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Show HN: I built a better music app for mac for people who buy music

brushedtype.co

19 points by edwellbrook 4 years ago · 19 comments

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tailspin2019 4 years ago

This looks awesome.

I'm a fan of electronic music (house, trance, drum and bass, EDM...) and consume the majority of my music these days via podcasts put out by various DJs/producers.

I've often felt that people like me are not catered for very well with the current crop of apps. There are no "music focussed" podcast apps (at least that I'm aware of) and since Apple pulled podcasts out of iTunes back in the day, my music listening experience feels very siloed. I go to Apple Music for albums, and go to whatever my current flavour of podcast app is for the latest DJ mixes.

So... question to the developer - have you considered incorporating podcasts into this app? Specifically music-focussed ones... I'd love to have an alternative to Apple's Podcasts apps (which I dislike, but haven't found anything better at least on Mac).

On my iPhone I used Overcast specifically to organise and listen to my music/mix podcasts, and PocketCasts for all other non-music based podcasts. (I listen to a LOT of podcasts, so putting all the music ones in a separate app helps me keep things organised).

  • edwellbrookOP 4 years ago

    Thanks!

    Can relate to feeling like there aren't apps out there that really focus on this specific problem. Happy to see Doppler resonate with a lot of people today.

    I've thought about incorporating music-focused podcasts into Doppler. There's a lot of really high quality ones out there (e.g. Resident Advisor). It's not something planned for the short term, but it's definitely on my radar.

    Good to know I'm not alone in thinking it would be useful!

  • dangravell 4 years ago

    But wait - as soon as you start adding audio podcasts, that's a different use case, and the original UX that it looks like the Doppler author concentrated on and refined for people that buy music is compromised.

    And then we add this, and then we add that...

    And there's iTunes.

    • tailspin2019 4 years ago

      I definitely see your point.

      However, the abstraction level I’m thinking about in terms of use-case is “listening to music” it’s not “listening to these specific file types, obtained via this specific method”.

      So I guess what I’m saying is, if I want to listen to an album from (for example) Above and Beyond, or I want to listen to their latest DJ mix podcast episode, as a music listener, I’d love to have a single app for that.

      At the moment this experience is very disjointed and you’re forced to have different apps for this experience.

      Its a bit like in the old days you’d have a combination stereo system with various different “sources”, (turntable, CD, radio etc) but these audio sources would be presented to you in one unified “interface”. (Eg shared EQ settings, single remote etc)

      Sure some people liked to have “hifi separates” but the most popular stereo systems were the ones that unified a bunch of audio sources into one package. They were a one stop shop for music listening and essentially “format agnostic”.

      For all that was bad about iTunes, I loved it when it used to combine all my digital music sources into one place. As a music listener this was intuitive and nice. (Notwithstanding that iTunes itself could have done with a bit of re-engineering).

      However, getting back to your point, perhaps you’re right in some ways - since music based podcasts might not be that widely listened to (outside of the world of DJ mixes?) - so perhaps it would indeed be feature bloat for a lot of users.

      Perhaps what I’m after is a more niche music player centered around electronic music/mixes.

      • dangravell 4 years ago

        Yeah, I see your point. I was making an assumption that audio podcasts have a different... usage profile? or user flow?... to album listening. I might have been distracted by "podcast" which I tend to associate with the spoken word, and episodic, time centered updates.

  • bredren 4 years ago

    SoundCloud is good for sets still as far as I can tell.

    Daftcloud is an indie dev paid MacOS app that wraps SoundCloud without the high resource overhead found in soundcleod.

    • tailspin2019 4 years ago

      Daftcloud looks v interesting. I've also experimented with DI.FM recently too.

      • bredren 4 years ago

        The dev is pretty chill and does answer email. A nice product to support.

        Had not heard of di.fm, will have a look.

  • itake 4 years ago

    > via podcasts put out by various DJs/producers.

    any recommendations of podcasts?

jibbers 4 years ago

Always good to see new apps for those of us who still buy and manage our own music files. Your app looks fantastic. Any chance it will gain support for macOS versions before Big Sur?

  • sentientforest 4 years ago

    I was scrolling down the page, thinking, "this application looks great, I have wanted something to replace iTunes for years. It plays FLAC _and_ ALAC! I would love to pay money for this."

    But I don't currently have a mac running anything later than Mojave, 10.14.

    And the primary machine I would want to host music on can't upgrade past it (2010 Mac Pro, 12 cores, 64 GB Memory, 4GB GTX 770, 4 easily-swapple internal hard drives, all in spent under $1,000, used, parts and all - not a bad deal, would anyone agree?). Of course, I'll probably be moving it to Linux at some point after Apple gives up on 10.14.

    I'm a very atypical case these days - I don't stream music, I actually buy CDs sometimes (often cheaper on Amazon shipped to your door giving you a hard copy backup and freedom vs buying the digital version they offer). I like to repair and upgrade older hardware. This kind of music player is right up my alley.

    I'm not trying to complain. This is awesome. Maybe I'll buy it anyway just for whenever I get around to upgrading my macbook.

    • happynacho 4 years ago

      I wanna chime in to say that's a great Mac. You could use a patcher to get it to Catalina but I definitely wouldn't go any higher. That will extend software support life a bit more.

  • edwellbrookOP 4 years ago

    Honestly, it's unlikely. I'm gauging interest, and while there is some, I have to weigh it against the extra dev time (and other things like compatibility, support etc).

    I'm just one designer/developer, so I'll need to see fairly substantial demand before I can commit to it.

    Not what you wanted to hear, I know, but hopefully it makes sense!

timothyduong 4 years ago

As someone who has been archiving my music (FLAC) and looking for the right player that isn’t too expensive, this has been a godsend.

The existing market for Lossless playback and library management for macos is pretty abysmal. I’ve been testing many (Audirvana, clementine, swinisian, Vox) and so many of have such basic feature sets (vox) that don’t meet my needs or are bloated as hell and run like a dog on a well speced 2020 16MBP..

Keen to try and review this one!

happynacho 4 years ago

A couple of questions and I'll buy it.

1) Does it feature 2-way sync? ie changes on playlist/data/playcounts on mobile will also change on the desktop.

2) On mobile, when browsing inside a single artist, do you have the option to see all songs by a particular artist? Apple stock Music only allows by Artist then single Album and I hate it.

  • edwellbrookOP 4 years ago

    1 — This first version is just Mac -> iPhone (Same as iTunes). 2 way sync is in development and I'm hoping to have it out within the next couple of months. Playlists, liked songs, play history would be included in the sync!

    2 — Not right now, but please drop me a quick email (https://brushedtype.co/contact/) and I'll let you know when it's out!

fattybob 4 years ago

yup, can agree, meeting all my needs so far, can recommend

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