Inspired by BeReal, the daily photo journal that goes off at random points in the day, we are making BeMusic. BeMusic will contain two main displays: 1) your feed, which includes the most recent posts from your friends in chronological order, newest posts on top, and 2) the profile pages of you and your friends, that serve as monthly music journals in calendar format, and includes overall ratings accumulated from other users, general nicheness score as calculated based on listening history, and top artist(s) of the month.
BeMusic is not a live-running app. Instead, it looks at the music history of our peers and presents it in a fun, interactive format where you can rate your friend's music tastes and see how niche they are!
(Click here for a video demo of how to use BeMusic :P)
Example of Your Profile
A person's personal profile, with their overall rating and music nicheness score. Music calendars can be loaded for the months of October and November. The music calendar is full of the album covers of the songs listened to on various days. On top of the calendar is also their top artist for that month as well as the number of times they listened to that artist.
Example of Your Feed
A user's feed shows the songs their friends have listened to in reverse-chronological order. You can click back and forth on the feed to view different posts. For each post, it displays your friend's username, the song title and artist, and the album cover. You can rate the song (which will contribute to your friend's overall rating), as well as view how niche that particular song is. Note that songs which could not be found on Spotify will display an "Image not Found" image, and their nicheness score defaults to 100 (song sooooo underground it could not be found on Spotify!).
TO RUN THIS PROGRAM, YOU MUST HAVE JAVA 25! To download and find more information on JDK 25, visit: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/.
We used the SpotifyAPI to take our users song history and get details from Spotify, such as track title, artist(s), url to the track's album cover, and the track's "popularity score", which is a Spotify-made score from 0 (not popular) to 100 (very popular).
The OpenCSV library is used to simplify parsing in data from listening_data.csv to populate our users and their listening histories.
Apache NetBeans was used to format and display the GUI. Files were then imported into VSCode and manually edited.
These APIs and libraries are managed through the pom.xml file that keeps track of dependencies.
To run the BeMusic application, run the RunBeMusic main class file.
RunBeMusic
main - Initializes database and loads GUI on Login window.
This will ask you to login.
YOU CAN ONLY LOGIN TO EXISTING ACCOUNTS! Below is a list of all users you can login as (capitalization matters). Their friendships are hard-coded in RunBeMusic.java. Logging in with different users produces different interfaces based on the timelines.
Existing Users: Alyssa, Cris, PJ, Jo, Emma, Ethan, Aniyah, Andrea, Hansel, Hasseit, Vanessa, Nelson, Amri, Tomy, Gwyn, Carmen, Lili, Julia, Liz, Kieran, Maela, Rhea, Jaden, Aami
Other Classes & Public Methods
Below is a list of all the classes avalaible, their public methods (including usage examples), though to use the intended program, only the RunBeMusic.java file is needed to start the program.
BeMusicDatabase
Behaves like a normal Graph data structure, able to add and remove vertices and edges.
getUser(String username) - returns the user associated with the given username (no duplicate usernames are allowed)
Ex: getUser("pj") returns BeMusicUser("pj")
BeMusicUser
friends() - returns an ArrayList of the users friends.
Ex: pj.friends() returns [BeMusicUser("alyssa"), BeMusicUser("cris")]
addFriend(BeMusicUser newFriend) - adds a BeMusicUser object to the adjacency list of the current user.
removeFriend(BeMusicUser newFriend) - removes a BeMusicUser object to the adjacency list of the current user, if that friend exists.
getRating() - returns the user's average rating from the ratings.txt file
Ex: alyssa.getRating() returns 4.9
rate(int rating) - takes in a rating inputed into a user's song, and updates the ratings.txt file.Does not return anything
getMusicCalendar(int month, int year) - returns a list of size 31 where each index correponds to the image-url of the song listened to that day
getFeed() - Get's the ENTIRE song histories of all added friends and formats into an ArrayList of String[] with hardcoded order [date, username, song title, artist, image-url, nicheness score]
getNichescore() - returns the "nichescore" of the user, or 100 minus the average popularity score based on user's song
Ex: alyssa.getNicheScore() returns 12 (very niche)
deleteAccount() - deletes user account (data for user still remains)
ListeningHistory
getMonthTopArtist(int month, int year) - returns a user's top artist for a given month and year
Ex: cris.getMonthTopArtist(11, 2025) returns "Tyler, the Creator"
getSongHistory(int month, int year) - returns a user's song history for a specified month and year as an ArrayList of Song objects.
Ex: cris.getSongHistory(11, 2025) returns ["By the Sea by Wendy & Bonnie", "Beautiful Soul by Katy J Pearson", "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot", ...]
getSongHistory() - returns a user's entire song history as an ArrayList of Song objects.
Ex: cris.getSongHistory() returns ["By the Sea by Wendy & Bonnie", "Beautiful Soul by Katy J Pearson", "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot", ...]
addSong(Song song) - adds Song object to listening history, formats the date that the song was added, and adds song's artist(s) to the artists history. Does not return anything.
