7 ms·

Show HN: CloudPlay - A music player for YouTube, SoundCloud, and more

54 points by ammmir 14y ago

ammmir 14y ago
This is an app I've been working on for the past couple of months (see [1] for some background). A lot of us listen to music while coding or designing and I wanted to build something that makes it as pain-free as possible. I'd love to know what you guys think! [1] http://amirmalik.net/2012/08/09/cloudplay-a-music-player-for-youtube-etc http://amirmalik.net/2012/08/09/cloudplay-a-music-player-for...
xam 14y ago
I think this would be even better if it were integrated with podcasts as well.
- ammmir 14y ago
  Currently it uses whatever is in your iTunes library, so you can play any downloaded podcasts, but you're right, a podcast directory/download feature would be great!
ramanujam 14y ago
It would be great if it let me import my playlists from Youtube. Also, option to close the video pane when the song is playing would be nice. Congrats on the launch. Very nice implementation.
- ammmir 14y ago
  Thanks! Import of favorites and likes across different services is coming soon! The window itself closes if you click away from it to another app :)
jancborchardt 14y ago
Oh nice, this looks slick. Do you know of the functionally similar http://youtify.com http://youtify.com? It’s an open source web app, see http://github.com/youtify/youtify http://github.com/youtify/youtify
- ammmir 14y ago
  Thanks! I can't believe I never noticed Youtify before, it's amazing. I think we'll see a lot of similar functionality to go across different services.
gdilla 14y ago
bandcamp as a source would be great too. lots of great music there.
alexkiwi 14y ago
Thankfully a native player for http://console.fm http://console.fm, congrats on releasing Amir!!!!
vikramhaer 14y ago
Are you planning on keeping this mac-only? Any reason for not making it browser-based? looks great, would love to try it
- ammmir 14y ago
  It's definitely coming to mobile (probably iOS first) if there's enough interest. There are already a few browser-based players that search multiple services, and I wanted something that doesn't require me to hunt down which browser tab is playing music :) CloudPlay is basically Spotlight for Music. (Spotlight is the Mac indexing service/always-running-app that lets you quickly find and open files on your system.) EDIT: To answer your actual question... it's Mac only for now, since I'm an army of one, but other platforms may come depending on demand.
  - simba-hiiipower 14y ago
    yeah, i totally understand the need to focus on one platform at a time if you’re not going for a web app, but a Windows version (guess i’m in the minority here; ironic) would also be much appreciated. it looks really cool; would love to try it out someday.
  - dcosson 14y ago
    Love the app, great job If you do decide to offer a web version, a chrome/firefox extension might be a good choice - it could be a very similar user experience to how it works now in the mac menu bar, and you wouldn't have to keep a tab open for it.
ajcronk 14y ago
Most of my music is in iCloud, so it shows up in CloudPlay, but it doesn't actually play. Any way that CloudPlay can fetch songs in iCloud?
- ammmir 14y ago
  hmm.. are you using iTunes Match? I believe iTunes uses a private API to stream music, so unfortunately there's not much I can do until I find another way. In the meantime, I should probably hide non-local iTunes tracks.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rabidsnail 14y ago
Very cool. Feature suggestions: * Add last.fm scrobbling * Add Grooveshark as a source * Group tracks into albums (you can get the metadata from musicbrainz and last.fm) * Use last.fm similar tracks (http://www.last.fm/api/show/track.getSimilar http://www.last.fm/api/show/track.getSimilar) to automatically queue up the next track
- ammmir 14y ago
  Last.fm scrobbling has been the #1 request to my surprise! Track grouping is one of the next features, just need to think more about the browse process. The Echo Nest also has a great API for finding similar tracks that I was planning on using, but I'll look at Last.fm, too... thanks!
  - rabidsnail 14y ago
    I would write integrations for both, use last.fm (since it's free) in production, and if last.fm decides to start charging you you're in a good negotiating position. Single-sourcing api's in general is extremely dangerous.
  - rickylais 14y ago
    Yes last.fm scrobbing would be awesome.
cjstewart88 14y ago
Looks nice, I made this(http://www.tubalr.com http://www.tubalr.com) about two years ago and have been working on it every since with pretty much the same vision and hopes.
jc4p 14y ago
This is freaking awesome. Is there any way to make it so the play/stop/previous/next shortcuts you have right now work off the respective keys on the keyboard? I'm really used to hitting the pause button on my computer so and if I do that right now Spotify start playing random music while I'm trying to pause this app.
- ammmir 14y ago
  Thanks :) Are you using a custom keyboard? Right now I've only mapped the Apple media keys (using the Option-Shift prefix since iTunes takes over the non-prefixed ones and Mac App Store apps can't trap them, giving Spotify/Rdio the upper hand).
aw3c2 14y ago
It would be ace if you could add jamendo.com and archive.org as sources for free music. Also maybe http://be.electrobel.org/ http://be.electrobel.org/
- ammmir 14y ago
  Fantastic suggestions! A lot of these sites don't have APIs, so I'll probably need to put together a little scraper.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    Jamendo has an API, they just made a terrible redesign a while ago and seem not to link it anymore. See http://developer.jamendo.com/en/ http://developer.jamendo.com/en/
evertonfuller 14y ago
Fantastic tool for copyright holders too.
codenerdz 14y ago
Shoutcast pretty please :)
jordanlev 14y ago
Cool idea! I recently built out a fun side project to scrape local music listings and display youtube videos for each artist (so if you want to go out to live music but don't know any of the bands playing you can quickly listen to music samples): http://stl.showspinner.com http://stl.showspinner.com A big problem though is when there are no youtube videos for artists. Your app makes me realize that tapping into the SoundCloud API might be a good addition, though. Any caveats I should be aware of?
brady747 14y ago
I'm not on a mac but good luck, I've been waiting for someone to do something like this or similar for a while. For those people looking at alternatives I recently found and am enjoying - tomahawk-player.org
jmathai 14y ago
Congrats Amir! Missed you at the recent nReduce meetings :)

