Show HN: Musish – Web client for Apple Music

by pplonski86 • 8 years ago

141 63 8 years ago

eloy• 8 years ago

Please change the title so it includes that this is about an Apple Music webclient

My first question was going to be web client for what? We need to not assume people reading just a title have any clue what you're talking about.

sctb• 8 years ago

Updated from “Unofficial Open-Source Web Client my friends and I created”.

jolmg• 8 years ago

Title is very misleading. I came here thinking it was a new web browser (an http client).

coob• 8 years ago

This is really well put together, works flawlessly for me.

sonaltr• 8 years ago

This is amazing! One of the main reasons I went with Spotify after 3 yrs of Apple Music is because I moved to use Linux as my primary desktop and I didn't have an Apple Music client there. This is making me reconsider getting Apple Music subscription again!

I'm going to see if there's a Github link or maybe reverse engineer the API and make it into a desktop app (mainly for Media key controls and Desktop integration to be honest).

subie• 8 years ago

GitHub Link: https://github.com/Musish/Musish

not op btw

Gaelan• 8 years ago

IIRC Apple has a JS SDK. Could run that in electron

jklein11• 8 years ago

It looks like Apple has a public API for this.[1] No need to reverse engineer.

1. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi

sjroot• 8 years ago

Looks very well done! Is the source code available anywhere? I was planning on working on an Apple Music web client myself and would be happy to contribute.

Edit: Musish github repo: https://github.com/Musish/Musish

magic5227• 8 years ago

This is amazing!

How did one person make a client that is 100x faster and more stable than Apple's?

vesak• 8 years ago

Here’s a few guesses:

1. It’s not 100x (or even 2x) faster or significantly more stable than Apple Music

2. It’s always easier to make a nice app when starting from scratch versus trying to fix existing older software to be nice

3. Apple did a good job with their APIs

mockdev3• 8 years ago

Yeah I don't think it is any faster or more stable than the actual Apple web client. They probably use the same API's. Plus lots of considerations that applies to any website. Is it available in multiple languages? How accessible is it? Does it work on older browsers? Also, digging around, the Apple web client seems pretty up to date. Isn't old software. I like the search feature though on this.

mockdev3• 8 years ago

Yeah looks like you can get Chinese pages as well. https://itunes.apple.com/cn/artist/taylor-swift/159260351

snek• 8 years ago

Seems like spotify and apple music both do the same thing here. the js api creates an iframe to their "embedded player" which is just their full player without a ui which will respond to rpc commands from the page.

https://embed.music.apple.com/ https://sdk.scdn.co/embedded/index.html

Would be nice if paying users could access actual streams, although that would probably violate the drm or something.

jdillaaa7• 8 years ago

What do you mean by actual streams?

penagwin• 8 years ago

The audio stream. This will likely never ever be supported by Spotify/Apple because of DRM reasons.

xfer• 8 years ago

Yeah Spotify doesn't give you an api for stream either, probably related to drm, i wonder how Qobuz(https://github.com/Qobuz/api-documentation/blob/master/endpo...) does this without DRM issues?

leppr• 8 years ago

What makes you think Qobuz relies on Spotify ?

jtl9992• 8 years ago

Spotify DRM _has_ been cracked before (extraction 320kbps Vorbis streams without recompression), but for obvious reasons there are no ready-made public PoC's.

kingosticks2• 8 years ago

Doesn't librespot count?

yantrams• 8 years ago

Great job! Thank you. I'll see if I can add support to this for the last.fm scrobbler extension that I use.

PS: For those of you who use Apple music and are into Indie / Alternative music, here's a 2018 mixtape I made recently.

http://linkdot.link/2018-mixtape.html

Edit: Added playlist

yankcrime2• 8 years ago

This is great, thanks! As someone who previously listened to Apple Music on Linux via the Windows edition of iTunes running using Wine in a Docker container (lol), a proper alternative is massively appreciated.

jdillaaa7• 8 years ago

May I ask why all of the effort to use Apple Music? Why not switch over to Spotify which has a ton more open libraries / APIs?

ghostly_s2• 8 years ago

Personally I don't use Spotify because the interface is hostile to people who prefer listening to full albums, and I don't want to support a monoculture if I have an alternative (not that Apple is some great panacea for artists, of course).

yankcrime2• 8 years ago

A couple of reasons. The integration with my existing iTunes Library is fantastic, and also there have been enough albums / bands only on Apple Music (for whatever reason) for me to want to stick with it.

kitsunesoba• 8 years ago

Considering how long Spotify has been dragging their feet on replacing the long-deprecated libspotify, I can’t agree that they’re the more open of the two options. I’ve been waiting to release a client project built on a messy hybrid of the Spotify REST API (for most functions) and libspotify (for playback) for years now and there’s still no hint of the replacement they’ve been promising.

benkaiser• 8 years ago

(self-plug here) If you're interested in web-based music players, I actually author one that's open source. It uses youtube/soundcloud iframes to play the tracks themselves, but allows for syncing playlists across from spotify as well as browsing top charts and syncing libraries between devices.

https://next.kaiserapps.com/discover

https://github.com/benkaiser/stretto/tree/next

wuliwong• 8 years ago

i made www.muusical.com a few years ago. i haven't been maintaining much lately but I'm still quite interested in meeting people with similar interests.

jdillaaa7• 8 years ago

Lovely design. Question, why would we not just use Apple's official site? For example, search for something on https://tools.applemusic.com/en-us, then just click sign in on the top right once you select your music. I believe there is a way to see your current library too.

