You don’t have to be a fan of the movie High Fidelity to remember the 80s and 90s culture of making mixtapes for friends.
Handwritten lists on the back of cassettes, CDs adorned with sharpie titles — these things probably seem like distant memories in the digital age.
But our desire to share music that inspires us, that makes us laugh, that moves us, never left. It’s just the technology that surrounds how we interact with music, that has changed so rapidly.
BlueMuze aims to help bring back this ability. Transfer custom-made playlists, and the music files/MP3s that go with them, directly to your friends.
Select some songs, put them in the order you want, give your playlist a name, then send it to a friend.
You will only ever need the Trial version to receive music from someone else.
To send music, you can use either the trial or full version but the trial is limited to sending 7 songs at a time.
Not trying to pick a bone but why does a Bluetooth app need Full Internet Access permissions? I am just curious to know. For debugging users Force Close messages?
The Following User Says Thank You to sohguanh For This Useful Post:
Thanks for the inquiry. The internet permission is for WiFi transfers (New feature). No data is sent past the local WiFi network however. Meaning no data is sent over the internet.
(edited to reflect current use of permission)
Last edited by alostpacket; June 23rd, 2011 at 08:51 AM.
You know on second reading, I realized you were looking for a more technical description since you seem to be a dev yourself. Sorry about that.
Anyways, the reasoning was that I didnt want people stuck having to manually update -- ever.
This is because there may come a time when an update is required to keep the app working, and if someone held back and didnt update the whole app would break for them if they tried to connect to someone that had a newew version. I tried to plan for all situations so that different versions of the app are compatible and can send and receive music, but realized that it's entirely possible there are situations I havent considered yet that would cause different versions of the app to not be able to connect to each other.
This would happen if I ever had to change the applications Bluetooth UUID (say due to rampant piracy or something). It would also happen if I ever had to change the serializable meta objects that I send from one device to another over bluetooth to let them know what file is coming, the album name, how big the file is, etc.
These meta objects implement Serializable and because of this MUST match exactly. They must have the same package name, same properties, and same methods as well as the same serialVersionUID, which I generated myself to make sure that eclipse, dalvik don't generate their own that might break/change.
Anyways I hope thet sheds some light on the tech reasons
Still, would love to hear from anyone using the app their thoughts, I'll be pushing a big update later today and would love to see what people like/dislike so far to make sure I work out the bugs for the 1.0 release (version will be 0.9 as of later today).
- New mini audio player for the Selection, Arrange and Bluetooth screens
- It should be much easier to preview music in order with the new mini audio player
- Complete rewrite of the Bluetooth reconnection code
- Connections should be signifigantly more stable now and able to recover much better from any disconnections
- Fixed rare bug with multiple dialogs popping up
Edit: Here's a screenshot of the new audio player and you can see it's #5 in the playlist order
Last edited by alostpacket; March 2nd, 2011 at 06:04 AM.
Update to 0.9.5
- New 2-tier caching system for the selection screen
- Should get up to 90% faster loading times
Next up: some minor bugfixes and one more big feature will be added before release.
But please feel free to let me know any feedback or suggestions/questions/problems whatever! You can post here or email me through the market as always
update 0.9.6
- Lots of bugfixes
- Bluetooth screen now saves state better
- Fixed bad FC bug with 2.1 devices
- Some performance tweaks with arrange screen (drag and drop)
- Lots of new features on the Arrange screen media player
- Move items to first, last, up, down or remove them
- This offers an alternative to drag and drop for arranging songs
- New feature to show selected only, deselected only, or all
- New feature where BlueMuze will better "remember" your selections from one screen to the next
- This should make it much easier to make selections, arrange them, and go back and change your selections without losing the order
- A few misc. bugfixes
Screenshots of the updated media player, and new selection options in the bottom menu:
Last edited by alostpacket; March 9th, 2011 at 10:44 PM.
1.0.0
- Beta is now over. More features in progress though
- More improvements on remembering selections and play order from one screen to the next
- New quick-view for playlists
- New Auto-select preference for playlists
- New "toast" hints to highlight features
- Hints can be disabled in the preferences
- Fixed rare FCs occurring after inactivity
- Fixed a typo
Screenshots of the new features: playlist quick-view and "toast" hints
1.2.0 released
- NEW: Transfer over Wi-Fi (full version)
- WiFi transfers can be 5-20 times faster than Bluetooth
- New Preferences
- Auto-disable WiFi when sending with Bluetooth
- Auto-disable Bluetooth when sending with WiFi (full version)
- This will make transfers for the free version and full version fast and more stable
- Hints now turned off by default, can be enabled in preferences.