54 points by ammmir 14y ago

This is an app I've been working on for the past couple of months (see [1] for some background). A lot of us listen to music while coding or designing and I wanted to build something that makes it as pain-free as possible. I'd love to know what you guys think! [1] http://amirmalik.net/2012/08/09/cloudplay-a-music-player-for-youtube-etc http://amirmalik.net/2012/08/09/cloudplay-a-music-player-for...

xam 14y ago

I think this would be even better if it were integrated with podcasts as well.

ammmir 14y ago
Currently it uses whatever is in your iTunes library, so you can play any downloaded podcasts, but you're right, a podcast directory/download feature would be great!

ramanujam 14y ago

It would be great if it let me import my playlists from Youtube. Also, option to close the video pane when the song is playing would be nice. Congrats on the launch. Very nice implementation.

ammmir 14y ago
Thanks! Import of favorites and likes across different services is coming soon! The window itself closes if you click away from it to another app :)

jancborchardt 14y ago

Oh nice, this looks slick. Do you know of the functionally similar http://youtify.com http://youtify.com? It’s an open source web app, see http://github.com/youtify/youtify http://github.com/youtify/youtify

ammmir 14y ago
Thanks! I can't believe I never noticed Youtify before, it's amazing. I think we'll see a lot of similar functionality to go across different services.

gdilla 14y ago

bandcamp as a source would be great too. lots of great music there.

alexkiwi 14y ago

Thankfully a native player for http://console.fm http://console.fm, congrats on releasing Amir!!!!