ReadCSV:
generateDatabase() - reads in a CSV file, creates users, adds in song and date history. Does not return anything
ReadCSVPreprocess:
preprocess() - runs through the CSV file containing users, songs, artists, and dates and creates a new file that contains everything prior as well as the URL to the album cover and popularity score, if found on the SpotifyAPI
Song:
getYear() - returns year as an int.
Ex: getYear() returns 2025
getMonth() - returns month as an int.
Ex: getMonth() returns 12
getDay() - returns day as an int.
Ex: getDay() returns 11
getDate() - returns full date as a String.
Ex: getDate() returns "12-11-2025"
getTitle() - returns title of song as a String.
Ex: getTitle() returns "First Rate Town"
getArtist() - returns artist of song as a String.
Ex: getArtist() returns "Good Kid"
getImageURL() - returns url link to the image of album as a String.
Ex: getImageURL() returns "https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2739e466f8262ef856bc5b70260"
getPopularity() - returns Spotify's "popularity score" for the song.
Ex: getPopularity() returns "47"
getUser() - returns the user that listened to this instace of the song.
Ex: getUser() returns "Cris"
setUser(String user) - sets the user that listened to this instace of the song. Does not return anything.
compareTo(Song that) - compares two songs based on their date, returning -1 if the song was listened to after 'that' and 1 if it was listened to before.
new Song(Chapter Six,Kendrick Lamar,12/6/2025).compareTo(new Song(Katana,Samara Cyn,12/5/2025)) returns -1
SearchItemExample:
search(String search) - Makes a call to the SpotifyAPI to get a song's [title, artist, album cover url, popularity score] as an array of Strings.
Example: SearchItemExample.search("First Rate Town Good Kid") returns [First Rate Town, Good Kid, https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2739e466f8262ef856bc5b70260, 54]
LoginFrame:
initComponents() - Initializes the GUI elements and layout.
bootUp(BeMusicDatabase database) - Initializes Login window when called. Creates the GUI window to 'log in'. Enter a valid username from the preexisting database in order to view that user's timeline.
loading() - Loads image displayed at Login menu.
confirmActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Action that occurs when the 'Confirm' button is clicked. Checks if username is valid. If not, prompts user to enter a different username through a Dialog box. If yes, then opens TimelineFrame window.
TimelineFrame:
initComponents(String user) - Initializes the GUI elements and layout. user is the currently logged in username.
addEntry(String date, String username, String songtitle, String artist, String url, String nicheness) - Adds song entry (in form of strings) to history (song timeline array).
Getters and Setters for database, index, loggedUserStr, history, currentDate, currentUsername, currentSongTitle, currentArtist, currentNicheness.
profileButtonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Lets user switch to the Profile screen by openning a ProfileFrame Window. Upon clicking the View Profile button, creates a dialog box, allowing user to choose to either view own profile or profile of the user whose the listened to song is currently being displayed in TimelineFrame.
nextbuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the -> button, 'scrolls' in the timeline by incrementing index to view next in list of history.
lastbuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the <- > button, 'scrolls' backwards in the timeline by decrementing index to view previous in list of history.
ratesongbuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the "Rate this song!" button, a dialog box will prompt the user to rate the current song 1 to 5 stars. This rating will then be added to the cumulative rating of the listener's profile.
nichebuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the "How niche is it?" button, a dialog box will display how niche the currently viewed song is considered according to Spotify data.
reload(BeMusicDatabase database) - Reloads the TimelineFrame window to update the display. Occurs automatically whenever 'scrolling' or viewing a new song.
firsttimeload(BeMusicDatabase database) - Processes the window when first called.
getImage(String link) - Sets image for the album cover label, scaled to 250x250.
setup(String loggedUserStr, BeMusicDatabase database) - Creates the GUI window for the timeline, initializes TimelineFrame. This is called after logging in successfully and first opening the TimelineFrame GUI. Runs firsttimeload.
ProfileFrame:
Displays a given user's profile, the month's calendar with the songs they listened to, rating and nicheness score, as well as a button that returns to the timeline.
initComponents() - Initializes the GUI elements and layout.
timelinebuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the "Return to Timeline" button, hides Profile window, revealing the Timeline screen.
selectMonthbuttonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) - Upon clicking the "Go!" or "..." button, loads calendar display of song covers listened to during the month/year chosen in combo box. Also displays the most listened to artist(s), and how many songs of theirs were listened to during the month.
createArrayImgLabels() - Initialized the ArrayList<JLabel> used to wrangle image display.
getImage(JLabel label, String link) - Sets the label to display the image at the link.
PJ James:
Student at Pomona College, Class of '28
contact: pjmandelaj@gmail.com | linkedin
Cris Ovalle:
Student at Pomona College, Class of '28
contact: @crissovalle2010@gmail.com | linkedin
Alyssa Wu:
Student at Pomona College, Class of '28
contact: zjwualyssa@gmail.com | linkedin