Like most, I have a profound love/hate relationship with Apple Music – the latter stemming mostly from the fact that it’s all but impossible to stream lossless audio across – let alone hi-res.
I’ve been toying around with MusicKit for a bit, building a menu bar app for the Mac. Before I knew, I ended up with a round of apps (Mac, iPhone and iPad) that offer Now Playing, list browsing your Apple Music account, search and queue. All good, nothing world shaking. Good fun.
It got interesting when I added a little bridge (wrapping together ApplicationMusicPlayer, a small http-server and a bit of Bonjour/mDNS trickery) running on a Mac, connected to a dedicated endpoint (DAC or Digital transport). Suddenly I the app became a nice little remote, able to ship lossless/highres Apple Music around. Then I built the bridge into the remote apps – suddenly any Apple device running the app (or bridge) can play by itself and becomes a play target for any other remote.
I run the bridge on a Mac mini, through a USB/Coax converter into my speakers (hi-res without compromise) – but also play on my MacBook. Or iPhone. Or iPad. Simultaneously, if needed. (I never need it, but still… ;-)).
Not sure where I am going with this. There’s a bit more to discover in MusicKit – and a full-blown dekstop app could be fun as well. We’ll see. Anyone interested, let’s discuss.
I’ve been toying around with MusicKit for a bit, building a menu bar app for the Mac. Before I knew, I ended up with a round of apps (Mac, iPhone and iPad) that offer Now Playing, list browsing your Apple Music account, search and queue. All good, nothing world shaking. Good fun.
It got interesting when I added a little bridge (wrapping together ApplicationMusicPlayer, a small http-server and a bit of Bonjour/mDNS trickery) running on a Mac, connected to a dedicated endpoint (DAC or Digital transport). Suddenly I the app became a nice little remote, able to ship lossless/highres Apple Music around. Then I built the bridge into the remote apps – suddenly any Apple device running the app (or bridge) can play by itself and becomes a play target for any other remote.
I run the bridge on a Mac mini, through a USB/Coax converter into my speakers (hi-res without compromise) – but also play on my MacBook. Or iPhone. Or iPad. Simultaneously, if needed. (I never need it, but still… ;-)).
Not sure where I am going with this. There’s a bit more to discover in MusicKit – and a full-blown dekstop app could be fun as well. We’ll see. Anyone interested, let’s discuss.
