Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs | Hacker News Reader

Like.fm (YC W11) Is A Social Network For Tracking Songs

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120 pointschrischen68 comments

At Grooveshark, we have a feature that does this and it works amazingly well. If you click on the people icon at the upper left hand corner of the screen you'll see a feed of what your friends are currently listening to on Grooveshark. The feature has become so useful, that I often discover new music to listen to through it much more so than algorithmic recommendations. Social recommendations are indeed the best way to discover new music. In fact, one interesting example of this is when one of our co-workers began recommending everyone listen to Mumford and Sons about 10 months ago. Within a month, everyone's feeds were filled with Mumford and Sons playlists. I remember looking at my feed and thinking "Who the hell are Mumford And Sons". Turns out they're awesome and got super popular.

10 months?

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hottest100/09/countdown/cd_lis... <-- That was the 2009 top list.

Those songs definitely weren't the top songs in 2009 (globally). Here's the billboard from 2009. http://www.billboard.com/charts-year-end/hot-100-songs?year=....

I don't think the billboard charts are global. For Australia -- They overall for the year charted at 52 in 2009 and 8 in 2010 (In terms of sales anyway).

From wikipedia: "The band's debut album, Sigh No More, was released in the United Kingdom in October 2009, and February 2010 in the United States." It's nice to see Australia getting a media release before the US for a change. :)

2010) http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-end-of-year-charts-... 2009) http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-end-of-year-charts-...

So my goal with Like.fm is to take that but have all your friends connected in that way regardless of what music service they use.

Yeah I understand. It's probably better that you aren't tied to the content. I'll be curious to see how you innovate with this idea and to see how users react to a site that isn't part of their core music destination.

Good luck! Btw, if you need any help getting through to anyone at GS or help with our API, feel free to message me.

A lot of people are being rather critical of this launch, which in itself is a rather mean spirited thing to do considering a) anyone launching anything should be applauded, b) and the 20 year old solo founder got into ycombinator with this product, c) data porn startups should be fascinating to hackers. Almost 20% of the comments here, and one of the most upvoted comments here is calling it a clone.

I believe that Like.FM can and will kill Last.FM. The reason is because Last.FM is in the corporate doldrums, and since Last.FM got acquired a few fundamental things happened: Facebook & Twitter. Last.FM has little to no integration with these services, seriously, imagine a social service in 2011 that entirely ignores these networks.

I love Last.FM, I have been a user for over 5 years (http://www.last.fm/user/Hejog) but I am infuriated to no end at the lack of innovation.

Last.FM has forgotten its roots of being a startup, and in this process lost the one thing products need to relentlessly focus on - delighting users. If Like.FM can focus on that, they will beat Last.FM.

The major roadblock with beating Last.FM is that their API is a very defensible beachhead - I refuse to use music services that do not scrobble, as data is worthless if you only see 90% of your listening habits.

Chris needs to run around SV and convince everyone to let him integrate his APIs with their music service. (seriously, isn't Earbits in the same batch as you?)

I've actually found Last.fm's APIs and its ubiquity to be a plus. I've implemented Like.fm's tracking APIs to be identical to that of Last.fm's. So new player implementations usually only require minor, or no, modifications by me to have it working with Like.fm.

Founder Chris Chen says that its emphasis on song tracking is what separates the Like.fm from streaming services like Last.fm and music buying networks like Apple’s Ping (which he describes as “a step above adding share buttons to the iTunes store.”) says Chen “Like.fm isn’t meant to be a destination music site, it’s meant to be a place to find songs that you like. It’s not meant to be a Pandora but a compliment to it, it’s a place for sound discovery, where you go and listen to music.”

It sounds to me like he's describing Last.FM perfectly. Last.FM is a social network for finding new music based on the songs you play/scrobble.

I think with Pandora and Last.FM already well established and Grooveshark certainly doing fine I struggle to see the room in this market and what Like.fm provides that's different. Even the name sounds like a rip off of last.fm.

Maybe there is something here that the others don't/can't provide, but I'm not seeing it - anyone have any ideas?

So currently I'm the only person working on the site, and it would be awesome if I could get some help. So if anyone is interested in working on Like.fm (with compensation) you can contact me at chris@like.fm.

I know this is offtopic, but I'll throw it out here anyway. My Last.fm account is 3 or 4 years old. I was 16 then, I'm 20 now. My tastes today are radically different from what they were 4 years ago. 4 years ago I used to listen to KoRn, Marilyn Manson and Eminem, and nothing much besides. Predictably enough, they were the top 3 artists in my Last.fm charts for a long time. Now my tastes have not only changed, they've become more varied. Some of the artists I listen to now have pushed my old favorites down the charts, but the old favorites still appear the top 10, and Marilyn Manson is still #1.

Sadly, Last.fm insists on listing heavy metal and rap artists as my top recommendations. I'd kill for a music discovery service that could take my changing tasted into account.