vikramhaer 14y ago

Are you planning on keeping this mac-only? Any reason for not making it browser-based? looks great, would love to try it

ammmir 14y ago
It's definitely coming to mobile (probably iOS first) if there's enough interest. There are already a few browser-based players that search multiple services, and I wanted something that doesn't require me to hunt down which browser tab is playing music :) CloudPlay is basically Spotlight for Music. (Spotlight is the Mac indexing service/always-running-app that lets you quickly find and open files on your system.) EDIT: To answer your actual question... it's Mac only for now, since I'm an army of one, but other platforms may come depending on demand.
- simba-hiiipower 14y ago
  yeah, i totally understand the need to focus on one platform at a time if you’re not going for a web app, but a Windows version (guess i’m in the minority here; ironic) would also be much appreciated. it looks really cool; would love to try it out someday.
- dcosson 14y ago
  Love the app, great job If you do decide to offer a web version, a chrome/firefox extension might be a good choice - it could be a very similar user experience to how it works now in the mac menu bar, and you wouldn't have to keep a tab open for it.

ajcronk 14y ago

Most of my music is in iCloud, so it shows up in CloudPlay, but it doesn't actually play. Any way that CloudPlay can fetch songs in iCloud?

ammmir 14y ago
hmm.. are you using iTunes Match? I believe iTunes uses a private API to stream music, so unfortunately there's not much I can do until I find another way. In the meantime, I should probably hide non-local iTunes tracks.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rabidsnail 14y ago

Very cool. Feature suggestions: * Add last.fm scrobbling * Add Grooveshark as a source * Group tracks into albums (you can get the metadata from musicbrainz and last.fm) * Use last.fm similar tracks (http://www.last.fm/api/show/track.getSimilar http://www.last.fm/api/show/track.getSimilar) to automatically queue up the next track

ammmir 14y ago
Last.fm scrobbling has been the #1 request to my surprise! Track grouping is one of the next features, just need to think more about the browse process. The Echo Nest also has a great API for finding similar tracks that I was planning on using, but I'll look at Last.fm, too... thanks!
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  I would write integrations for both, use last.fm (since it's free) in production, and if last.fm decides to start charging you you're in a good negotiating position. Single-sourcing api's in general is extremely dangerous.
- rickylais 14y ago
  Yes last.fm scrobbing would be awesome.

cjstewart88 14y ago

Looks nice, I made this(http://www.tubalr.com http://www.tubalr.com) about two years ago and have been working on it every since with pretty much the same vision and hopes.

jc4p 14y ago

This is freaking awesome. Is there any way to make it so the play/stop/previous/next shortcuts you have right now work off the respective keys on the keyboard? I'm really used to hitting the pause button on my computer so and if I do that right now Spotify start playing random music while I'm trying to pause this app.

ammmir 14y ago
Thanks :) Are you using a custom keyboard? Right now I've only mapped the Apple media keys (using the Option-Shift prefix since iTunes takes over the non-prefixed ones and Mac App Store apps can't trap them, giving Spotify/Rdio the upper hand).

aw3c2 14y ago

It would be ace if you could add jamendo.com and archive.org as sources for free music. Also maybe http://be.electrobel.org/ http://be.electrobel.org/

ammmir 14y ago
Fantastic suggestions! A lot of these sites don't have APIs, so I'll probably need to put together a little scraper.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  Jamendo has an API, they just made a terrible redesign a while ago and seem not to link it anymore. See http://developer.jamendo.com/en/ http://developer.jamendo.com/en/

evertonfuller 14y ago

Fantastic tool for copyright holders too.

codenerdz 14y ago

Shoutcast pretty please :)

jordanlev 14y ago

Cool idea! I recently built out a fun side project to scrape local music listings and display youtube videos for each artist (so if you want to go out to live music but don't know any of the bands playing you can quickly listen to music samples): http://stl.showspinner.com http://stl.showspinner.com A big problem though is when there are no youtube videos for artists. Your app makes me realize that tapping into the SoundCloud API might be a good addition, though. Any caveats I should be aware of?

brady747 14y ago

I'm not on a mac but good luck, I've been waiting for someone to do something like this or similar for a while. For those people looking at alternatives I recently found and am enjoying - tomahawk-player.org

jmathai 14y ago

Congrats Amir! Missed you at the recent nReduce meetings :)