But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.
Now that I came back to HN for my morning fix and made it through the form:
1. Seems to only have trance-y stuff, not the general electronic dance music (e.g. search for popular non-trance artists: Pendulum, Prodigy, or Aphex Twin). The only problem with that is the expectation from the description.
2. On my browsers (Safari, FF3), the sets search edit box isn't clickable / won't take focus. I can only search tracks and artists.
3. How does this help me? Is it just a nicer interface than Amazon's? I frequent sites like http://dnb-sets.de to listen to music. I suppose this is a compelling argument for pandora to take mixed sets into their playlist?
Now, I've closed it because I don't see a reason to use it. This is a major problem because I figure I'm probably the best consumer you can imagine for this. I love this music. I listen to it online for literally hours nearly every day. I'm very hungry to find new stuff to listen to, have it available to listen to again (I had physical media storage problems back when raves were big), and I'm happy to pay ridiculous sums for the service (e.g. i'd pay $10 just to know the name of the D&B song from 1-2 years ago with certain fight club samples#, and if I couldn't quickly find a mix with it online, maybe $25 for an mp3 of it).
If the site had a much broader range of music, and at least 100x more of it, I might use it. Even then, you'd need a compelling reason for me to stick around on your site (e.g. making it easy for me to find tracks I don't know what they are and buy them... or sucking in zillions of mixes and indexing them continuously in a way more convenient than others do).
___
# example sample, Tyler Durden: "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you." This isn't the more common tune you'll find in your quick search. Like I said, I'm serious, I want this tune.
I really appreciate your feedback. All your points are valid. The search box is disabled on the set page to keep the UI consistent but that functionality is not built yet. You again make a valid point that there isnt much content on the site. Relatively. Yes, Electronica is huge, there are literally dozens of genre. We really wanted to launch the service at a certain level before investing the time in covering different genres. It will come, eventually and hopefully you will return to the site.
Once again, this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted and expected from the HN community.
Cheers.
You might want to indicate at first that you're focusing on certain genres (trance, it seems). The first several searches that I tried (for techno) returned nothing. Managing expectations there seems like it could be important.
> i'd pay $10 just to know the name of the D&B song from 1-2 years ago with certain fight club samples
i run a little site that people go on to help identify music, called http://iden.tify.us you could try uploading it, and see if anyone knows it. there is a signup form, but if you'd rather not signup, just email the song to me and i'll post it (there is a link on the bottom of the site) sorry to threadjack, but this is the exact reason I started my site
I think he isn't trying to court you guys as a consumer, but rather as fellow hackers to test his beta site. You guys should cut him some slack — I always thought YC was a positive environment, but all your comments are incredibly unhelpful and just showcase your personal laziness.
BTW, this is site is FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!
It has a bunch of live DJ sets that you can listen to and even allows you to jump between tracks. It's for people that enjoy trance music and are tired of having to constantly find new sets.
We go through this on nearly every review. I think that instead of a day of coding, the team should sit around the table and bang out a list of reasons why people should sign up to their service right now.
This is critical: if you are launching a site, spend hours and hours and hours thinking about this. You know why you started the site, you know why you've been working on it so hard, but we are all busy playing minesweeper.
Tell us why we should spend 15 seconds checking it out.
Its the difference between gaining some traction from a YC! "review" and getting zero traction and having no clue why.
Ahh that would be awesome. I have always wanted the ability to have a set annotated, so that i can replay my favs and skip to certain sections easily - is this what it does?
I wish you could browse the available sets and DJs without signing up for an account. To force me to do that is a bit of a pain. I'd rather go back to doing some "real work" than to go through the trouble of signing up so I can explore your new site quickly.
That is the idea. I dont't like signing up for accounts either. The only reason we have account signup right now is for the beta period. Essentially to understand how people are using the site and to make fixes accordingly. When we launch we want it to work perfectly, right now its far from that.
Now you understand how people will use the site: they will look at it, not instantly understand why it's worth giving personal information to, leave, and tell their friends it's not worthwhile.
If you want to track interaction, just give everyone a cookie (or Flash cookie, nearly nobody clears those) and watch behavior by that.
I love it! I like listening to live sets, but I'm always annoyed when I want to know what a certain track in the middle of a set is. If you're lucky you can find a breakdown of the set list, but this is way better than even that.
[me goes to unsubscribe from electronic music podcasts in iTunes]
Now, just make it so you can continue browsing the site without interrupting the currently playing track/set. You could do that with frames, or by loading content using AJAX (that's what http://www.thesixtyone.com/ does)
I've always wanted a GUIDE to good electronica, techno, dance etc because I know I like it, I just don't know whats good... so it sounds like your site may help me! Right now I'm listening to some random tracks I've found... so far so good....
