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Kunugiken Software Release: Pianopub

Posted: September 10th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cocoa, OS X, Site News | 38 Comments »

Pianopub is a Pandora internet radio player.  It lets you manage and listen to your stations in a native Cocoa application.  It is a port of Pianobar, please support these brilliant people.  It has built in support for the apple remote, and the media keys.  It also posts notifications of songs using growl. Listening to Pandora, I felt like I wanted to control it like iTunes, and also I wanted to not have to have my browser open just to listen to it, because I might close it accidentally.  Then when I ran across Pianobar, I was thrilled and delighted, but I just wished it was more user-friendly, and easier to control.  So thats why I made this, so now more people can enjoy the benefits of Pianobar in a convenient package.  Why not check it out yourself, its free! Download Here.  If you like it, or have ideas for new features, let me know about it in the comments.

Pianopub in Action

38 Comments on “Kunugiken Software Release: Pianopub”

  1. 1 Aaron Stone said at 4:38 pm on November 4th, 2010:

    Would you share this as open source, please?

  2. 2 Adam said at 6:05 pm on November 28th, 2010:

    Thank you! This is excellent.

  3. 3 Daniel said at 8:50 am on December 1st, 2010:

    Thank you so much! Finally, a great Pandora player for Mac that doesn’t require Flash :)

  4. 4 JmS said at 1:04 pm on December 7th, 2010:

    I love the idea of this app, but at least for now I’m considering it to be in the “hopeful” state.

    How do I enable the media keys? So far, they only start iTunes (play/pause F7) for me…

    Is it or will it be possible to change Pianopub volume? It’s too loud with some stations even at the lowest system volume setting for me. I find that limits what I can comfortably listen to through Pianopub.

    Thanks, I hope you have time to take a look at these issues.

  5. 5 Peter Goodman said at 9:55 am on December 10th, 2010:

    I’ve tried other Pandora miniplayers and they have all been huge memory hogs. But not this one. Works great. Thank you!

  6. 6 Remi said at 12:35 pm on December 12th, 2010:

    I haven’t been able to test the media keys support on every computer, but I too have the issue you are talking about from time to time. I would try removing the iTunes Helper from your startup items in the login preferences if it is there. Basically, from what I can tell when two different programs want to use the media keys, its kinda arbitrary which program gets control.
    I am aware the volume thing being an issue, and I am going to try to add volume controls at some point in the future, I need to try to understand libao a little better.

  7. 7 JmS said at 8:22 pm on December 13th, 2010:

    Thanks for the reply. I removed the itunes helper from the startup items, it’s nowhere in the activity monitor, and still the media keys respond only to iTunes.

    Perhaps an easier solution would be to enable configurable shortcuts for play/pause/skip/like/etc. I’m thinking along the lines of SizzlingKeys functionality for iTunes (there’s plenty of others, this just happens to be my long-time favorite).

  8. 8 NLunsford said at 7:01 pm on December 15th, 2010:

    First of all, thanks for developing this–it is fantastic.

    I would like to second the suggestion for hot keys, or at least applescript support for those actions (maybe both?). I’m the sort of user that wants to be able to do most everything from the keyboard if I can.

    Another nice idea would be to include (at least the option for) song artwork. I know that PandoraBoy is able to access that data somehow (and it is open source…).

    In any case, do not take my suggestions as critiques of your app. I am really enjoying using it.

  9. 9 Kevin Glowacz said at 11:54 am on December 16th, 2010:

    Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for!

    Pianopub seems to capture the media buttons only for a few minutes before iTunes/Quicktime takes them back over.

    I’d love to play around with the code if you choose to open source this.

  10. 10 Alex said at 8:59 am on December 27th, 2010:

    Anyone else getting the “Error Unknown” window when trying
    to enter their login credentials? Can’t figure out what I’m doing
    wrong. Running Pianopub 1.0.3 on OS X 10.6 MBA 11″

  11. 11 JmS said at 4:02 pm on January 11th, 2011:

    Thanks for the 1.1 update with the added volume control! IMHO it would be nice to have “Volume” next to “Stations” on top right as an option to hide it so the window stays cleaner.

    The album artwork is nice, too.

    Just an FYI, the Macupdate listing for PianoPub is still on 1.0.

  12. 12 Remi said at 4:10 pm on January 11th, 2011:

    Thanks for using it! I was on the fence about having the volume control hide too, I’m not sure if I made the right decision, hopefully some other people might provide some ideas. I’ve been trying to figure out how to update that macupdate software listing, I’m not sure how to let them know.

  13. 13 Red said at 1:45 pm on January 15th, 2011:

    Thanks Remi! Great app that’s been needed forever. (I’m on vers 1.1)

    A couple questions:
    1) Is there a config file, similar to pianobar? Or did you do away with that when porting.
    2) Is there a shortcut for upvoting/downvoting songs?
    3) I’m a PandoraOne subscriber, is there a way to specify the higher fidelity audio stream?

    Thanks again, great app.

  14. 14 Remi said at 2:36 pm on January 16th, 2011:

    Red,

    First of all, thank you, now your questions:

    1. Yes, I did away with the config file when porting.
    2. Currently there is not a shortcut for this, although you can do it from the dock menu, but since other people have also been asking for a more comprehensive shortcut system, I think I will be adding that in the next release.
    3. Currently there is no was to specify the higher fidelity stream, this will also be coming in a future release.

  15. 15 Red said at 2:50 pm on January 17th, 2011:

    Thanks, Remi! Look forward to future versions, especially the higher fidelity audio stream.

  16. 16 Mark said at 7:00 am on January 23rd, 2011:

    Remi, this is an excellent application, thanks for doing the work to port and add features. The improvements in v1.1 are excellent!

