How to develop an iPhone app to work with the current iPhone's music library

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How to develop an iPhone app to work with the current iPhone's music library

Hi everyone,

My friend (who knows nothing about programming what-so-ever) asked me if I could develop an iPhone application that lets the user select an artist from thier current synced artists on their iPhone music library, and display to them a list of concerts they will be playing in the near future. Maybe even use your current location to display the certain one you would be interested in.

Obviously, I told him no.

As I have no iPhone development experience and have only recently really started programming properly, I don't think I'm capable. But I'd still like to explore, seeing as I have just purchased a MacBook anyways!

Any ideas on how to approach this app?

Thanks in advance to everyone!

+1 A:

I'd rather recommend you playing with Last.fm API services. Not exactly what you want but I am not sure if iPhone lets you access the artist library directly. If it doesn't (which is yet to find out), you can write a plugin for iTunes that exports your music collection to your website and then access it from the iPhone.

The choice is up to you, but I'd probably stick with Last.fm.

gaearon 2010-09-29 11:44:54

@ gaearon: So, could I incorporate these Last.fm services into my App? And I'm sure you can access the music library, I have a App called "Ringtones" which allows you to select a song from your library and turn it into a ringtone, with the option to browse by artist.. ? Just like you were choosing a song to play.

New Start 2010-09-29 11:47:59

You may be right on this point, I'm no expert in iPhone. I edited the answer to highlight my uncertainty. And yes, you can use Last.fm services in your app freely, and this is really useful. You can query event database for events in a region, events for certain artists etc.

gaearon 2010-09-29 11:59:37

+1 A:

The best place to start learning iPhone/iPad programming in general is to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430224592

And more specific to your question, yes, apps are allowed to access the iPod music library in the phone, through the MPMediaQuery class and its brethren:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Audio/Conceptual/iPodLibraryAccess_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008765

Josh Hinman 2010-09-29 19:49:34

Oh, also, I should mention that this app already exists. It's called "Local Concerts".

Josh Hinman 2010-09-29 19:50:37

there's another one called iConcertCal as well. my friend was gutted!

New Start 2010-09-30 07:59:33

ansaurus

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How to develop an iPhone app to work with the current iPhone's music library

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