Design a system that can intelligently and seamlessly combine the music collections from all the mobile devices inside of the vehicle. All of the vehicle’s occupants should be able to browse and control the combined music collection.
The following can be assumed:
1. All of the music is stored locally on the phone
2. The system only needs to support a single phone platform (iOS or Android)
3. One of the phones is paired to a vehicle’s multimedia system via Bluetooth to stream the audio (using the A2DP protocol)
4. The vehicle has a Wifi hotspot that you can use for any networking, but this is not required.
The implementation of this system should consider ease of use, impact of latency, overall entertainment value, and how multiple users would interact with a shared resource. Beyond these initial requirements, you are free to implement any additional functionality that you feel would enhance the user-experience.
We met today to look into existing apps and services related to what we're trying to do and brainstorm ideas about what we want to create. Before our meeting, we each came up with a list of products and a list of potential features we envision our product having. We tried to organize existing services into a few different topics:
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| MUSIC TRENDS/HISTORY |
- last.fm: logs listening history and shows data about long-term music preferences
- Soundwave: creates timeline from anything you listen to on Spotify or Rdio; can see users based on location
- vs. Soundtracking (deliberate, sporadic sharing), Soundwave is automatic
- Listn: combines songs from iTunes, RDio, Spotify, YouTube; share with others
- Yap: makes custom playlists based off your music likes on FB
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| REAL-TIME SHARING |
- Rockbot: start playing a random song, users view all available songs and vote; songs play based on popularity
- MyStream: iOS devices share songs via bluetooth/wifi - create playlist and broadcast (neighbors can opt into playlist and listen along)
- Jukebox Hero: one phone is a central library hub and other devices log on as remote; uses GPS to pull jukeboxes in area
- Playmysong: just like Jukebox Hero
- Youzakk: scrapes FB accounts and foursquare location information to choose the optimal music for your location and taste profiles
- Turntable.fm: no longer exists; allowed users to take turns being DJ in virtual listening room, can up/down vote; very social
- Eavesdrop: allows streaming music from one iPhone to another
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| GAMES |
- Smule: many games (play songs on various instruments, T-Pain app, etc.)
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| CARS |
- BMW X1: new entertainment system will stream music from web
- CarTunes: app designed for listening to music in the car - particular emphasis on controlling the music while minimizing the distraction to the driver (allows customization)
After talking through all of the above related apps, we thought through limitations we had - time limit, man power, Audi's requirements, etc. - and brainstormed different ideas for what our eventual app might look like. We noted the things we liked and disliked about each of these services, and considered whether or not to incorporate these aspects into our own app and project goals. Ultimately, we decided on the following goals for the next 6 months:
CORE GOALS
- everyone can control the collection (e.g. turntable.fm)
- car safety (e.g. cartunes)
- Facebook login (for security and setting us up for potential stretch goals of scraping Facebook data)
- allow for keyword tags (genre/artists/titles/etc.)
- each person submits a playlist or group of songs that they're in the mood for (people might not want everyone in the car to see everything in their library)
STRETCH GOALS
- high priority: cloud-based music services in addition to locally saved music (look into listn)
- smart recommendations (scrape Facebook music likes, Twitter, etc.)
- gamification of music listening
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