The UI is nice, one thing that would help, though I'm spoiled, is how on the new playlist.com website you can browse music without interrupting your player stream.
i tried signing up a few times but couldn't make it work. username too short, then the invite code disappeared on the retry page. i tried going back to step 1 and it still wouldn't let me sign up.
Does anyone else feel that the play/pause button is backwards? For me, the button displays the "Play" arrow when the music is playing and it shows the pause button when it is paused. I know that sounds like how it should be, but I think that's the reverse of most other players that show the Play button when music is not playing, and, after clicking, the music begins and the button switches to give you the option to pause.
Also, I noticed that the album art was constantly flickering for me.
I was only able to get two of the sets to play. Every other one sits at 0:00 with the play button clicked. Added it to my Flashblock whitelist, but the flash bar was way below the player, which was weird. The player should be able to pop out or iframe or something so that you can browse while listening. How do I gather and share? You should pre-check the buy links so they could go to Amazon, itunes, Juno, or wherever, based on who has it. Many tracks are hard to find mixes.
Looks great, but... I can't seem to get any sound out of it? I click the Play button, and absolutely nothing happens.
It's disappointing, since I actually want to use it :p
Tried it in Chrome and Firefox 3 so far.
Small side note: log me in right after I register! Especially if you don't require email confirmation. It's a minor one-time irritation, but any friction you can remove, especially at the beginning of a user's experience, is worth it.
Edit: about 15 minutes into a set, it stopped playing with no explanation, although the time elapsed changed to NaN:NaN:NaN. Changing tracks or fiddling with the controls couldn't get it going again, but reloading the page did.
Love the concept, and I'm going to keep using it, but it seems to need a bit more QA :p
Why are you using a streaming server? Stream over http, save on a little infrastructure since the files are generally going to be easily consumable by most broadband connections due to their small sizes.
What's broken about the invite form? Could you take a screenshot. I have noticed sometimes if you load the page and click on invite friends too soon it takes you to a white page with a blank form. This is because the JS hasn't finished loading. I'll have a fix for that soon.
I wish you the best of luck. My momentum ran out with the signup form. And I like electronic music.
But regardless, congratulations! You got something up and running, and the custom link greeting page was a very nice touch. Please give us updates + progress reports.
- Let me queue up dj sets.
- Give me a desktop player so I can listen without keeping firefox open.
- Not clear why I have to create an account since I can't do anything with it other than leave comments
Every single set listed is eurotrance. Many even play the same tracks. Furthermore, they are all from established DJs. When does the 'upload set' feature make it in, and truly democratize techno music?
1. Flow of the signup form. I think this was mentioned before, but the "login" field should be titled "username" since you have it on the login field to the right.
2. Can you add a lighter color to the footer? I think it may look better with three variants of the black on the page.
3. Can you direct me to a tour of what Mugasha does, rather then pointing me to text with a "Find out more" pointing me to an "About" page with copy? Give me a guided tour, show me what it is and why it's useful!
Using XP at home, I can't register, it gives multiple errors, and using the password recovery page, it gives the following error: A password reset link was not sent, you may have enetered an invalid email address. (typo on original page).
I used the link in the original post. If you want to send me an invite, use my nick/handle at yahoo dot com. I'd also use the same nick/handle as the login name as I post here with.
I agree. If I'm listening to a good set I'm much more likely to "buy set" than I am to take the time to buy them one at a time. "Buy set" option highly suggested.
You can't really buy sets. Sets are basically podcasts that are mixed by DJs weekly for promotional purpose. Unless we collaborate with sites like Beatport or Juno to make this happen.
I understand that, but as it happens, sets (and mix CDs which are basically less often released, higher quality sets) are the only thing I listen to as far as electronic music is concerned.
I do not listen to progressive house in single tracks. That doesn't even begin to make sense - progressive house is all about the progression across a set.
The input of a DJ in selecting, arranging, mixing the tracks into a set is what makes electronic music great to me. I would not buy single electronic music tracks, but I might consider paying for a subscription that would give me access to vast amounts of sets by the likes of John Digweed, Anthony Pappa, Sasha, Dave Seaman, Mirel Jarca, Nick Warren, Danny Howells, etc...
Also, worth noting, if I can't download them to my computer in a DRM-free format, those sets are absolutely worthless to me. However, I'd be very willing to pay a subscription fee (even with a - reasonably generous - limit on the number of sets that I can download. In fact, I used to subscribe (for money) to freshlymixed.com, and all they did was record and republish Digweed's kiss100 mixes and the Essential Mixes from BBC 1.
Thanks for the feedback. I am really happy to hear that you are interested in those features. A lot of the things you mentioned are planned and will eventually come into play. We are young right now, but we are definitely here to grow.
Cheers.
I actually love electronic dance music.
But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.