Great work.

Edit: Changed link.

ghostly_s2• 8 years ago

I've never heard of that site, and it clearly doesn't look like it's intended for use by subscribers. I can't get it to play a full song even after signing in.

rglover• 8 years ago

Really well done. Design was a nice surprise :)

e1ven• 8 years ago

Has Apple said anything about why they aren't releasing their own web player?

With the API integration it seems pretty straight-forward to make one, so there's got to be a strategic reason they don't want to?

Maybe they want to encourage people to use native apps wherever possible, since they have more advantage over Chromebooks there?

filoleg• 8 years ago

My personal guess:

1. Primary reason: it is a job someone needs to do, and it isn’t high on the priority list at all due to many possible factors.

2. Secondary reason: as a side effect of (1), it encourages the use of their native apps, which they might want for whatever reasons as well.

aylmao2• 8 years ago

In the short-term, micro context, like most exclusive Apple apps, it's one more reason to buy Apple devices and lock existing users into upgrading to Apple devices. Switching apps is a hassle, especially if there's no easy ways to migrate data.

In the broader context and rough terms, it's against Apple's interests that web apps in general take off over native apps. In theory, there's no reason web apps shouldn't be as capable as native apps for 90% of workflows (playing music being well in that 90%).

If web apps, at large, take off:

1. The App Store loses relevance, and so Apple loses influence over developers, distribution, and 30% piece of the cake. 2. Apple loses platform lock-in, since web apps run everywhere. It'd be a no-brainer for companies to have one team developing for the web, instead of one for the web and one or two for mobile.

I don't doubt if Apple wanted they could form a team with enough expertise to build solid web apps and make their services gain marketshare, but the experience would either have to be subpar vs native (like iCloud.com is IMO) or solid enough that they would unwittingly prove web apps are equally capable to native apps, and so create demand for more web apps, more progress in that space, and stray away from an advantageous position for them.

artimaeis• 8 years ago

Apple Music is not an exclusive app though:

Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...

Windows 10:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/itunes/9pb2mz1zmb1s

ashraful• 8 years ago

I had created something similar using Spotify and Youtube to replace a need for a spotify subscription - https://www.livejam.com

Now I'm thinking about turning it into a desktop app coz its a pain to keep a tab open for playing music.

degenerate• 8 years ago

Maybe you could fork FreeTube to save some time:

https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube

lisowski• 8 years ago

I did kinda that same thing for soundcloud a few years ago with meteor <3. It's been awhile since this code was touched.

I stopped developing it because soundcloud's UI started to really match my design and feature set.

but:

- my search is faster (just a long startup time) - it will actually shuffle all your songs and not just the last 20-ish

https://sctunes.herokuapp.com/ https://github.com/hipstersmoothie/sctunes.meteor

elwell2• 8 years ago

The code is very well-written.

Some highlights:

https://github.com/Musish/Musish/blob/master/src/app/service...

https://github.com/Musish/Musish/blob/master/src/app/utils/U...

https://github.com/Musish/Musish/blob/master/src/app/utils/C...

victorantos• 8 years ago

What about this horrible code section: https://github.com/Musish/Musish/blob/74a1a0c570c002d5980f15...

elwell2• 8 years ago

Well it is JavaScript...

buzzert• 8 years ago

Very cool! Would be incredible if you could access your iCloud Music Library as well.

artellectual• 8 years ago

I'm perplexed as to why the web client is so much better than the native itunes client. This was completely unexpected. I have to say the web platform has come a very long way.

nicoburns• 8 years ago

Indeed, for most things it's more than posisble write a performant web app these days. The bloat/lag found on the web is mostly due to poor/lazy engineering, and in some cases, ads/tracking code. Although, I believe native platforms make it easier to write performant code.

grogenaut2• 8 years ago

Apple has little motivation to improve the music player and has a massive megalith in iTunes to support. It does so much it’s likely quite difficult to work on. I mean I think it still installs bonjour on windows for some reason.

accatyyc2• 8 years ago

That reason is probably to discover AirPlay speakers on the network, right? Sounds useful to me

mockdev3• 8 years ago

Are you referring to the Apple web client or this one in being much better?

darkstar_16• 8 years ago

This is actually pretty nice. I was expecting a heavy bloated web app but its not. Good work.

Show HN: Musish – Web client for Apple Music

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