You can always browse the "similar artists" section on individual artist's pages. There's a "similar songs" feature as well, but I've found it to be fairly weak.

The signup process is fantastic. I had zero trouble whatsoever completing the registration and installing the web & desktop clients. Streamlined = good stuff.

I can't tell you how pleased I was when I clicked the Facebook Connect button and didn't see a request for permission to post to my wall. Thumbs up for not needing that.

If you're going to make a last.fm clone you could be a little more subtle about it.

I didn't choose the domain. The domain chose me.

right...

Say, penultimate.fm?

Hey what do you know: http://penultimate.fm

It's because the target user was fakestevejobs.

I use last.fm heavily and i do not see anything for me on like.fm. it is basicly (for now) a bad copy.

Like.fm is new. Let me know what are the features you need. My email is chris@like.fm. This is, in essence, a preview of what's to come.

I noted that the article mentions that there is a lot that is 'coming soon', so maybe this is all in the works and i'm being redundant but:

I have to say that i'm not super impressed with how the profiles are set up. I really like Last.fm's profile pages because they provide a huge amount of information at a glance, and they do Like.fm's stated job of being 'a place to find songs that you like' very well by giving you compatibility ratings and showing top artists, top tracks, &c.

Meanwhile, the profiles on Like.fm are barely a step up from a text log of songs you've played. There's no information at all aside from that, just song a, song b, song c. I am not sure how this is meant to help me discover music i like -- there's no context or anything.

On another note, i find the design/layout of the site somewhat lacking as well. There's a lot of unnecessary white space and the design doesn't seem to have any coherent branding or theme (Last.fm has a relatively attractive and memorable red-and-white thing going on, for instance) -- it's just very dreary.

I hope that wasn't too harsh, it was meant to be constructive. I should add that i did sign up, in anticipation of improvements -- i am very interested in moving off of Last.fm, it's just that so far there's not much to tempt me.

So your summary page will rank your recently top played songs and group them by artists. It's supposed to reflect your top music within the last 1-3 days so it can keep up with what you like right now. I know the site may still look a little bare and even unpolished but I'm the only person working on it right now but I'll be hiring soon.

And as far as more quantitative stats and similarity ratings, that's all in the works.

Brilliant. Good luck :)

Personally, I think it's better than Last.fm. There are too many pages, too many clicks to get anywhere, it's too much information and too much hierarchy.

Like.fm is simpler to discover what friends whose music taste I like are listening too. Hearing their last 10 songs is fine with me if I can skip through them quickly. And if I want to look at their profile I'll go to Facebook.

Please keep the white space. There's not enough of it on the web.

Huge congrats Chris! Being a 20 year old solo founder is seriously impressive.

To everyone hating for how this borrows too heavily from last.fm: I think that you'll find soon enough that there's a serious opportunity in picking up where an acquired but now stagnating startup left off. Startups are so much more agile that this might turn out to be a consistently repeatable strategy.

He's 20?

Sweet, he's given me hope then, I had this feeling I wouldn't have a chance because im 19 (almost 20 - in april).

Good luck Chris, and make sure not to overbloat the app with features (like last fm)

Devan

I misread the title as Last.fm there!

I have a hard time reading it as anything other than Last.fm even after knowing it isn't Last.fm.

Wehn you cnodiser how we sacn wdors scuh taht the bignennig and end are by far the most iportmant deriffentaiotrs, the nmiang is annoyingly similiar, IMO.

Nice demo :-) I hadn't put my finger on why exactly I always read like.fm as last.fm, but I think you hit it on the head.

I read the linked article and I'm not entirely convinced there is a difference (I've used last.fm happily for five years, and never touched the streaming stuff).

If I've got 30,000 "scrobbles" and all my friends on last.fm, what does like.fm offer me that would make me switch?

They have all this cool data and I feel they're not doing as much as they could with it in terms of modern social features. And for new users I think the experience of finding your friends via facebook is much easier than it is on Last.fm.

But I agree with you right now the site still needs more features. But you can use both services while I work on them. I see a lot of potential for improvement and for advancing the idea behind music tracking.

I am sure they will have FB social features soon enough. Do keep in mind that Last.fm has their own valuable friend graph (even if you may not have a ton of friends on it) that is meaningfully different from the FB graph

"It’s not meant to be a Pandora but a compliment to it, it’s a place for sound discovery, where you go and listen to music.”"

Right, because I don't go and listen to music when I visit Pandora, Grooveshark, etc.

I think the transcribing got a little messed up, but what I meant was that Like.fm isn't meant to be a listening destination. It's not meant to compete with Pandora, Rdio, or iTunes. It's supposed to work with content delivery platforms, aggregate the data, and the ability to play via youtube on the site is simply a convenience feature to aid in discovery.

Last.fm didn't let you listen to music through them at all in the beginning; they were just a sharing and recommendation service. And for a lot of people, that's what they still are. They also are an affiliate for content delivery platforms. They also let you listen to music via youtube on their site. They also aggregate metadata from other sites like wikipedia. How do you differentiate yourself from them?

