How it works (FAQ)
Well, basically, we'd like to devote more of our time to make atmosph3re even better than it is now.
In order to do that, we'll need to generate some money, and that's definitely not by going free and open-source. Open-source is great when you get a community of developers that are otherwise paid on their daily jobs. That is not our case.
atmosph3re is made by us, as music lovers, on time we would normally earn money. That's why we retain all copyrights on PHP files we've written that constitute the core of atmosph3re.
We believe atmosph3re is an outstanding product, maybe the best music application on the market today.
So, with due respect, we think that 30USD to put your hands on such a product is definitely a bargain. Anyhow, we're really not apologizing for trying to make money out of a good product. If you like it, buy it!
atmosph3re is essentially an album-oriented application. It requires that your music be organised in folders that correspond to an album, or a disc.
If your music is mainly composed of individual songs regrouped in no specific order in random folders, then atmosph3re is probably not a good solution for you.
That being said, atmosph3re is quite capable of finding and playing individual songs, and of building playlists from individual songs as well.
Well, fundamentally, we believe in the 'Code once, run everywhere' motto. You can't do that with native apps or local applications, period.
But, on a more poetic note, once upon a time, we used to be web app developers, and back in those days, we used ColdFusion as a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool, that was in 2003!
We developped and used A3, built in CF, for almost 10 years, until we got fed up with CF (try installing CF10 on Windows 7 for fun!!).
So, we reprogrammed it in PHP, MySQL, Ajax, jQuery, and made sure the most irritating bugs got quashed along the way. We added a pinch of streaming capability, a drop of playlist management, and made sure that all features could be configured through a user-friendly UI, without ever having to get into the database.
Over all, we are pretty satisfied with the end result, but there are definitely more interesting features coming along the way... sooon....
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy it as much as we do! Rave on!
atmosph3re scans your music folders and expects a certain type of naming convention to be respected. As such, regrouping all songs in an album in on folder is good practise, and naming the folder with the following convention makes a lot of sense.
- 'Artist Name - Album Name'
- David Bowie - Let's Dance
- John Acquaviva - Skills
- Metronomy - The English Riviera
are all valid folder names that will be recognized by atmosph3re
But the following won't be recognized by atmosph3re
- David Bowie/Let's Dance
- John Acquaviva-Skills
- 086657964795-=707896/iTunes
Yeah, but isn't that going to pose a problem who manage their music with iTunes?
No, because atmosph3re now manages music folders on two levels, like those in iTunes, where all albums of an artist are separated in subfolders, each subfolder corresponding to one album:
- Artist Name
- Album #1 Name
- Album #2 Name
- Album #3 Name
For example:
- David Bowie
- Alladin Sane
- Heroes
- Let's Dance
Firefox is the only browser that allow access to local files, and that allows to launch a local application like Winamp to play a local file. Chrome is 'too secure' to allow that, and IE, well, let's not go there...
That being said, if you access atmosph3re from a local IP address or from the internet, you may very well use any browser you like. It's only for accessing music through local files or network files that Firefox is mandatory.
YES, atmosph3re allows you to stream your music from anywhere around the globe, as long as you are connected to the Internet! Party on dude!
When installing in Windows, atmosph3re will try to create the symlinks necessary to make sure streaming works properly. It may not succeed, if you do not have administrator rights on your server. If you do have problems streaming music, please go in Tools --> Music folders and follow the described procedure to create relevant symlinks.
Symlinks (symbolic links) create a link between a physical folder, and a virtual sub-folder within your atmosph3re folder. It is very much like a shortcut in Windows.
It allows you to keep intact your music folders, whilst allowing you to stream your records through atmosph3re over the Internet.
They've always been supported in Linux. They also work in Windows since Vista, and they also work in OsX. Only previous versions of Windows, such as WindowsXP don't support them natively. There are third-party freeware that bring this functionality to Windows XP though. Search for 'Link Shell Extension' and 'Symbolic Link Driver' to fill this need.
There are many free cd rippers and mp3 digitizers, but the combination of Exact Audio Copy and Lame has always produced good results (And that's been true since 2003!!).
Once correctly configured, you'll be able to rip, digitize all your record collection with minimal effort. You only need atmosph3re on top of it all to manage your freshly digitized music collection!
NO. All your music files will stay intact. They won't be moved, reorganised, renamed in any way (Hello iTunes!!).
The only files atmosph3re will write are m3u files, which are only playlists for any given record or song.
Also, atmosph3re can save cover art found through its fetchers directly the proper release folders.
There are no way you can physically alter or delete an mp3 or an entire record in atmosph3re, and that's not a bug, it's a feature!
When you buy atmosph3re, you get a license to install it on ONE computer (home server, local computer), for an unlimited period of time. You can access that installation of atmosph3re from any number of machines though.
Proven customers will get access to upgrades as they are made available online.
All intellectual property rights over atmosph3re are detained by Turbine interactive, or its developers.
Your Internet Access Provider probably gives you a dynamic IP address, which changes from time to time. To reach the computer on which you're running atmosph3re from outside your home, you need to use a service that will durably associate your dynamic IP address to a domain name of your choice, http://mya3instance.ddns.net/atmosph3re for example.
In order to do so, you'll need to adjust some of your home router settings. This has nothing to do with atmosph3re.
Briefly, here are the steps you'll need to accomplish:
- You need to give to the computer that runs atmosph3re a static IP address within your home network, an address that will stay the same even when you reboot your machine.
- Vous must gain access to your home router in your browser (generally at address 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1)
- On your router, you must forward all external web requests made on port 80 towards the static IP address of your A3 computer, or else declare the latter within the DMZ.
- You must subscribe to a dynamic DNS service like noip.com, which is free by the way. Please do not forget to enter your public IP address from your router, not the private IP address from your A3 computer, which can't be seen from outside your home network.
- Finally, you must tell your router to use the freshly created noip.com account, enter your noip.com login and password, so you can access your a3 instance from anywhere on the planet!
Such a setup will allow you to access your atmosph3re server outside your home, without having to know your public IP address!
From then on, you will be able to access your music in your car, in the subway, while travelling, at your friends.... 8o)
We only provide a music management system, as such, we have no saying on how you acquired your music.
Obviously, we presume you acquired or digitized all your musical content legitimately, and that responsibility is entirely up to you.
Turbine interactive cannot in any way, under any jurisdiction, be held responsible for people who are using atmosph3re to manage and listen to illegally acquired music.
All music, cover art and sleeves, and external musical reviews, managed through atmosph3re, remain with their respective intellectual property owners.
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