MetaFilter Radio on the App Store May 15, 2014 12:16 PM   Subscribe

Thanks to the work of scottandrew, the MetaFilter Music app (iOS 7+ only) is now available on the App Store for free.

It shows the most recent songs, a list of the previous podcasts, as well as pulls in your playlists. There are "favorites" in the app, but keep in mind they only exist within the app, there's no logging into the MeFi server or storing your favorites there.
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 12:16 PM (27 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite

Super cool! And the inevitable question: will it ever be available for Android?
posted by ocherdraco at 12:30 PM on May 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


This is a volunteer project by scottandrew, so I highly doubt he's going to be learning python/Android development to port this app to other devices. I believe he used it as a way to teach himself how to program in Objective-C and I suspect once this is out and a few bugs get patched, the chances of major new features or updates will be slim.

Still, if you have an iPhone, it's a nice little app.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:48 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like the clean design.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:57 PM on May 15, 2014


Dat radio icon.
posted by cashman at 1:21 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Cool! Good job scottandrew!!
posted by azarbayejani at 1:57 PM on May 15, 2014


Woohoo! This means my music is indirectly accessible through the iTunes store!

Things are going to start happening to me now
posted by Hoopo at 2:35 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I really like the podcast feature! Thanks!
posted by misozaki at 5:07 PM on May 15, 2014


Yep, you bet I'm gonna start telling people my music is available "through" iTunes. I'm mere days away from a recording contract and world tour, I suspect.

*holds out hand*
Grammy, please.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:56 PM on May 15, 2014 [5 favorites]


This is rather awesome and a fantastic way for me to delve into the archives!
posted by arcticseal at 7:54 PM on May 15, 2014


Very pretty!
posted by mosessis at 9:15 PM on May 15, 2014


This is really fantastic. Thanks scottandrew.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:46 PM on May 15, 2014


This is awesome! Thanks so much, scottandrew!
posted by daisyk at 11:48 PM on May 15, 2014


A dream come true!
posted by grog at 6:06 AM on May 16, 2014


Is there a Music API (or Metafilter API in general, I guess), or is this scraping/filtering?
posted by inigo2 at 6:41 AM on May 16, 2014


It's mostly just pulling in RSS feeds of everything.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:42 AM on May 16, 2014


Thanks! (Lot of other stuff on my plate, but maybe _this_ is what gets me to look at Android programming beyond Hello World and its ilk.)
posted by inigo2 at 6:44 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


It shows the most recent songs,

*deftly moves to front-load most recent songs*
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:35 AM on May 16, 2014


Oh excellent! I'm looking forward to trying it out.
posted by immlass at 2:05 PM on May 16, 2014


"... so I highly doubt he's going to be learning python/Android development to port this app to other devices."

I've not done any Android development, but it's Java, isn't it?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:38 PM on May 16, 2014


Wow, this is the best! It's something I've wanted so long that I completely forgot I wanted it until I saw this. Thanks.
posted by Secretariat at 5:38 PM on May 16, 2014


Neat! I have a feeling I'll wind up listening to a lot more Music posts than I currently do (which I'm looking forward to).
posted by Lexica at 6:17 PM on May 16, 2014


Thanks for your interest everyone! To be clear, I intend to keep the app updated and working with new versions of iOS as long as possible, fix any bugs I find and roll out a handful of nice-to-have features that didn't make it into the 1.0 release.
posted by scottandrew at 4:56 PM on May 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Excellent. I have a good time each time I listen to MeFi Music; I just forget to do it for months at a time. So, hopefully, this'll help with that!
posted by ignignokt at 8:20 AM on May 18, 2014


Hey, thanks for doing this. It looks great.

Am I the only one having trouble getting my username recognized? I don't know if it's a generalizable problem, or whether the accent in my username is tripping it up.
posted by umbĂș at 7:40 PM on May 18, 2014


Woohoo! This means my music is indirectly accessible through the iTunes store!

You know, it's not hard to make your music directly available through the iTunes store. A tiny bit of paperwork and you're set. Managing assets is easy.

I put a book of poems up there in a weekend. I think I've made about $8 in a couple years.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:09 AM on May 19, 2014


scottandrew - thanks for the app! I'm enjoying it and it finally got me to listen to the podcast, which I should have done a long time ago.

A question about notifications: for other apps, I can go into the notification center on my ipad and change whether or not the app displays a badge. This app is not listed in the notification center. Also, it is not obvious to me why I sometimes see a 1 or 2 badge for the app. I'm sure there's more than one new song. What is this badge reflecting? Is there a way for me to turn it off?
posted by mosessis at 2:07 PM on May 26, 2014


@mosessis: the app doesn't actually use notifications, so it doesn't appear in the Notifications Center. It uses background updating to poll the Mefi Music feed to see if there's been new content posted since it last checked. (This is (for now) only for new songs, not the podcast.) The check is at random, so it won't always match what appears on the site.

There's no way to disable it at the moment, but I'll include that capability in an upcoming patch. Thanks for the report!
posted by scottandrew at 6:16 PM on June 1, 2014


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