    I very much like the clean look and don’t mind the long, thin volume control. I think I prefer to have the volume available without needing to open the station drawer, although global keyboard volume controls make it a very minor point.

    Some ideas for future features:

    1) Provide an alternate set of control buttons. This application is very clean in appearance, it would be very nice to have some monochrome or black/silver control buttons as an option to the user.

    2) Support scrobbling to Last.fm. I have come to really enjoy the listening history that Last.fm provides.

    An excellent app overall, thanks very much for your efforts!

  17. 17 Terrence Talbot said at 10:36 pm on February 3rd, 2011:

    What about a Universal build for PPC? My stereo is an old PowerBook G4 and some HK sticks.

    Anyway, best implementation I’ve seen. Congrats!

  18. 18 Eric said at 5:37 am on March 14th, 2011:

    For those wanting to use the Mac’s media keys with this app, and running 10.6, the patch referenced in this Lifehacker post works well as a temporary workaround:

    http://lifehacker.com/#!5651055/free-your-macs-media-keys-from-itunes-no-manual-hacking-required

  19. 19 Andy said at 4:49 pm on April 19th, 2011:

    I love this app. could you make it even smaller by adding an optional upper taskbar icon with navigation shortcuts? Or do away with the window all together and keep it all in the task bar? I love pandora, but I also like it out of the way.

  20. 20 JJ said at 11:04 pm on May 6th, 2011:

    I use this every day. I love it! It is by far the best completely free app for the mac. Thank you so much for creating such a wonderful app! The only thing I could suggest is making the faces different colors. Good green…Bad red? I have always wondered, how did you come about the name?

  21. 21 sb said at 7:12 am on May 8th, 2011:

    How do I set up a control proxy? I’m currently outside the US. The dialog says ‘please see man (main) page’ to set up a control proxy. It’s great when in the US, by the way! thanks

  22. 22 Brian Hartvigsen said at 12:52 pm on May 17th, 2011:

    A second request for Last.fm integration (it’s part of Pianobar so should be possible.)

    Also, would be nice to see the history of songs so that we can vote on them after they played.

    Lastly, any chance on source so we can extend the program ourselves? Github seems to have done well for Pianobar.

  23. 23 Jon said at 7:49 pm on June 3rd, 2011:

    Hi!

    Love this app! Just have a quick suggestion:

    Could you enable airplay? This would be absolutely amazing!

    Also, is there any possibility of getting a fullscreen mode that would display coverart?

  24. 24 Dan Shockley said at 8:16 am on June 22nd, 2011:

    I often get the error “Not Authorized” when I try to mark a song as a favorite. Once it starts, even quitting Pianopub and logging in again doesn’t seem to fix it. Later, it just starts working again for no apparent reason.

  25. 25 BiL Castine said at 4:58 pm on July 9th, 2011:

    FYI: today Pianopub stopped working. upon launch I get a dialog box stating “Protocol incompatible. Please upgrade Pianopub.”

  26. 26 Marshall said at 8:07 am on July 14th, 2011:

    Can you use the Quickmix function of Pandora through this app, or only listen to one station at a time? Thanks!

  27. 27 Marshall said at 8:21 pm on July 19th, 2011:

    Belay my last; I found my custom quickmix from Pandora listed under the stations. Perfect!

    I am having an issue, however, w/ bookmarking songs/albums. When I select either of these from the toolbar, I first get an “Error unknown,” followed by a second “there was a problem bookmarking the album/song (title). Any others w/ this problem?

  28. 28 Remi said at 11:01 pm on July 19th, 2011:

    I’ve just published an update fixing this problem.

  29. 29 wesco said at 9:48 pm on July 26th, 2011:

    Awesome software. I’ve converted from pandorajam.

  30. 30 nlunsford said at 12:21 pm on August 20th, 2011:

    By way of looking to continue to improve this app, I wanted to suggest that you take a look at MOApps myTunesControl, which I think would make a fantastic UI for Pianopub—gorgeous and very functional.

    See it here (a free download): http://moapp.tumblr.com/post/979074834/mytunescontrol

    Thanks again for the awesome work.

  31. 31 Kevin said at 7:47 am on September 22nd, 2011:

    Anyone else getting the protocol incompatible error now with 1.3.1?

  32. 32 Kevin said at 9:02 am on September 22nd, 2011:

    Hermes recently fixed this with a Pandora v32, perhaps this changeset will help.

    https://github.com/alexcrichton/hermes/compare/v1.0.5…v1.0.6

  33. 33 VRH said at 11:05 am on November 30th, 2011:

    I love this application! Thank you for your work!

    I have a feature request: I know it may seem odd, but I want to be able to allow the ads to play sometimes so that I may support Pandora without necessarily becoming a subscriber. It looks like Pianobar has support for this, so I’m hopeful it can be done.

  34. 34 matt said at 9:14 am on December 1st, 2011:

    I second the ability to scrobble. Its a dealbreaker for me without this.

    Looks terrific I admit.

  35. 35 John M said at 5:36 pm on January 13th, 2012:

    Glad to hear an update is coming! It’s the best little app I’ve come across in a very long time.

  36. 36 jakeonrails said at 12:42 pm on February 20th, 2012:

    I would like to request that the Thumbs up/Thumbs down buttons change the icon to thumbs instead of happy/sad faces. The two icons are so similar I find myself clicking the sadface when I want to thumb up a track.

    Also, awesome app!

  37. 37 Andrew said at 5:33 pm on May 6th, 2012:

    I just installed the new version 1.5.5 on snow leopard 10.6 and it works fine. no soaring CPU usage. It may not be 100% optimized, but it does in fact run

  38. 38 Remi said at 5:35 pm on May 6th, 2012:

    Hey thanks for letting me know.