

Show HN: Tunebox, Dropbox + iPhone = cloud music service - phil
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunebox-music-player-for-dropbox/id475688071

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phil
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-ac...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/tunebox-listen-music-dropbox-
account)

30s demo video here: <http://yearofcode.com/tunebox>

~~~
Derbasti
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
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.

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endlessvoid94
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.

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gravitronic
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
I don't mean to steal Tunebox's thunder, but Audiogalaxy
(<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.

~~~
b3b0p
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.

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kittxkat
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>

~~~
edwardy20
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>

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

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farslan
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).

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run4yourlives
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
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.

~~~
timerickson
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
But iTunes Match is US-only for now.

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sjaakkkkk
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
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
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!

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aam1r
Great app! Does the app cache songs? (ie. can I listen to them once and then
listen to them offline?)

~~~
phil
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
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
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
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).

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

~~~
phil
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.

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

