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Show HN: Tunebox, Dropbox + iPhone = cloud music service

131 points by phil 15y ago

gurgeous 15y ago
I participated in the beta. This is a nice app, well done. Dropbox and music - two great tastes that taste great together.
phil 15y ago
This is my new iPhone app. Been working on it for ages now. I've always wanted a cloud music service I could just drag files into, and I realized Dropbox would be the perfect platform for it. The goal is to make a music player that's as good as the built in Music app - I think I'm pretty close 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-account http://www.geekwire.com/2011/tunebox-listen-music-dropbox-ac... 30s demo video here: http://yearofcode.com/tunebox http://yearofcode.com/tunebox
- uberzet 15y ago
  This is really awesome very excited to start using. I've also been working with the Dropbox API on a file-sharing-platform. http://uberzet.com http://uberzet.com
- trun 15y ago
  This is fantastic! I've been hoping for something like this for quite some time. Any plans for an android version? 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.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Awesome app! I really like it! 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!
  - phil 15y ago
    Thanks! 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.
gravitronic 15y ago
Thank you for making this! The existing dropbox music apps are terrible, you have to select songs one by one instead of streaming entire directories. Thank you. Going to download when I get home.
- psychotik 15y ago
  I don't mean to steal Tunebox's thunder, but Audiogalaxy (http://www.audiogalaxy.com http://www.audiogalaxy.com) might be another solution to your problems. It's completely free, supports almost all audio formats and has a ridiculously high max-song limit (200K+). Works on Android and browsers, too.
  - gavreh 15y ago
    Audiogalaxy is a great service. Works well on desktop and iOS. Highly recommended.
  - b3b0p 15y ago
    Thanks for mentioning. I have heard of the site, but never checked out what it was for. Looks nice, I'm going to try it out. 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.
  - farslan 15y ago
    The problem with audiogalaxy is they don't have Linux support at all. Dropbox solves this problem, they have a Linux client that works very well.
aam1r 15y ago
Great app! Does the app cache songs? (ie. can I listen to them once and then listen to them offline?)
- phil 15y ago
  Yes - kinda. 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 :)
  - roc 15y ago
    Does "shuffle" intelligently shuffle through cached songs while offline? That'd be handy. 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.
    - phil 15y ago
      I totally agree, it just didn't make sense to build all the offline stuff into v1. 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.
      - roc 15y ago
        I get that you gotta ship sometime :) Looks great though, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. 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).
run4yourlives 15y ago
This is a good app, but Dropbox would be very expensive as a cloud platform. Wouldn't it make more sense to use Amazon or something cheaper?
- wvanwazer 15y ago
  I thought so too, but it's $9.99 a month for 50 GBs, which is more than iTunes Match gives you, and comparable with services like Rdio and Spotify.
  - jbrennan 15y ago
    I'm just wondering if it's actually cheaper though. iTunes Match is $24.99 per year, remember. However, iTunes Match isn't everyone's cup of tea (and odds are, not available in their country. It isn't in mine).
  - timerickson 15y ago
    And $99 yearly. iTunes Match is only $25 yearly, it's not billed monthly. Furthermore, iTunes Match limits at 25,000 songs. At 256kbps, thats roughly 175GB.
    - lloeki 15y ago
      But iTunes Match is US-only for now.
  - gravitronic 15y ago
    I did the "dropbox referral via google adwords + $100 coupon" so I now have 10GB free on dropbox. It's an (albeit sneaky) alternative to the monthly $10.
- zach 15y ago
  I actually don't think so. For one thing, this argument is true of Dropbox itself, and are music files really that special? For many people, the simplicity and convenience is worth it. Plus if you have some extra space in your Dropbox (yes, there are some of us) this gives you a good use for it. Very slick. I like it. Dropbox should promote this app.
endlessvoid94 15y ago
With a Mac version of this in the Mac app store, you can seriously compete with iTunes and iCloud as the music solution for many people. Kick ass.
kittxkat 15y ago
I actually use a similar Dropbox Music setup to seamlessly sync my music via WiFi. I use Android, so sadly I can't check out your app. But it sure looks great, and I would definitely use it! 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 https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync
- edwardy20 15y ago
  Thank you so much! I use Android and this is amazing. As a side note, I saw a blog post on HN a while back detailing how to get 16GB of storage on Dropbox for under $10 using their referral system: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173
sjaakkkkk 15y ago
Very nice app, have been looking for this for some time as I wasn't pleased with dropbox only playing one song. However, the app doesn't recognize the names etc of most of my music and has organized it pretty messy. Is there a way to make it better organized in the app? Or can I change my id3tags etc?
- phil 15y ago
  Can you send me some screenshots? Reach me at phil@yearofcode.com. 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.
  - sjaakkkkk 15y ago
    Sent you some pics. I have some pretty badly tagged music so it's partly my fault, however Spotify did recognize some things that your app didn't. Still, really good app that I'll be using a lot, keep up the good work!
skiplecariboo 15y ago
what the difference with apps like Songbox ? I remember trying it and it was so slow..
xriddle 15y ago
Does this have any benefits over mSpot?
sidwyn 15y ago
Can I save them for offline playback? My 3G connection can be rather intermittent sometimes.
- phil 15y ago
  See below for more details, but in brief: 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.
farslan 15y ago
That's great especially for Linux users. I'm looking for a long time to an all-in-one solution for my music. With Tunebox I'm now able to upload, organize all my music within my Linux distro (due to Drobpox Linux Client).

