What is Parrot Tunes (Open Web Media Library and Player)
Parrot Tunes is a web application for organizing and managing personal music collection (music and video clips), such as iTunes, songBird and more. It also has an essential player. View screenshots from the app as it is at this time Video presentation of the app as it is currently
What it takes to use the application
The application runs on a web server like all pages and web applications. Specifically on linux server with Apache / PHP and mySQL.
What technologies are used
The application is written in PHP, Javascript and HTML5. For a database uses mySQL. For some extra features (if the user wants it), some linux tools are used.
Target Audience
- Whoever has a large music library and wants more flexibility, to own the data and to be able to do what he wants.
- Whoever wants to be able to easily carry his files where he wants (directories, discs), without worrying that the library will break .
- To anyone who wants to access his music from everywhere, regardless of the operating system.
- To anyone who wants their own personal music cloud.
- In cafes / bars, for example, or radio stations that want to play music from playlists, or even display music videos and album covers on a screen.
At what point of development is it?
At this time the Parrot Tunes, is in beta version. All of its key features are working, but it still needs work on the interface and fix some bugs.
What features does the app have?
The application has the following features at this time
- User system. There are two kinds of users. Admin has full rights to manage the music library and application. Simple user who only has music playback permissions.
- The application is multilingual. You can easily add any language you wants.
- Synchronize files with the application. The user gives the application the paths that have its files (separate music from the music videos), the application reads all the files and registers them to the database, with all the necessary elements they can find (title, artist, genre etc )
- The application can get song details from the existing collection of the user as it has in iTunes, since it can accept the iTunes xml and sync it based on it.
- It reads the media id tags from the files themselves, if any.
- The user can later perform bulk editing of song data or per song.
- The files that are supported are what HTML5 technology allows. That is mp3 / m4a for audio files and mp4 / m4v for video files.
- For audio files, the application itself can find album cover of the song if it is embedded in mp3 / m4a. If it is not embedded, the user can add it for what songs it wants.
- The user has the ability to erase (and the physical file and record on the base) a particular song or many.
- The user can transfer some or all of the files to another location or even change their name and the application can understand that these files correspond to specific records in the database. The user can transfer the files to other directories or drives without any problems in library.
- After the user has imported his music collection into the app, he can search whatever song he wants. Title, artist, album, genre, date, official / live, rating, date of recording, last played date, play set, song duration, file size, video dimensions.
- The user can filter the list to play all the songs or just the music or just the music videos.
- On full screen, all the key elements of the song are always displayed at the beginning of the song (as on music TV channels). Rating, progress bar with song time, set of songs, title, artist, album, chronology.
- There are keyboard shortcuts for various functions. For rating a song, forward / backward, play / pause, next, up / down the volume, etc.
- When a song does not have its cover album, then it searches and displays it through the iTunes API. If it does not find it uses the Giphy API to display gifs based on the title of the song. The user can press G (enable / disable) and always show gifs from Giphy.
- It is possible to automatically download videos/audio from youTube. The user gives the links of the videos (or youtube playlists) he wants to download and the application downloads them and passes them automatically to the collection. For this feature, a separate linux tool is required.
- Manual Playlists. The user can create a playlist, with a name he wants, and then add any songs he wants in the song.
- The user can export the library to use the data in another application. Either a specific playlist or the entire collection. At the same time, he can copy the files to another directory so he can transfer them to another friend, etc.
- Jukebox. Users are able to browse a specific page (with a specific playlist chosen by the admin) where they will vote for songs they want to play next. Ideal for cafe / bar or radio stations that can use the application (experimental)
- The app can also play on chrome on mobile (experimental)
Features that the application will have in the future
Beyond the interface that still wants work and is not what the final is now, there are thoughts on what will be added in the near future.
- More ways to manage the collection, fill in the correct song details etc
- An API will be created to make even his own application using the music library.
- Other possible APIs like giphy will be added to give more visual display options to the full screen player.
How can someone download it and install it?
The application can be downloaded from bitbucket.org The installation instructions are here Change logs are here
User License
This application is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. That is free to anyone who wants and can use / modify it as it wants. But it is not allowed to modify it and share it.
Support application development
The application is free of charge, but anyone who wants to buy some (depending on the amount they want to give) from the optional licenses to help us finance the development of the application
The optional license (whichever is selected) does not offer anything extra to the user, but is only for financial support for the development of the application.