Keymote + Airfoil + Spotify = music around the house

Before I go any further, I’ll explain the way I listen to music these days.

Since I started using Spotify a few weeks ago, it’s taken over from iTunes as my music jukebox of choice. The app lives on my MacBook, which resides in the office (read small bedroom) upstairs. This is great if I want to listen to music when on the computer, but not so good when I want music downstairs.
Here, my Apple TV comes into play. When using iTunes I would obviously be able to stream music over the WiFi to the ATV and all was well. Spotify, though, can’t do this. If only there was a way to send audio from my MacBook upstairs to my Apple TV downstairs….

Take a bow Airfoil.

Airfoil, by Rogue Amoeba does just what I need. According to their product website, Airfoil will let you ‘Send any audio to AirPort Express units, Apple TVs, and even other Macs and PCs, all in sync! Airfoil for Mac gives you your audio – everywhere’ and that’s exactly what it does ! So, fire up Airfoil, select your app of choice (in this case, Spotify) and Airfoil springs into action. From here on in, any audio coming out of Spotify gets sent to your device of choice. Simple.

This is all well and good, and everything is indeed all rainbows and unicorns. That is, until I want to skip a track.

Here’s where Keymote on the iPhone saves the day.

Keymote is a cool little app which lets you assign button presses to keyboard shortcuts on your Mac. With Keymote you need never remember a keyboard shortcut again, which is good because I can never remember any of them ! Press the on-screen button on your iPhone and a string of keyboard strokes happen on your Mac courtesy of the free app you’re running in the taskbar.

Another great feature is the Keyset Store. Here you can download pre-made sets of shortcuts which saves you the hassle of doing it yourself. The icing on the cake here is that, despite the name, everything in the Keyset Store is free.

To make the magic happen in our little example here, download a Spotify keyset and you have yourself a dedicated remote control for your tunes. play/pause, track skip and replay are all there, along with volume controls too. Perfect !

Now I have a near-endless supply of music at my fingertips, streaming from one corner of the house to another, all thanks to three great pieces of software. What’s more, it means my Apple TV might actually get used as something other than an expensive podcast player !