There are loads of music applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is hardly surprising considering the history of the iPod device and the deep integration of the portable devices with iTunes.
Up until now, the most downloaded application for jailbroken iPhones on Cydia was also a music-related one: TuneWiki, an app that brings music streaming, a lyrics database and music videos from YouTube to one social, customizable media player (iTunes link). In total, the application was downloaded an estimated 2 million times through the Cydia Store.
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:
The race is on for software supremacy on Google’s Android platform, as developers compete to develop the applications that will eventually come preloaded on branded phones. Today TuneWiki, one of the most popular third-party developers for the iPhone, has announced a media player for Android that will feature an iPhone-esque interface, support for synching with iTunes, and the karaoke-like lyric functionality that put them on the map.
Owners of jailbroken iPhones may be familiar with TuneWiki already – As we mentioned last week, the iPhone version has seen “hundreds of thousands” of downloads since December 2007. The iPhone version of the software features a player that displays karaoke-style lyrics in time with songs in the device’s library. TuneWiki has partnered with Universal to provide lyrics legally, and has ongoing talks with other music labels.
The Android version of the software has the same karaoke synching, with added support for music videos that are synched with lyrics. While this is significant in itself, the real news here is the media player that will accompany the software. From the brief demonstration seen in the video below, the player seems to be every bit as usable as the one seen on the iPhone (it looks nearly exactly the same, which isn’t a bad thing).
Android may be an “Open” platform that will allow handset manufacturers (and possibly users) to install whatever applications they want, but we’re going to be seeing a few dominant leaders emerge in each space. There won’t be any shortage of iPhone-imitating apps, but TuneWiki has given itself a leg up by establishing a number of features that will be difficult to replicate. Whether or not these will be enough to lift TuneWiki above the rest of the pack remains to be seen.
You can try an emulated version of the software (minus some of the navigation seen in the video) here.
Israeli startup TuneWiki delivers user generated song lyrics to music playing on a PC or mobile device.
The service, which was launched in December 2007, became a hit with “hundreds of thousands” of downloads to jailbroken iPhones alone (says our source), despite the very sketchy nature of the main website and the fact that only hacked iPhones can use the app.
Why is TuneWiki so popular? The video at the end of the post shows how it synchronizes lyrics (karaoke style) to music playing on the iPhone.
A source tells us that the startup has raised an initial round of financing from Benchmark Capital’s Israel fund. General Partner Michael Eisenberg joined the board of directors. We’re still trying to track down the size of the round, and if there were any other investors.
Song Lyrics are still relatively hard to find legally on the Internet. Last year Yahoo began publishing lyrics for hundreds of thousands of songs in image format (to reduce copying and scraping, through a partnership with Gracenote.
TuneWiki as a legal song lyric wiki alone is an interesting site (they recently announced that Universal Music is permitting usage). The syncing software can turn it into a real business. Look for it to take off when official third party applications on the iPhone are released this summer. For now, though, the hacked application is one of the feature applications on the iPhone installer.
TuneWiki was founded by serial entrepreneurs and former Israeli fighter pilots Amnon Sarig and Rani Cohen.
There are loads of music applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is hardly surprising considering the history of the iPod device and the deep integration of the portable devices with iTunes. 
