09-25-2009 by dan
A comment appeared on my blog the other day that asked me about some of the details I had mentioned in my earlier Flex Mp3 Jukebox posts. I wrote back to the commenter, and in doing so re-visited the website for mp3dj. Wow! It has come a long way in the past few months!
First of all, what do I mean by an “mp3 jukebox”? For my purposes, I am looking for an application that does EXACTLY what iTunes does, but I can run it in my browser from ANY computer ANYwhere in the world, with my mp3 collection sitting in one spot on my server. No needless replication of my library of tunes — I put everything in my “music” folder on my server, and I can make any playlist I want and listen to it anywhere I want. This application should work as seamlessly as if it were running on my desktop. I tried to use jinzora, but using it’s icecast stream feature had a very sizable delay and it wasn’t dead simple to make and use playlists.
There are 4 aspects to a (in my mind) successful web-based mp3 jukebox:
- Responsiveness. It has to feel like a desktop app. It doesn’t necessarily have to be written in Flex or Flash, but at this point in the game I think that Flex and Flash are the only environments that will give you the “desktop app responsiveness” that I know most people are looking for.
- It must have a database backend for searching, viewing and organizing music, particularly for playlists.
- It must have a front end that works in an intuitive way. Drag and drop is a huge plus here.
- It must be able to read the id3 tags on mp3s, and be aware of new additions to my music folder — without me having to intervene. I don’t want to manage the database, I just want to listen to my music!
When I first visited the mp3dj page, it appeared to only do frontend part, with maybe a very simple backend that was not the full blown database solution that I wanted. Times have certainly changed! At this point, I don’t see any better alternative to using mp3dj — it keeps track of your music library, it has a snappy iTunes-clone front end, and it tracks your playlists. All in an open-source (flex source is open, if not the compiler) environment! I’m sold. I just need to get a new server up and running and this will be the way I do my music from now on — centralized repository, accessible from any computer in my house, and further from any computer on the internet.
