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Quit my job to make this iPad app

15 points by Amplifind ↗ HN
I use Soundcloud and Grooveshark, right? Well I had to swap between apps all the time to listen to my songs and it was annoying.

This app makes use of the APIs from these services to stream music, all within the one app.

Currently we support Spotify, Grooveshark, Soundcloud and iTunes.

Currently iPad only. Here are some codes, please post if you want more!

http://tokn.co/n3bfdvew

http://tokn.co/0kj27mh2

http://tokn.co/k87s4jk9

http://tokn.co/qwyu6w5v

http://tokn.co/2dgyugap

P.s. What other services would you like to see supported? Direct link to our site: www.amplifindapp.com

19 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 39.8 ms ] thread
willimholte
Took the first code, am excited to try it out.

Why go iPad first?

Amplifind
Good question!

Well, part of it was selfishness. We wanted to make a visualizer and the iPhone is not a good platform for that.

Secondly, I had experience with XCode and OpenGL and Cocoa.

As a bonus, we figured that there were more iOS tablets and less piracy, but we could be wrong on that one. :)

willimholte
Makes sense, thanks.

I use iTunes Match and have quite a bit of music on my computer and my phone, so it doesn't often occur to me to listen on my iPad. However, when I do, I exclusively stream, so this might actually be the perfect fit for me. Will let you know when I try it out.

Amplifind
Also please let me know how long it takes to open when you load.... We have an issue with large library parse times... If you get a blank screen for more than a few seconds please time it and let me know how long it takes. We need to put this initial loading/library prep into a new thread.
willimholte
Good news: loaded in ~2 seconds. Bad news: interface seems to not work at all. (I'm using iPad 2, with iOS 7.0.2)
Amplifind
Frozen interface? Nothing worked?
morrisirrom
Hey guys, I'm Matt Brown, one of the 2 programmers on this project. Simon and I met at 2K Marin on Bioshock 2, and met up about 9 months ago to team up on this project. We spent about 9 months working on it, and our budget was around 5k--we're extremely proud of what we were able to do with those constraints and are continuing to improve the app daily.

We love all the music on the web these days, but were frustrated with how bad the music playing experience was--having to constantly switch between websites, so we made Amplifind! We would love to hear your feedback in the comments below!

dbond
Looks good, nice to see spotify integration in an app. Though I'm curious as to how you're getting around section 3.3 of the libspotify (assuming its use) terms of use, or if you didn't know about that then I'm here to throw a warning at you...

  3.3 You may not sell the Application, charge Users for 
  use of the Application or otherwise derive any income 
  from Users’ use of the Application, such as through e-commerce 
  initiated via the Application or the sale of any advertising, 
  sponsorships or promotions on the Application itself.
Not trying to be that guy, but having your spotify streaming access revoked could leave you with some angry customers :)

There are also some smaller clauses in there that may restrict the streaming from multiple providers. These terms don't seem to be based on any kind of logical reason though.

morrisirrom
It requires Premium spotify membership to make use of those features.
dbond
If you haven't spoken to spotify about this you might want to double check that, any usage of libspotify requires premium, these terms still apply.
waxenfigurine
Perhaps the author can come to an agreement with Spotify to integrate their service under different licensing terms. It might run into money, but that can be cast positively as forcing more clarity for the revenue model.
fuddle
Nice icon! I thought the iTunes app screenshots are a bit dull, they could do a better job of "selling" the app.
paulhauggis
This looks like a great app.

How are you going to make money? How much money do you have in the bank to support yourself?