IsraeliAmerican startup TuneWiki has come a long way.
Soon after the iPhone’s launch, the company released an application that allowed users to view highly-accurate lyrics synced karaoke style to any song stored in their music library. But because there was no App Store at the time, TuneWiki was limited to users with jailbroken (hacked) iPhones. Despite this, the application has racked up over 1.2 million downloads since its launch - a number competitive with those seen by the most popular Apple sanctioned apps. The company raised a funding round from Benchmark Capital’s Israel fund.
And now, after nearly a year of developing a Karaokee-like music program for hacked iPhones, the company has developed an application that stands a good chance at becoming the standard media player on Google’s forthcoming Android platform.
At first glance, the Android version of TuneWiki has more than a little in common with the iPhone’s default media player (except with a black color scheme). Songs are sorted into spartan but easy to navigate lists, and playing a song displays its album art alongside standard playback controls. The player integrates TuneWiki’s extensive database of lyrics, which are played karaoke-style alongside your songs (lyrics are pulled from a user-modified database). There’s also support for YouTube videos - if you search for a song you don’t have, the player will automatically take you to the YouTube version, which also support synced lyrics.
Perhaps most exciting is TuneWiki’s integration with location services. Because the player can optionally tell TuneWiki’s servers what song you’re listening to, it can offer an interactive map that displays musical tastes across the world. This could be a huge hit on college campuses, where breakthrough artists tend to be discovered first. It’s also fun to find people in Dubai who listen to Kelly Clarkson (see the video below).
One of the most key features to the iPhone’s success is its ability to sync seamlessly with a user’s media library through iTunes. TuneWiki recognizes this, and is doing everything it can to make syncing as painless as possible. The company will be offering plugins for iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Songbird, and will also feature support for wireless syncing across Bluetooth or Wi-fi.
Some of these features are already offered on the jailbroken iPhone app, but the Android version is clearly TuneWiki’s focus, and for good reason. The company is one of fifty finalists in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, and has received extensive support from Google and a number of other companies during development.
Android is an open platform, which means users (or at least device manufacturers) will be able to install whatever media player they want onto the phones. Despite this freedom, there will probably be one or two media players that emerge as the platform standards. TuneWiki has positioned itself to become one of these, with features that go above and beyond those found on the iPhone, and a focus on keeping things as simple as possible.
Here’s a demo video we took on the app running on the Android emulator:
pretty cool app
makes learning songs easy
“…Perhaps most exciting is TuneWiki’s integration with location services. Because the player can optionally tell TuneWiki’s servers what song you’re listening to…”
It’ll prompt you about local venue with performances by bands in the same genre, too. Add mobile payments for tickets to said “near-by” performances while you are at it. Just give it your Last.FM RSS or APML and you are “ready to rock” as it were.
I love this service
TuneWiki was fantastic on my jailbroken 1.1.4 iPhone. I wish it was available as a replacement for the iPod app on 2.0. However, being able to run as a background task it pretty crucial for a music app. The Pandora, Last.fm, and other radio-type apps are really being screwed by Apple’s vigorously anti-competitive restrictions.
TuneWiki, Pandora, Last.fm - I really hope to see them all make the jump to Android. It would also be helpful if someone would start making some Android handsets. The iPhone needs competition, desperately.
not bad at all.
I refresh Cydia (like Installer) daily for what new stuff trickles down the 2.0 pipe. In the back of my mind though, I’m really just hoping to reacquire TuneWiki. When I took the plunge of 2.0 TuneWiki was the only app that really had improved my music experience with the iP. I miss it dearly, but not enough to go back to 1.1.4.
the advantage of tunewiki is its compatiblity, it will broaden to jailbroken iphone users. it will give them a good users base. also it local service is also good
I have a feeling that they haven’t cleared the copyright issue. IP lawfirms are just waiting for them to launch.
Yeah, as someone who works with music copyright and publishing rights everyday, I can’t imagine this could gain much mainstream traction without some serious lawsuits or paying out the butt for publishing rights for each song. IF they can even get the thousands of publishers to license them.
As someone who works with music copyright and publishing rights everyday: is “paying out the butt” a legal term? Just kidding…
I can certainly see your point of view, as may a judge, but it’s certainly questionable. Whether licensed for streaming by Last.fm, or licensed for play when you obtain a song by legal means (i.e. buy a CD), some limited right of use for the lyrics to that song are conferred.
If the license agreement for streaming says, “streaming an audio performance and ONLY AUDIO of that performance,” that seems pretty cut and dry. However, it may not say exactly that. There may be a provision like, “sound recording may be converted to a format suitable for streaming.” Lyrics are suitable for streaming, aren’t they?
Without advanced knowledge of laws and licenses regarding streaming radio, and the inner workings of TuneWiki (where they get their lyrics from, for example), it’s hard to say exactly what they’re violating and how. I guess that’s what real laywers and judges are for.
However, if I were TuneWiki and defending myself in court, I might make mention of the fact that lyrics to every song are available on hundreds of sites around the internet. Trademarks can be invalidated if they’re not defended. Why shouldn’t copyrighted works carry the same burden?
If that’s their sole defense, TuneWiki would probably lose, but it does illustrate how flawed and inconsistent our legal system is. Laws concerning intellectual property are too favorable to the rights-holders, and too ignorant of innovation and the public-good.
Would Apple ever licence out their player?
Cool app.
for more Israeli mobile start-ups take a look at http://www.TalkingMobile.com
This video post is in contention with the NDA signed by the creators of TuneWiki with Google when they entered the Android Challenge Round 2.
Launching Youtube videos is awesome. It should also launch Last.fm “Similar artists” radio. And once Last.fm figures out to put advertising on Android, they could also allow on-demand listening of all the music. Perhaps even on-demand “Download complete discography of this artist”.
Not sure how much I would like to watch lyrics of all those tracks. But I would definitely enjoy wiki access to meta information about the music I am listening too. As well as realtime user comments on specific songs, on artists. And a way to browse remixes, alternative versions of each song. Or view that song in the chronology of songs published by the artist, and basically any type of meta data.
But last.fm functionality is my biggest feature request. Last.fm functionality should also work offline, basing on the available songs on the device, and it should be able to load a whole bunch of webradio content into a cache on the device and play from that while offline. Access to Last.fm recommendations should be so configurable that the software should make it possible to even filter within recommendations for example to play recommended music closer to a specific song or within a specific genre or mood.
Wow.. this article is so off base… what does lyrics have to do with media playback? All that Tunewiki did not create any media player. All they are doing on both the iPhone and Android is building services on top of the media players already built into the platforms.
As mentioned…. unless they have big cash, get the lawyers ready. As a one-time purchase on the AppStore is not gonna handle lyric royalties in perpetuity, that’s for sure.
CoreCodec has announced they are about to launch CorePlayer for the iPhone on the AppStore (they created TCPMP and CoreAVC)… now that’s something Jason Kincaid should be looking into.