So, it is done — more or less. Never to be released publicly though for certain obvious reasons. The app behaves very much like iPod music player but streams everything from home on demand, all the tracks are being transcoded in real time when they are requested for. Works on 3G networks around the globe. No hard load on networks, it uses AudioQueue API (which is probably one of the most messy APIs out there but it's ok as long as it does its job). Sqlite is used for local data storage, some PHP on server side for "likes" and a whole lot of Java on the transcoding server. Pretty much all the screens open in a flash, no delays, no 3-5 seconds thread block for synchronous requests. Playback stats are transmitted to Last.FM in real time, both "Now Playing" and "Just Played".

Here are some screenshots:

Application starts, authorizes device on the server by its unique hardware id. No log-in or other authorization screens for convenience. Gives you a list of dynamic playlists and links to categories. For instance, "Recent" is randomized list of latest 350 selected tracks, "3 Star" is a humongous selection of all highlights etc.



Playback screen. You can skip tracks, highlight them, set their rate, loop and so on — pretty much it repeats standard iPod interface, even opaque inverted cover artwork. No wheels reinvented here but it looks solid.



Bands/Artists list. You can skip to letters with index column. There's some lovely Unicode down the index!



Alternatively, there's a way to search for an artist, this is way much faster if you know what you're looking for.



Finally, you are there. You can fire up generic artist playlists right away or scroll down for more records.



All the artwork is being downloaded asynchronously from the server (which, in its turn, resizes images according to requests). Number of selected tracks in a particular record is indicated with top-left badge.



Same applies to the record.



There's some font work needed for the tracklist but then again, it does its job and controls are big enough for fingers.



The app uses the same smart playlist engine that was introduced on Antennaria.NET last year. Zillion of various playlists for every day's new demand and for every picky choice. Here's an example of playlists by years. Years start in the 1930s!



One of the strongest items in playlist engine: marathons. As an example, it can bring you best songs per year from, let's say, 1960 to 2011. No artists repetition! Follow your music evolution. Really lovely stuff.




For more information there's http://www.antennaria.net.