Show HN: Jukebox – Free, Open Source Group Playlist with Fair Queueing
31 comments
·July 8, 2025andelink
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
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
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&entity=song' | jq
corny
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
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
Ripping the video to s3, naughty naughty. Be expecting your YouTube API key to be revoked and DMCA.
nzoschke
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
I would love to! Reached out to you
itslennysfault
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
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
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...
Unai
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)?
skeptrune
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.
Aeolun
Oh, this is perfect. I still miss the epicpower group from Grooveshark, and it’s been nearly a decade since that shut down.
jp57
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
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?
bahrtw
Superfun! Would be cool if you could experience the Jukebox itself, with a playlist from visitors? Then you directly have playable songs? :)
skeptrune
Agreed! That's been the most common feature request so far.
jason_zig
Ah man... anyone remember JQBX?
skeptrune
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.
joeyagreco
> Failed to search YouTube: 500
:(
skeptrune
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.
awaseem
Love this! More open source products for the better!
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!