- Reduced file size of the app
1.3.0
PLEASE NOTE: This is a required upgrade for continued compatibility
(Due to adding the genre info in songs, BlueMuze will no long be compatible with older versions)
- NEW: Sort by and search by genre
- NEW: Playlist backup & restore to SD (BETA)
- Improved UI and graphics
- Improved reliability, stability & security of WiFi connections (Full Version)
- Removed 60 day trial time limit. Trial does not expire now
Actually you answered my question with that. I've been looking into the different ways to broadcast between multiple devices and the direct to IP through an AP was one of the ways I found. Just curious how you were doing it, and with nice large music files too. I may end up having to develop with a rooted device as my target just to do what I want as broadcast over ad hoc. Thank you for the response, and you're app looks awesome btw keep up the good work.
The Following User Says Thank You to Hawk2001 For This Useful Post:
That'll give you a way to find the IP while only broadcasting on the local network (eg 192.168.255 instead of 255.255.255)
Then once you have the IP you can close the udp connection and open a regular direct TCP/IP connection. This of course would not work at a place like Starbucks, where they could possible block device to device communication and/or upd entirely, but it should work fine for home Wi-Fi networks.
The Following User Says Thank You to alostpacket For This Useful Post:
I came across that in my research as well. It is a very interesting discovery method; however, I really want to be able to do this without the need of any AP.
Yeah I hear ya, If I ever get ad-hoc figured out (sans root) I'll post back here (or send you a pm) but not sure if that will ever be possible.
NFC may have some interesting possibilities for helping setup connections though. Definitely will be looking into that over the next year or so. Possibly something like direct IP connections over 4G. Supposedly phones are going to be more easily addressable via IPs but I havent looked into it much yet.
Have put out a few updates recently with a lot of "under the hood" improvements/fixes and a few new graphics
1.4.3
-Improvements in Wi-Fi stability
-Minor Bluetooth improvements
-Added playlist backup to individual playlists
-Fixed a selection bug where selections were remembered incorrectly
-Improved Instructions
1.4.2
-Fixed a bug related to media scanner
-Changed preferences slightly
-Minor graphics fixes
-Fixed a performance related bug
1.4.0
-Fixed FC that happend after prolonged inactivity
-Big improvements to playlist backup-restore
-Some new graphics
-Some optimizations related to the internal media DB
The Following User Says Thank You to alostpacket For This Useful Post:
Thank you for adding the playlist backup and restore. Honestly I was just looking for a simple app that just did this but couldn't find one. I've lost my playlists more times than I care to say! Your app is just what I need plus so much more.
One question, if I just want to use the PL backup/restore, is the trial version all I need? Thank you again!
The Following User Says Thank You to wcaterino For This Useful Post:
1.4.5
- Improved display for tablets
- Lots of bug fixes
- Stability improvements
- Still looking into Wi-Fi (beta) issues
- Minor performance improvments
- Fixed an issue with the app switching to trial mode
1.4.6
- EXPERIMENTAL: New option to let the phone sleep during transfers in the settings - should save a lot of battery life!
- NEW: Manual Wi-Fi connections
- NEW: BlueMuze will remember the last IP connected to for manual connections
- Wi-Fi stability & performance improvements
- Bluetooth pairing improvements
- Bluetooth Name, Mac address, and Wi-Fi IP now shown to user
- Removed hard to see dark colors from menus
- Misc bug fixes
- New permissions relate only to Wi-Fi stability improvements
Can you check to be sure the playlist files exist on the SDcard in the /BlueMuze/Playlists/ folder with a file manager (such as Astro or OI File manager)
Did you backup the playlists using BlueMuze?
As always please feel free to email me directly for support too.
Can you check to be sure the playlist files exist on the SDcard in the /BlueMuze/Playlists/ folder with a file manager (such as Astro or OI File manager)
Did you backup the playlists using BlueMuze?
As always please feel free to email me directly for support too.
You can reach me at:
software (at) (my forum username) .com
Hi alostpacket,
Yes, there are four playlists in the BlueMuze/Playlists folder from when I previously used the app to back them up just this week.
The Following User Says Thank You to TrooperThorn For This Useful Post:
1.4.7
-Bugfix release
-Major rewrite of playlist backup/restore & folder handling
-This should address most issues users may have been seeing
-Fixed an issue with Bluetooth connections failing on first try
-Fixed an issue with Wi-Fi manual connections
KOWNN ISSUES:
Note: the playlist backup & restore feature is still in beta. Please let us know if you have any problems whatsoever. ***Please be sure to make extra backups of playlist files to your PC (just in case)***
1) A few users have reported not seeing playlists when flashing CM7 or FCs when restoring playlists.
