Dear Music lovers, today it’s a special day for Volumio and all of us.
The Volumio team is proud to present you MyVolumio.
MyVolumio is the brainchild of a dream we had since few years: emancipate our beloved Volumio Audiophile player from being just accessible on the local network, and make it communicate with the world out there.
To make what, you might be asking.
To extend Volumio capabilities. To make Volumio smarter. To make Volumio better in new ways, and most important: to make ourselves enjoy more our music.
So, let’s go straight to the point: we’ve been working hard for almost 2 years to make something which we think will evolve Volumio by a great shot.
And guess what, we called it MyVolumio because we have plenty of creativity, and we wanted to be truly yours, Volumio user.
WHAT IS MYVOLUMIO
In a nutshell, myVolumio is:
– A premium paid subscription service which extends Volumio’s capabilities
– It’s available in 3 tiers: free, Virtuoso and Superstar
– It’s not mandatory, and never will be, to enjoy Volumio (which will remain free and open source)
– Awesome
You will be able to access MyVolumio directly from Volumio’s Web Interface or by navigating to myvolumio.org
WHY WE MADE MYVOLUMIO
It always felt to us that Volumio needed an evolutionary leap: it’s just great, but it could have been better with a Cloud Service supporting it, allowing it to integrate smoothly with online and cloud music service. Let’s face it: this is where digital music is going.
Music in increasingly dematerializing and it’s getting more and more fragmented into a plethora of online services, and a Music Player which has some ambitions must be capable of fetching every kind of music from every kind of service.
Then, the way we currently use Volumio, via browser from a local network is great. We imagined that it could have been even better, for example by allowing control of it even without being connected to your home network, or from anywhere you are.
Last, the single most requested features were streaming services support like QOBUZ and Tidal, and we simply could not have been able to deliver them without a wider approach which involved some additions to Volumio as we know it.
HOW DOES MYVOLUMIO WORK
Basically, you will be able to crete an account on MyVolumio (like you do with every other service in the world) which will allow you to experience some pretty good stuff nicely integrated in your Volumio player.
After you created your account, MyVolumio can be accessed in 2 ways: directly from the Volumio UI or via myvolumio.org . You will retain the same functionalities in both modes, and when you’re not connected to your network you can access MyVolumio (and your associated devices) from Myvolumio.org.
That’s it.
You’ll notice a profile tab on the usual settings menu, and by going to your profile you can choose which device to connect, edit your profile settings or upgrade your subscription in any moment.
From there, you will be able to subscribe on our 3 subscription tiers, which offer different levels of features:
FREE
That’s your entry point here, feel free to look around and experiment. By signing in for the free account you will be part of the family, and we’re working hard to bring some cool feature for the free tier as soon as possible (suggestions are very welcome).
VIRTUOSO
That’s where it gets interesting: you get the full MyVolumio experience for one device. We expect this to be the ideal choice for all of you which have only one Volumio player, but want more from it.
SUPERSTAR
It can’t get any better. You get the full MyVolumio experience (same features as the Virtuoso plan) but for up to 6 devices together, which you can use at the same time. So if you’re like me and you’ve basically a Volumio player in every corner of the house, you will be able to control them all from one convenient place.
As you will read later, we are releasing MyVolumio initially as an Open Beta, to gather your feedback and to make it ready for prime time.
This gives also us a chance to show you what we have in mind and what can be achieved with it. Let’s view what MyVolumio introduces:
STREAMING SERVICES SUPPORT
The single most asked question has been: when do we get other streaming services support (namely TIDAL and QOBUZ). Well, we’ve worked really hard since day 1 of Volumio2 development to bring such functionalities.
It turned out to be an extremely complex task, due to legal requirements and technical challenge. So the only way we could make it happen has been creating a cloud service to support them. This is in fact, how we started working on what has later become MyVolumio. So yes, we’ve laid the groundwork for every major streaming service support. And the good news is that we have a great one from day 1.
QOBUZ VOLUMIO INTEGRATION IS AVAILABLE WITH MYVOLUMIO
We’ve worked closely with QOBUZ to make it happen, and we finally made it. I must admit it has not been easy in the beginning, but in the process I really saw the tremendous improvement this Music Service has done over the last year and I am pretty sure it will become the first choice of many.
