AudioBlog

Hello People,
AudioBox.fm is still young but the platform has proven to be rock-solid and production ready, in fact it’s quite some time that we left the beta status.

I can confirm that the team is working on AudioBox 2, and it is a total rewrite of the existing codebase.

During those months of listening to user’s feedback (you’re awesome by the way) something interesting emerged. Yeah, mostly fixing apps in the mobile space, but here’s a rundown of the most requested features.

Sharing
We implemented sharing in the AudioBox.fm’s codebase long time ago but we kept it disabled.
Still today we explain our decision to anyone that writes us and asks why he cannot share his/her tunes with his/her buddies, and that happens daily.
It’s not like I have a template for this kind of reply, but it’s clear that sharing is something to take into account.
The problem is that we don’t believe it’s exactly ethical/legal to open up the doors of your account for everyone to consume.
Apart bandwidth bills that will ensue by enabling sharing (I’d like to remind everyone that we are not Apple and plans are already cheap) we want to take another look at it, and we will come up with a surprise. Stay tuned for that.

Embedding
Hundreds asked us to have an awesome and embeddable Cloud Web Player within their web site.
We are going to do that. PRO users will be able to copy and paste their code to create a html5/javascript player, tied to a specific playlist of your choice.
We anticipate however that the playlist will be restricted to 20/25 elements or so, that should be pretty enough for such needs.

Business-tailored players
Another feature request comes from Big Companies™, they want to distribute their media through all their locations, eliminating the need for physical delivery and media.
We went a step further and introduced the concept of Company accounts and Nodes.

More specifically you will be able to register as a Business entity and add Nodes to your account.
Each node can represent a physical location, like a continent, region, even a server room.
Then you can decide what to play on any of your nodes, see if they are online, pinpoints them on a map, and much more, all in real time.
You will be provided a unique URL for each of those nodes, just open it in the location’s browser and you’re set.

There is much more and development is going steady.

Also for the first time we are open to talk with investors interested in supporting our platform.
Contact us at support@audiobox.fm for more informations.

As usual, have fun!

Hello AudioBoxers,
Cody just released an app that lets you control the Cloud Web Player remotely through your iPhone.

Give it a whirl: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audioboxremote/id438627108?mt=8&ls=1

Regarding this kind of integration we are working on something similar on our official Android application, stay tuned for further updates!

Hello AudioBoxers,
Recurly did a good job at integrating PayPal in their infrastructure, so we took advantage of that and enabled it as a form of payment again.

Should you have any problems the email is the usual support@audiobox.fm.

Have fun!

Hello AudioBoxers,
we all knew this was coming, first Amazon Cloud Player, then Google Music.

I was thinking that it’s better to let our users know how we feel about this.

Indeed they have huge possibilities, while we are a tiny software house busy delivering what’s best for our users and our products.
But.. of course we don’t give up! We are up to the challenge and we still pursue our goal, to make AudioBox.fm the best platform to store your media library around!

Now, the site needs a refresh and so does our Cloud Web Player and we’re working on it; but we are going also to add some new nifty features very soon, like podcast support and Android Remote capabilities.
Yes, you will be able to control the Cloud Web Player or another Android’s Player directly from your phone.

If you would like to see something particular just send your ideas to support@audiobox.fm, we read everything.

On a side note I would like to thank our users and the developer community that uses the AudioBox.fm API and that we are very proud of having.

As usual, have fun!

Following a precious user’s suggestion we rolled out the m3u feature, letting you stream your media library in the cloud with your application of choice.

M3U files contains songs informations, like duration, artist, title and where the media is located.
The M3U file AudioBox.fm provides is directly linked within our API, so simply download the file and start streaming!

You can find where to download M3U files in your Library Manager: http://audiobox.fm/manager/playlists

Not all existing media applications supports M3U properly, for instance we found out that Winamp cannot follow HTTP redirects when initiating a stream; we however already wrote a note to their team and we will try to find a solution, meanwhile iTunes, and probably many other players, are working properly.

Players will also ask username and password to access your stream, of course this is the email address and password combination you are using on AudioBox.fm.

Tests:
- VLC (ok, but does not save http auth info: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=62929&start=0)
- iTunes (ok, just drag the m3u file in the Playlist section of the sidebar, check out also http://www.burroak.on.ca/m3u2itunes.html)
- Winamp (not ok, does not follow redirects: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?p=2760747#post2760747)

Let us know if you experience problems with any other player and we will try our best to overcome those problems.

As always, have fun!