TUIO is a simple but powerful emerging protocol for multitouch control for live music and visuals, as used on the powerful live tangible synth reacTable. Apparently no one told Apple, however. While the App Store rubber-stamps useless toys like fake cigarette lighter flames, they bizarrely rejected a powerful application by a leading digital artist that would enable standardized TUIO control – for free. (More back story below; see an example in action above.)

As a blogger, my reaction is usually to whine and pontificate, for better or worse. The engineering approach would be to find some hack away the problem. That’s what Andrew Turley did with the TUIO protocol. So, Apple won’t allow an app that does the trick? Why not go back to what developers did before the SDK, and just use the iPhone browser?

As Andrew explains it:

After reading the story I started thinking about seeing how far one could push Safari as an application platform, using web apps to get around Apple’s tight control of the app store. Since you would be connecting to another computer anyway to use an OSC application, why not just have the app be a web app running on a web server somewhere on the local network? The web server can then take care of things like sending out OSC messages or playing music or doing whatever it is people want to do.

To that end I created a little system that implements the TUIO protocol. You use an iPhone to run a web app, which in turn talks to the web server, which in turn sends OSC messages.

Details:

touchy feely [Pillowsopher Blog]

Needless to say, there are some downsides: you have to run the Python server, you’re more limited in input and control than you would be in a real app, and you’re stuck inside the Safari browser, which could be a bit inconvenient. So I’m not backing down from my original complaint – I don’t see Apple doing anyone a service by blocking this kind of app, and the only rational explanation seems to be that the folks doing the review process don’t understand what the app is.

Most importantly, I do know that all our griping was sent to Apple, so I’m hopeful the App Store will reconsider the decision once they get it.

But I love solutions, too, and this can be one for many applications.

It also illustrates an important point: the browser on mobile devices (Apple and otherwise) could be a powerful outlet. It doesn’t always make sense to build an entire application; there will be various cases in which a little browser tool will do a job. Need a quick remote control for a live performance / art installation / club lighting rig? You might try the easy solution with the browser first.

Thanks for the great hack, Andy, and I’m curious to hear if anyone uses or extends this.

Previously:

Apple Rejects Free iPhone Tool For Artists Because of “Minimal User Functionality”

There’s been some confusion from our readers and existing beta testers of SoundCloud (see their forums / login required) about what you can get with a free account on the service.

Co-founder Eric Wahlforss answers some of these concerns in comments. With a free account, you will be able to:

• Send/upload up to five tracks a month, of any length/size
• You can upload as many tracks as you like, but only your ten most recent tracks will be visible to others (unless you delete tracks). No tracks are deleted – you can upgrade/downgrade at will.
• You get a DropBox, and the most recent five tracks dropped will appear (again, if you delete tracks as you listen to them, you’ll see more)
• Make contact lists with up to 20 contacts
• See basic stats

So, the free account does look reasonably usable for light use. That said, they are clearly trying to push people to pro accounts, which start at EUR9 / mo. (Even separate USD pricing would help, I think … even though the dollar has recovered a bit in recent weeks, unlike our – ahem – stock exchange.) Eric does promise more is coming in those pro accounts to entice you, if you feel the value proposition isn’t there yet.

Full details:

From comments:

Peter, this is Eric, one of the founders of SoundCloud. Thanks for a great post.

It’s been our vision from the very beginning to make SoundCloud more or less ad-free and totally streamlined for the needs of musicians and labels. Like other websites that provide real value to people/companies and unlike slow/bloated/ad-ridden/"free"-but-oh-we’ll-waste-your-time-instead sites, we do charge for our services.

Again to clarify, there will *of course* exist a free account. Sorry about the vague communication on this so far. It will hopefully be clear tomorrow. The free account will have certain limitations that I will list here (you’re really among the first ones to know).

You can:

• Send 5 tracks/month
• See the 10 latest sent tracks (they will also show on your profile)
• Get a DropBox, but you’ll only see the last 5 tracks dropped (you can always remove tracks to see more)
• Make contact lists with up to 20 people in them

The free account will work fine for quite a lot of use-cases. And you will always be able to go back to it, should you realize you don’t need a PRO accounts. Easy. We won’t delete any of your stored tracks, or anything else for that matter.

I should also mention that we’re working on a few *very* cool things that will land in the PRO accounts later this fall, like sets uploading/sharing, versioning of tracks, and more…

cheers // eric [currently working the nightshift on perfecting the site before the release...]

I was confused on the stats portion and track limitations, so I asked Eric to clarify for us.