What I really love about QOBUZ is their editorial selection (which is beautifully presented in MyVolumio). It’s definitely a great way to discover music, for all tastes. Well done on that.
Last but not least, directly from MyVolumio you can receive a 30 days free trial from QOBUZ, so you don’t have more excuses for not trying it.
REMOTE VOLUMIO CONTROL
And when I say remote, I mean it. With MyVolumio you can add as much as 6 Volumio players into a single account, and control them directly even if you’re not connected to your home network. Even if you’re not in the same city.
Even from a different continent (yeah, that’s not quite useful I know).
But this is a great advantage if you want to have all your playback endpoints available in a single glance without messing with IP address or network issues.
Not to mention that we use an end-to-end encrypted connection, so you get a pretty big bonus in security.
MYVOLUMIO ROLLOUT MASTERPLAN
As I already anticipated, we are relesing MyVolumio as an Open Beta, until we hammer it to perfection. This is our plan:
Phase 1: Open Beta
Even if we worked on MyVolumio for more than 18 months as of now, we need to make sure everything runs as good as our community deserves. This means addressing every possible residual misbehavior MyVolumio has.
So, we decided to relase MyVolumio initially as an Open Beta to validate our Cloud infrastructure, to see how well it performs under reasonable loads and to make it as stable as possible.
As some of you know, Volumio counts about 150k users: and serving such a potentially wide crowd is something to be taken seriously. Phasing out the load our infrastructure is the soundest choice to get us prepared for the big show.
This is why we deiced to release MyVolumio in this Open Beta stage. What it means is:
– We will provide a limited amount of Voucher codes for people to try it for free. We will offer about 50 voucher codes every week to gradually increase the load on the system. This does not mean that this beta is closed: everyone can subscribe to MyVolumio service, but we want to offer the possibility to enjoy it for free to our community members, while they are willing to give us a hand by reporting suggestions, feedbacks and bug reports. Voucher codes have a limited duration of 2 months.
– We are starting with a limited set of functionalities, in order to perfect them and focus on having few but robust additional features. Namely:
– Secure Remote connection from anywhere to your Volumio player.
– Full QOBUZ support
We will be adding in this phase also:
– Automatic syncing and backup of Favourites, My Webradios, WebRadio Favourites and Playlists
– Another very famous Hi-Res Streaming service (it ends with L) integration
Last but not least, we want to listen to what our beloved community has to say about this work we’ve been doing behind the curtains for so long. Our vision is to create a set of cloud-based additional features that improve the listening experience with Volumio, and we’re eager to know if we actually made something relevant for you guys.
Before focusing on moving forward with more functions, we want to know if this is a good direction or if there is something we should reconsider, and how.
The single most important feature that MyVolumio is asked to serve is to improve the experience of people like us, who just love to listen and discover exciting music. We’ve done our part, now it’s your time to say what you think about it.
You can leave your feedbacks in the MyVolumio Feedback thread
This initial Phase will last for likely a couple of months, and we will then progress to official release, expansion and community driven development. More info on the MyVolumio 101 thread.
Last, but not least we want to make it very clear that Volumio is and will remain always free and Open Source.
MyVolumio is a set of additional premium capabilities which are not mandatory at all to enjoy Volumio.
We will retain all current features as Free and Open, and we will also add new one in this scheme. In parallel, we will be adding new and new features to MyVolumio.
It’s very important to note that if you love the Volumio project, MyVolumio is the perfect way to sustain it financially, and get a pretty good features bonus in return.
If you’re still here after this huge post, then it means you really want to try MyVolumio! During the Beta Stage we will offer special MyVolumio images for download, which are separate from Volumio standard release cycle. You can find all the informations on the following link:
MYvolumio.org – This is where you login on MyVolumio
MYVOLUMIO 101 FORUM THREAD – Refer to this thread to stay up to date with everything regarding MyVolumio and to download the current release
MYVOLUMIO BETA VOUCHER CODES – Check this periodically for 2 months of free MyVolumio Service
MYVOLUMIO FAQs – Everything you want to know about MyVolumio
MYVOLUMIO TECHNICAL OVERVIEW – For the Geek in you, see how we developed MyVolumio
We really hope you will enjoy MyVolumio as much as we enjoyed developing it.
A new era for Volumio has just started…