How it works

Rochtunes is a shared music library that a group fills in together. People add songs from their phones; later, one person loads the whole thing onto an MP3 player.

Your key is your login

There are no accounts and no passwords. When someone invites you, you get an email with a six-character key and a link. The link signs you in on its own — you never type anything.

Keep that email, and don't forward it. Your key is how Rochtunes knows which songs are yours — anyone using it would be adding and removing songs as you. The key is also the only way in, and nobody can recover it. If you lose it, an admin can send you a new one.

On a new phone or browser, go to rochtunes.com and type the key in. It is not case-sensitive, and the ambiguous letters are left out entirely, so there is no confusing O for 0.

Adding songs

Search for a song and press Add. To add a whole record at once, press the disc icon next to a result and then Add on the album.

You can remove songs you added. You cannot remove other people's — ask an admin if something needs to go.

A few things are deliberately quiet about themselves:

• If someone already added that song, you are told who, and nothing is added twice.
• If a song was previously removed from the library, it stays out. Ask an admin to put it back.
• A live version, an acoustic take or a remix counts as a different song from the studio recording, so you can have both. A remaster does not.

If you are an admin

Your admin page adds three things: inviting people by name and email, moderating the library, and the command for loading a player.

Inviting someone emails them their own key. You can make them an admin too, which lets them invite people and load players themselves. A library always keeps at least one admin, so the last one cannot be removed.

Loading the MP3 player

Plug the player into a Mac and run the command from your admin page. It works out which songs are not on the device yet, checks there is room, and fetches only what is missing. It is safe to run as often as you like.

Rochtunes never deletes anything from a player. If you want a song off the device, delete it in Finder. Taking a song out of the library does not take it off any player — the sync just tells you which files are no longer wanted.

Deleted something by accident? Run the sync again and it comes back: the device is re-checked from scratch every time, so it is always the truth.

If the library will not fit, you are asked whether to stop and free up space or to load as much as fits. Anything left out is named, and goes first next time. One player can hold several libraries at once, and a song on more than one of them is only stored once.

Starting your own library

Creating libraries is invite-only. If you are set up for it, create one here — you enter your email, get a one-time code, and name the library. Each code makes one library, so ask for another whenever you want the next one.

Not set up yet? Request creator status.