Do you get the same view of stats in the free account as you do in the light pro account?

yes, the basic stats graphs as in the PRO light account, but not info on exactly who listened and who downloaded.

What are the limitations on how many tracks you can upload?

you can upload as many tracks as you want over time, but only 5 tracks per month. only the last 10 will actually be shown on your profile, but you can always "unlock" your account to show them all by upgrading to any PRO account. if you downgrade back to free then they will again be hidden so that only the last 10 are shown (just like on flickr).

So, what do you get if you upgrade to the pro accounts? You lose the track limitations, for one, with 15 tracks per month (EUR9/mo) to unlimited tracks (EUR59/mo). With the EUR29+ accounts, you get enhanced support, more stats, and a branded dropbox, so it’s clear those are aimed at labels, venues, and the like.

I expect there will still be some pricing skepticism, though. I’m curious to hear – will the free account be enough for you? Any of you thinking you might pony up for one of the pro accounts? Or are you looking elsewhere?

We expect more changes to hit SoundCloud over the coming weeks, so we’ll be watching. I think this is a really important development, and one worth researching. I’m sure it’ll have some competition, and we’ll cover that, as well.

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

SoundCloud, an online sharing community for sound and music, is now hours from public launch. I’ve been playing around with a closed beta for several months, and have to say, I’ve been really impressed. SoundCloud isn’t the first attempt to provide places to share music files with others, but previous attempts have been lackluster when it comes to easy sharing, features necessary to make music listening more enjoyable, and upload capacity. Most importantly, none has accomplished the community “stickiness” that has been the cornerstone of successful media services like Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube. In fact, there’s been so much of a noise-to-signal problem with the Web space, I expect a lot of you have simply tuned out new Web services. There are some good reasons to pay attention to SoundCloud, though:

• Singing telegram, anyone? Music on SoundCloud acts more like a messaging service. Tracks from people you’re following appear in an inbox for you to sort through. You can even create a DropBox for other people, so this could be huge for people running labels or live events. (That’s especially welcome now that a lot of people have given up on individually clicking myspace links to hear what someone sounds like.)
• Easier uploads and sharing: Getting files on the service in your favorite format, with whatever length you want, is a whole lot easier than on competing services.
• Smart player interaction: Services like this now live and die on their embeddable player. SoundCloud’s is really clever and attractive. Download links are everywhere. Also, SoundCloud attacks the biggest problem with music – it’s invisible. There’s a waveform view, and people can comment on specific points in your music. That feature has been annoying in a lot of video players, but here comments appear only if you want them to, and I’ve found them really helpful in getting feedback. (See my example track below, for instance.)
• Open API: A full API means you can built interesting apps atop SoundCloud. Check out the lovely Radioclouds by Matas Petrikas for an example of how interesting this can be; source code is available.

SoundCloud, indeed, seems to have all the kinds of features that made Flickr stand out from a crowd of photo services. Labels are already onboard, too: Compost, BPitch Control, and Goldie are already making it part of their workflow, says SoundCloud.

One very significant missing feature: it’s not yet possible to embed licenses in your music, so it’s not possible to tell what’s copyrighted and what’s Creative Commons-licensed. SoundCloud founder Alexander Ljung tells us this feature is coming very soon, though, and as on Flickr, you’ll be able to set a global default for your music, so if you want to release everything under a CC license, you can. That should make SoundCloud absolutely explode as a place for CC-licensed remixing.

Now, the only bad news: pro accounts are a bit pricey when compared to a service like Flickr, priced at EUR9-EUR59 each month. The EUR9/mo account is actually probably what most people will need: 15 tracks per month (that seems like plenty), plus basic stats, dropbox, and support. If you were a beta tester like me, you probably got a complimentary Light account through the beginning of next year. And importantly, there’s no limit on file sizes on any of the accounts. That means you could easily upload 15 live/DJ sets a month, so no complaint here. My guess is that the rates are a reflection of what it costs now in bandwidth for an ad-free site. And you can always go for a free account and see how the service works. But I do expect price to be the major obstacle to this service’s popularity. Update: comment to that effect in, what, five minutes of me posting?

Alex and the team say they’re CDM readers, and I’ll get to meet with them next week while I’m in Berlin. So if you’ve got any questions or feedback, let us know. I’d also love to see this stuff integrated more tightly in other communities; Facebook is there, for a start. Stay tuned.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud Tour

SoundCloud Blog

Here’s an example of my player (just an informal live improv set, not a full track). I need to go upload more content but plan to do that over the coming weeks. But it gives you a sense of how this works in action.

Here’s the upload interface, which I find quite usable. Note that you can also use SoundCloud for private files: