Yesterday, Tycho and I released Forecast, an app which uses your local weather forecast to generate a unique Spotify and Apple Music playlist. Not o

Turning Weather into Music with Dark Sky and Spotify for Tycho

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2021-07-18 19:30:05

Yesterday, Tycho and I released Forecast, an app which uses your local weather forecast to generate a unique Spotify and Apple Music playlist. Not only was this a fun developer challenge, it was also an opportunity to work with Scott (Tycho) directly on design. I think the concept works because it meets each of the three principles I strive for: Simple, Accessible, and Magic. It’s simple in that the user merely needs to tap the sun in order to invest themselves in the app. It’s accessible via the web from a url. No downloading needed. And it turns the fucking weather into music! That’s magic.

These days users want to put themselves within the app and location is one of those readily available variables which can make the experience more unique. I’ve used it to similar effect when terrifying Manson’s following and allowing Khruangbin fans to generate music for upcoming flights. Just don’t be creepy with location data.

It all starts with a pair of coordinates which you can get by using the Geolocation API. In addition, I’m using the MaxMind GeoIP service as a fallback in case something goes wrong. MaxMind will turn the user’s IP address into a location which is a solid fallback for a weather app.