Facebook did a lot of the same things other social networks did too on a high level. But you can't look at things only on a high level or else they all look the same. This is a preview of what's to come, since this site is new, and we're a much smaller company than Last.fm.

My startup blaster.fm which I submitted for review recently - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275032 - does a similar sort of thing with more of a social bent. It leverages last.fm's idea of scrobbling, so there's no need for new ways to track what you're listening to.

Best of luck though, guys.

"... the service uses a Chrome, Firefox and Safari extension to automatically track what you’re listening to on YouTube, Pandora, Rdio, Meemix, Grooveshark and Earbits and a desktop client to track what you’re listening to on Winamp, iTunes, MediaMonkey or Windows Media Player. ..."

The missing bit has been video (youtube) and various downloads in mp4 format that I play in xine, totem (linux). Is there anyway to capture in the desktop client in windows (WMP)?

"... My startup blaster.fm ..."

looks like you beat my tweet. The same applies to blaster.fm. Stuff that's not in mp3 that I play mp4,flv isn't captured unless I write my own client.

Last summer, I remember saying Rdio should put together an offer for like.fm - looks like that has gotten more expensive. (nice work)

Why did I have to log in with facebook if you were going to give me an account I can't get into using my facebook account?

Edit: Also, the chrome extension seems somewhat bad at picking out the song and artist from YouTube videos. I tried to leave feedback about this, but your feedback form doesn't have a submit button.

404 Error file "/rome/rome/rome" not found. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Rest assured there will be a layoff with extreme prejudice.

....that was my bad. Please no layoffs.

Can you tell me where you got to that url?

I clicked on my profile, history, then I clicked on my name. It just says loading now... ??

This seems pretty cool, but I use the Pandora desktop client (paid for Pandora One.. hated the ads) or foobar2000 as my player and neither of those are supported :(

I haven't used Last.fm in years and this is very appealing, but Like.fm just doesn't offer a way to track what I listen to right now.

Fortunately, Like.fm has almost the same scrobbling API as Last.fm, which makes it very easy to port existing plugins.

Chris (Like.fm's creator) was able to help me modify a python plugin for Exaile rather quickly to support his website. I'm sure he'd be willing to work with anyone who would want to create and open source a plugin for other players.

Foobar2000 is actually next in line for windows to be supported.

Awesome, thanks. I just subscribed to the blog for updates and will definitely be using it once it's out.

http://blog.like.fm/ (I can't find a link to this on your site)

So, if the scrobbling API is the same like Last.fm's, there's slight chance some client (player plugins) could support Like.fm thanks to Libre.fm (yay, Micronesian registrar must be very profitable). For example, in Quod Libet's QLScrobbler plugin you can choose to which URL to scrobble, instead of post.audioscrobbler.com you can use turtle.libre.fm or any other URL. And there's much more clients - http://bugs.foocorp.net/projects/librefm/wiki/Clients

Just give us URL to point our scrobblers to.

Great! I'm loving the iTunes support. It's how I do most of my listening. I'd like to see friend recommendations based on listening habits. I'm rome on like.fm, add me if you want to add me.

Signed up. If you send me an email when mpd support is added then I'll give it a try. I could check back in a few months, but I'll probably forget.

Sure. I will let you know.

Why all the custom extensions/tracking software, and emphasis on compatibility with the last.fm api when you could get the same data by just pulling from last.fm?

Data ownership, maybe, but it also felt like a very heavy onboarding process. "Welcome! Now install these two browser widgets and some desktop client..."

I have totally been working on a site that would recommend music based on what your friends have been listening to. Similar to this, except it didn't have the great idea of tracking everything you listen to online through extensions. This is such a great idea. Congratulations guys!

Mini-ask HN: Why link to a techcruch article when you could just link to the startup's website? I'm not trying to be ornery, sincerely asking.

I'm not interested in reading a techcrunch article about a new startup. I'd rather go straight to the startup and look at it.

Thanks for that signup process.

How hard is it to extend this to some linux apps like Amarok or VLC? Is that in your development list, or are the programs too sparse?

Chris replied via his live support that he has an API and some support for Exaile (a linux player). Sick!

Yes the API is identical to Last.fm's api and there is a hacked Last.fm scrobbler for exaile.

I think I'd choose blip.fm over like.fm, personally.

Love it. Runs in the background, I don't have to do any work at all. When I need it, it's updated. Nice work keeping it simple.

Ha! Too cool Chris, I had no idea you were in YC W11. Too cool to see it go so well with Like.fm :)

Yea your lyrics button is still there :)

Congrats Chris!

Thanks!

Very nice!

congrats on the launch Chris! looks awesome!

The negative with Like.fm is that I have to install a Like client on my laptop to track my music habits. I don't want to clutter my laptop with unnecessary software.

The client only runs when your music player is running. And it's very lightweight. You can think of it as an addon to your music player.

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