131 points by phil 15y ago

I participated in the beta. This is a nice app, well done. Dropbox and music - two great tastes that taste great together.

phil 15y ago

This is my new iPhone app. Been working on it for ages now. I've always wanted a cloud music service I could just drag files into, and I realized Dropbox would be the perfect platform for it. The goal is to make a music player that's as good as the built in Music app - I think I'm pretty close 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-account http://www.geekwire.com/2011/tunebox-listen-music-dropbox-ac... 30s demo video here: http://yearofcode.com/tunebox http://yearofcode.com/tunebox

uberzet 15y ago
This is really awesome very excited to start using. I've also been working with the Dropbox API on a file-sharing-platform. http://uberzet.com http://uberzet.com
trun 15y ago
This is fantastic! I've been hoping for something like this for quite some time. Any plans for an android version? 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.
Derbasti 15y ago
Awesome app! I really like it! 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!
- phil 15y ago
  Thanks! 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.

gravitronic 15y ago

Thank you for making this! The existing dropbox music apps are terrible, you have to select songs one by one instead of streaming entire directories. Thank you. Going to download when I get home.

psychotik 15y ago
I don't mean to steal Tunebox's thunder, but Audiogalaxy (http://www.audiogalaxy.com http://www.audiogalaxy.com) might be another solution to your problems. It's completely free, supports almost all audio formats and has a ridiculously high max-song limit (200K+). Works on Android and browsers, too.
- gavreh 15y ago
  Audiogalaxy is a great service. Works well on desktop and iOS. Highly recommended.
- b3b0p 15y ago
  Thanks for mentioning. I have heard of the site, but never checked out what it was for. Looks nice, I'm going to try it out. 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.
- farslan 15y ago
  The problem with audiogalaxy is they don't have Linux support at all. Dropbox solves this problem, they have a Linux client that works very well.

aam1r 15y ago

Great app! Does the app cache songs? (ie. can I listen to them once and then listen to them offline?)

phil 15y ago
Yes - kinda. 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 :)
- roc 15y ago
  Does "shuffle" intelligently shuffle through cached songs while offline? That'd be handy. 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.
  - phil 15y ago
    I totally agree, it just didn't make sense to build all the offline stuff into v1. 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.
    - roc 15y ago
      I get that you gotta ship sometime :) Looks great though, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. 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).

run4yourlives 15y ago

This is a good app, but Dropbox would be very expensive as a cloud platform. Wouldn't it make more sense to use Amazon or something cheaper?

wvanwazer 15y ago
I thought so too, but it's $9.99 a month for 50 GBs, which is more than iTunes Match gives you, and comparable with services like Rdio and Spotify.
- jbrennan 15y ago
  I'm just wondering if it's actually cheaper though. iTunes Match is $24.99 per year, remember. However, iTunes Match isn't everyone's cup of tea (and odds are, not available in their country. It isn't in mine).
- timerickson 15y ago
  And $99 yearly. iTunes Match is only $25 yearly, it's not billed monthly. Furthermore, iTunes Match limits at 25,000 songs. At 256kbps, thats roughly 175GB.
  - lloeki 15y ago
    But iTunes Match is US-only for now.
- gravitronic 15y ago
  I did the "dropbox referral via google adwords + $100 coupon" so I now have 10GB free on dropbox. It's an (albeit sneaky) alternative to the monthly $10.
zach 15y ago
I actually don't think so. For one thing, this argument is true of Dropbox itself, and are music files really that special? For many people, the simplicity and convenience is worth it. Plus if you have some extra space in your Dropbox (yes, there are some of us) this gives you a good use for it. Very slick. I like it. Dropbox should promote this app.

endlessvoid94 15y ago

With a Mac version of this in the Mac app store, you can seriously compete with iTunes and iCloud as the music solution for many people. Kick ass.

kittxkat 15y ago

I actually use a similar Dropbox Music setup to seamlessly sync my music via WiFi. I use Android, so sadly I can't check out your app. But it sure looks great, and I would definitely use it! 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 https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync

edwardy20 15y ago
Thank you so much! I use Android and this is amazing. As a side note, I saw a blog post on HN a while back detailing how to get 16GB of storage on Dropbox for under $10 using their referral system: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173

sjaakkkkk 15y ago

Very nice app, have been looking for this for some time as I wasn't pleased with dropbox only playing one song. However, the app doesn't recognize the names etc of most of my music and has organized it pretty messy. Is there a way to make it better organized in the app? Or can I change my id3tags etc?

phil 15y ago
Can you send me some screenshots? Reach me at phil@yearofcode.com. 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.
- sjaakkkkk 15y ago
  Sent you some pics. I have some pretty badly tagged music so it's partly my fault, however Spotify did recognize some things that your app didn't. Still, really good app that I'll be using a lot, keep up the good work!

skiplecariboo 15y ago

what the difference with apps like Songbox ? I remember trying it and it was so slow..

xriddle 15y ago

Does this have any benefits over mSpot?

sidwyn 15y ago

Can I save them for offline playback? My 3G connection can be rather intermittent sometimes.

phil 15y ago
See below for more details, but in brief: 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.

farslan 15y ago

That's great especially for Linux users. I'm looking for a long time to an all-in-one solution for my music. With Tunebox I'm now able to upload, organize all my music within my Linux distro (due to Drobpox Linux Client).