Lately I’ve been thinking about the mix CDs I used to burn for friends. Building the perfect mix for someone took a lot of time and intention, but it was a great way to expose friends to the rare musical gems I’d discovered, and sometimes, they even returned the favor.
In the transition from physical mixtapes to cloud-hosted playlists, we stopped giving each other digital things. These days, we mostly point to things that we don’t control.
Mixapps are my answer to this problem. Drop some .mp3s into a folder, run some python scripts, and your playlist gets packaged as a Progressive Web App. Upload the resultant “mixapp” to any HTTPS-enabled host, and your friends can install it to their home screens with just a few taps.
After the initial download and cache, mixapps work completely offline on any device (iOS, Android, desktop). No subscriptions, platform dependencies, or “this song is no longer available in your region.” The files are in the computer!
Source code: https://github.com/hunterirving/mixapps
Live demo: https://hunterirving.com/vibe_capsule
For me the use case is 1. making it easy for the receiving party to receive and listen to your mix, and 2. enabling that mix to persist on their device indefinitely. Since I can’t necessarily count on the receiver to have a working CD player set up, and managing a bunch of loose files is a lot to ask of some people, I see this as a way to lower the effort required of both the sender and the receiver.
My theory is that the convenience of platforms like Spotify has eroded the cultural practice of music sharing that was so prevalent in the days of cassettes and CDs. I believe this practice can be restored, given appropriate tools. This is an attempt at developing such a tool.
The files are cached using the Cache API. This is durable storage that persists until the user explicitly clears their browser data or uninstalls the app. Once someone installs the PWA and lets the tracks download, they can listen offline indefinitely.
Interesting concept. But this does not allow sharing or backing up, or does it? It still binds to a platform
Exporting the audio files from the app isn’t something I’ve added, but this isn’t a technical impossibility, just something that hasn’t been implemented.