Motivated by my own need for an appropriate working soundscape, I created this web application that plays natural soundscapes with minimal user interaction. The core principle was to make the app act as an „acoustic window" rather than a traditional media player.
Using the current sunrise and sunset times, the app determines the currently appropriate time setting, night, dawn, and day, and selects a soundscape from a curated list each time it is launched. The app has a minimalist interface with only one interaction: muting and unmuting the soundscape - in line with the "window" metaphor mentioned above. When an audio stream ends, the app picks a new one automatically. To get a different soundscape, the user reloads the page.
For more background information, please view this post on my personal web page.
The app is currently hosted on Vercel and available online for you to try out.
First, install the dependencies and run the development server:
npm install
npm run devOpen http://localhost:3000 with your browser to see the running page.
You can add new soundscapes by appending YouTube links and the appropriate category to the public/soundscapes.csv file. The category is encoded as an integer, where 1 is night, 2 is dawn, and 3 is day.
If you want to batch categorize YouTube videos, you may find the YouTube Video Categorizer repository helpful.
Feel free to create pull requests for new soundscapes (or other changes and features).