dropbox.
[1] https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync
However, iTunes Match isn't everyone's cup of tea (and odds are, not available in their country. It isn't in mine).
Furthermore, iTunes Match limits at 25,000 songs. At 256kbps, thats roughly 175GB.
Very slick. I like it. Dropbox should promote this app.
I've found Dropbox works really well for documents and such, but if you're talking 100GB music collections, that's a lot of cash. Yes, this is a Dropbox issue, not an app issue. I think the app is really neat.
Dropbox supports delta sync (a la rsync), which means a change to music metadata translates to only a few bytes being transferred instead of the whole file. This is a killer.
On the other hand, there are lots of people out there who are already have their music library in Dropbox so they can sync it between their computers, so I don't think it's fatally expensive.
TuneBox is iOS though, so I will definitely be checking this app out since I have an iPhone!
The app tries to always organize correctly, but to be light on the wire, it has to make some guesses. Your examples of where I'm getting it wrong will help me fix. And, yes, you can change your ID3 tags. It should pick up on that next time you enter the app.
In the meantime, if it has guessed an album wrong, say, try playing a song from that album, and it should fix all of them.
Recent songs are cached as they play, and library info is maintained locally. So if you know you've listened to a song you should be able to go back and play it offline.
v1 doesn't have a good interface for showing you which songs it's got cached though -- that might arrive in an update :)
And is there an "offline" toggle in the app, or would you have to put the device in airplane mode?
I like the idea of having my music in the cloud. I just don't like the battery drain of constant streaming. Or the "what happens when I'm on a train/a plane/a crappy-2G connection?" cases. Robust offline support would be totally awesome.
Obviously I'm just getting started on this, but I'd prefer not to have a switch, but just to do the right thing, and give some cues so you know if it's going to have to stream to play a song or not.
That's mostly the case now -- files should stream once, then be cached. This version uses a 250mb LRU cache, so figure the last 50-60 songs you listened to.
Though I would urge you to reconsider the switch. There are plenty of times when I technically do have a data connection, but for various reasons, would rather hold off on streaming. (e.g. traveling through a series of deadspots; trying to prevent 3G overage charges; trying to preserve battery; generally slow data connection).
This version - sort of, last 50 or so songs should work offline
Planned for update - more control over caching, better view of which songs are available offline.