[HN Gopher] Show HN: Jukebox - Free, Open Source Group Playlist ...
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Show HN: Jukebox - Free, Open Source Group Playlist with Fair
Queueing
Hey HN, I built Jukebox because I got frustrated with group music
apps and Spotify's limitations (not everyone has Spotify, and
collaborative playlists are still too easily dominated by one
person). Jukebox is a web app that lets you create a group queue--
anyone can join via link, add YouTube songs, and the system
automatically rotates songs so everyone gets a fair turn (no more
playlist hogs). Web-based, no accounts, no installs. Drop in a
YouTube link or search and add music instantly. Songs rotate in
round-robin order (so even if one person adds ten songs, nobody
else is skipped). Entirely open source (MIT), self-hostable with
Docker, privacy-friendly. Live demo: https://jukeboxhq.com Code:
https://github.com/skeptrunedev/jukebox I made this as a stress-
relief project while pivoting my actual startup (Trieve) and used
it to practice UI/UX (neo-brutalist design, drag-and-drop), plus
experiment with AI pair coding. Would love your feedback or
feature ideas!
Author : skeptrune
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-07-08 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jukeboxhq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jukeboxhq.com)
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| dope. If I hit next does it go next on the other people's
| players?
| skeptrune wrote:
| No, that has been a common feature request, which I didn't ship
| in the first version. Right now, it assumes that only one
| person is playing.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| Or a "vote" if one person hits next, if majority agree, then
| it goes next
| noleary wrote:
| I love that this was a "stress-relief project."
| skeptrune wrote:
| Code is therapy haha
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Very cool. It's like a much more minimal (and more open source)
| version of one of my favorite sites https://deepcut.live
| (formerly turntable.fm)
| skeptrune wrote:
| Woah! I had no idea that the URL for turntable changed. Bunch
| of other folks reached out and also said it reminded them of
| that.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Yeah, the "why" the URL changed is a pretty messy story.
|
| The original founders both wanted to start a new version of
| the original, and had a very public feud about ownership of
| the domain / name. I can't find any of it now so I'm assuming
| it was all removed as part of the settlement. Instead, they
| both posted this nearly identical statement.
|
| https://jperla.medium.com/turntable-resolution-c66c6662ad62
|
| https://billychasen.medium.com/settlement-
| agreement-9d5a5366...
| awaseem wrote:
| Love this! More open source products for the better!
| jp57 wrote:
| One thing I think is interesting is that many people value
| fairness, but people also have very different ideas of what is
| fair.
|
| For example, I think quite a lot of people think first-come-
| first-served is fair, and jumping the queue is unfair. But that
| doesn't seem to be the notion of fairness employed here.
| bramhaag wrote:
| Another way to define fairness could be based on the song
| duration. Is it fair if two people get to play the same amount
| of songs, but one picks songs with an average duration of 3
| minutes, while the other picks 15 minute long songs?
| treve wrote:
| 0-trust house parties
| andelink wrote:
| Cool project! I have never been very satisfied with the existing
| services for collaborating on playlists.
|
| I think the experience could be improved if you branched beyond
| YouTube for the media. I search "jim-e stack" and see multiple
| non-song videos (in fact 3/4 are not songs). One idea might be to
| use a service like https://odesli.co (formerly song.link) to
| filter to real music tracks people are familiar with on their
| streaming platforms. Their API returns links to Apple Music,
| Spotify, YouTube, etc for a given music entity (e.g. song,
| album). Furthermore, integrating with Odesli would offer a path
| towards allowing users to drop Spotify / Apple Music URLs
| directly from their respective apps into the jukebox, which I
| think would be my ideal experience.
|
| My $0.02. Thanks for sharing!
| skeptrune wrote:
| THANK YOU FOR THE REC TO ODESLI!
|
| Tbh I should have done an Ask HN. I tried googling and using
| the AI to find some song API which could replace youtube and
| nothing came up.
| andelink wrote:
| No problem! You might also consider the iTunes Search API [1]
| to power your search functionality e.g.
| curl 'https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=jim-e%20stack&enti
| ty=song' | jq
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation
| /Au...
| jason_zig wrote:
| Ah man... anyone remember JQBX?
| skeptrune wrote:
| I learned about JQBX and similar platforms through people that
| reached out as I've been sharing Jukebox around and they seem
| like they were beautiful corners of the internet.
| bahrtw wrote:
| Superfun! Would be cool if you could experience the Jukebox
| itself, with a playlist from visitors? Then you directly have
| playable songs? :)
| skeptrune wrote:
| Agreed! That's been the most common feature request so far.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Oh, this is perfect. I still miss the epicpower group from
| Grooveshark, and it's been nearly a decade since that shut down.
|
| https://www.jukeboxhq.com/share/epicpower
| altendo wrote:
| I miss it too :( but I'm glad that we're still in people's
| memories :)
| closetkantian wrote:
| Great job!
| Unai wrote:
| There's another "Jukebox" [1] that's been doing apparently the
| same thing for many years, in there a connection there, or just
| the same name (and function)?
|
| [1] https://jukebox.today/
| skeptrune wrote:
| I had no idea there was another! The search function on that
| site doesn't seem to be working, but it otherwise seems much
| more fully featured.
| keysdev wrote:
| Seems like your project is using YouTube API to get the
| songs. Would be good to make that just a plugin then one cam
| swap for spotify bandcamp etc while data still stays local.
|
| Dont want a nice open source project to just turn into a
| front end for youtube.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| > Failed to search YouTube: 500
|
| :(
| skeptrune wrote:
| Just fixed it. Fun fact, I have had to rotate between ~7~ 8 API
| keys today!
|
| That means people have made over 70k search requests on Jukebox
| lol.
| nzoschke wrote:
| Love it!
|
| I made an open source jukebox too. Mine models an old-school
| jukebox, where you set up a tablet so all your friends can browse
| and queue up music at a party.
|
| https://github.com/nzoschke/jukelab
| https://nzoschke.github.io/jukelab/spotify/desktop
|
| I see you're in the Bay Area. I do occasional Jukebox Happy Hour
| in SoMa we could meet up at...
| skeptrune wrote:
| I would love to! Reached out to you
| corny wrote:
| This is great. One little thing, after the last song in the
| playlist is over, it would be nice if the state remained in play
| mode so that when another song is added to the queue the new song
| would play right away.
|
| Also, I've been wanting something just like this but that would
| also play the video as well as audio.
| skeptrune wrote:
| Will ship that feature request. I can understand why that would
| be useful.
|
| I thought about doing video, but that requires downloading and
| storing much more content in S3 which makes the app feel slower
| than it already does for just the audio.
| cdurth wrote:
| Ripping the video to s3, naughty naughty. Be expecting your
| YouTube API key to be revoked and DMCA.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| Another one, but for TTRPG sessions: https://dragonicle.com
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(page generated 2025-07-08 23:00 UTC)