My pony has an iPhone

March 10, 2010 11:34 PM

Pony? Mefi-Music iphone app?

Australian radio station just released this app for the iphone, that allows users to stream or download music that have been submitted by up-and-coming artists via Unearthed. More about it here.

How about something like this for Mefi-Music?

I'm not that computer savvy, so wouldn't have a clue how to go about this. (Hell, I don't even have an iPhone!)

posted by robotot to Feature Requests at 11:34 PM (10 comments total)

Have you tried to use that Unearthed app? The music is so brutally compressed as to be painful to listen to - more artifact than tune. Given that the tunes are available in decent quality from the site, I reckon you'd be bettor off scripting some way to download from the web and upload to your phone while you have a decent net connection.
posted by pompomtom at 2:54 AM on March 11, 2010

(sorry, not to say that someone couldn't give it a crack, but they should use a far higher bitrate than the ABC does...)
posted by pompomtom at 3:02 AM on March 11, 2010

Just this morning I was wondering if there is some kind of Mefi iPhone app in the skunkworks. I like the mobile version of the site, but an app would be extra special. Something for Music like you mention robotot would be cool too. But I have neither the 133t skillz or resources to help something like this get off the ground.

Incidentally, there are a number of apps that stream decent-sounding (at least to my ears) music--Pandora and Soma.fm are two that quickly come to mind--so I think the technology is there to make something like this plausible.
posted by slogger at 6:00 AM on March 11, 2010

TapLynx might be a good way to do a MeFi iPhone app. It's basically a simplified iPhone development kit where every screen is a feed reader.
posted by scottreynen at 6:27 AM on March 11, 2010

I just subscribed to the Mefi Music RSS feed as a podcast and set it to never throw anything away. Voila!
posted by unixrat at 12:30 PM on March 11, 2010

Don't think the programming part would be too horrible, there's a fair number of programmers around of the necessary ability.

But even assuming there's a real demand for a dedicated music app that is insufficiently meant by other means, you have other significant issues. Possibly the biggest issue would be finding someone who could spec a decent interface to work with, along with any artwork.

That, and then finding a few truly excellent beta testers who would give feedback which is actually worth using up several of the semi-precious registered device IDs a registered developer is allowed for the testing and distribution of apps. Or, I guess, work with a developer who has an enterprise license.
posted by mdevore at 1:06 PM on March 11, 2010

Works well in mobile Flash (Nokia) . Just saying... Does it work on Android?
posted by meehawl at 4:41 PM on March 11, 2010

Tilde (~) and I were starting to write an iPhone app, but I hit a bit of a wall parsing profile pages. If there's genuine interest from everyone involved, I'd be interested in starting it up again.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:51 PM on March 11, 2010

BP: I know I'd be interested. I'd also be willing to help with any design-related feedback if that's needed. (What was the profile parsing difficulty?)
posted by Rory Marinich at 5:02 PM on March 11, 2010

Some things in a profile were tagged and some weren't, and it wasn't consistent, so that various permutations of what might be tagged and not would make scraping for data a bit error-prone. Consistent and logical tagging of profile data would be useful for scraping data and shouldn't interfere with the display. I don't think it would be a security issue, either, as you can only access profiles when logged in.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:19 PM on March 11, 2010