- This issue should be resolved in 1.4.7. Please let us know if you continue to see this problem
2) Playlists created in Google Music Beta are not visible in BlueMuze.
- Unfortunately there is little we can do for this issue. All 3rd party music apps have this problem. This is because Google hides the playlists it creates.
We urge you to please write Google and ask them follow their own "open data" policies and allow playlists to be seen by other apps. To learn more about Google's own policy, visit this Google website: the Data Liberation Front
3) Playlists use a forward slash / as a folder separator.
This is not a bug but rather the default folder separator for Android. However we hope to add a tool to help with converting files for the desktop in the future.
Last edited by alostpacket; August 9th, 2011 at 07:10 PM.
Reason: Liberated a typo
This program appeared to be working great at first, soon after I started noticing bugs though.
Issue #1) Every once in a while(not sure of a specific trigger) my playlist will be missing, this is temporarily fixed by restoring the playlist again.
Issue #2) Anytime I try to change the order of my songs they get thrown around randomly instead of where I place them, even when editing in the player instead of Blue Muze. This problem stops after uninstalling Blue Muze.
I understand this isn't the main feature of Blue Muze, however it'd be nice if it worked, and at the very least wouldn't 'cause the problems it does in issue #2. At any rate, thank you for the hard work.
The Following User Says Thank You to Gogetalvl4 For This Useful Post:
Sorry you're having those two issues. As for the playlists disappearing, that's actually most likely an Android OS bug. This is why a backup and restore feature was created. A user had noticed his playlists get deleted by his phone sometimes and wanted a way to keep them safe. So I added backup and restore.
As for things appearing out of order this is the first I have heard of that particular bug, but I will definitely look into it.
Could you give me a bit more info?
1) What version of BlueMuze are you using, Paid or Trial?
2) What phone do you have?
3) is you phone rooted and/or have you installed a custom ROM on it?
4) What other apps do you use with music on the phone? Specifically, do you use Google Music (it has been known to not play nice with other apps)
anyways thanks for using the app and sorry again you're having trouble, hopefully we cant get this fixed for
The Following User Says Thank You to alostpacket For This Useful Post:
Sorry you're having those two issues. As for the playlists disappearing, that's actually most likely an Android OS bug. This is why a backup and restore feature was created. A user had noticed his playlists get deleted by his phone sometimes and wanted a way to keep them safe. So I added backup and restore.
I've actually never had that happen before until after installing Blue Muze, the reason I searched that feature out was because Cyanogen had shit video playback so I needed to flash back to Gingerbread, and I didn't want to lose my playlists. I'm not saying it's a fault of your app('cause I wouldn't know), it just turns out that it only happened soon after installing it in my case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alostpacket
As for things appearing out of order this is the first I have heard of that particular bug, but I will definitely look into it.
Could you give me a bit more info?
1) What version of BlueMuze are you using, Paid or Trial?
2) What phone do you have?
3) is you phone rooted and/or have you installed a custom ROM on it?
4) What other apps do you use with music on the phone? Specifically, do you use Google Music (it has been known to not play nice with other apps)
anyways thanks for using the app and sorry again you're having trouble, hopefully we cant get this fixed for
1)Trial
2) HTC Inspire 4G (AKA HTC Desire HD and HTC Ace)
3)Yes, I had Cyanogen installed on it, but I flashed back to stock, and then re-rooted.
Also, if you look at the comments in the market for the trial version one user said this: "saves playlists fine, but very buggy when reimporting them from sd card- it adds songs to the lists randomly." Sounds pretty similar to my problem.
The Following User Says Thank You to Gogetalvl4 For This Useful Post:
OK I will definitely take a look at that. Actually the playlist backup thing is going to get an overhaul soon. Partly because the M3U files dont seem to be "holding" the information correctly (especially for non English titles).
Anyways thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will try and have a fix soon
The Following User Says Thank You to alostpacket For This Useful Post:
OK I will definitely take a look at that. Actually the playlist backup thing is going to get an overhaul soon. Partly because the M3U files dont seem to be "holding" the information correctly (especially for non English titles).
Anyways thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will try and have a fix soon
Oh, that's probably part of my problem. Both of my playlists are foreign languages hehe.
The Following User Says Thank You to Gogetalvl4 For This Useful Post:
[App] BlueMuze - Bluetooth & Wi-Fi music & playlist transfer
