Show HN: Tubalr.com, taking advantage of all the great music content on YouTube.
www.tubalr.com - any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
code: https://github.com/cjstewart88/Tubalr
code: https://github.com/cjstewart88/Tubalr
Clearly it wouldn't be perfect, but a reasonably consistent format seems to be <title - band>. It might be possible to use a combination of "links to" and video viewcounts to acts as indicators of authenticity? I mean, I've hardly done much research into this, but I know when I look for music on youtube I almost always use those metrics to determine which videos I'm going to listen to, as it were.
Interestingly, they pivoted into a 'better Pandora' where they license music, allow playing similar songs, but also let users hand-pick songs for playlists (that for licensing reasons can only be played by other people).
http://evolver.fm/2011/03/30/songza-attempts-to-reinvent-net...
Good work.
Feedback:
• I love the Similar button.
• Perhaps the links to the videos could be outline or something, right now it's hard to distinguish them from eachother because it's a mass of text. I mean of course the design of this is very minimalistic and the main focus here is the function, but for now that would be my main design criticism.
• You should filter for the word "with" preceding an artist's name in the video title. Also perhaps "and", or any sort of list of names after an occurrence of "with," because I got one video for the query "Avi Buffalo" that was "Look Out for My Love Jeff Tweedy with Avi Buffalo, Solid sound August 15 2010," which is of course not Avi Buffalo at all.
EDIT: Also, the ability to search while still keeping the current song playing at the top would be nice.
As far as filtering out videos with the keywords "with" and "and", I'll have to do some testing with this and see if the results are better. My concern is what happens when a user searches for something like "Coheed and Cambria", tons of the videos would be filtered out. I guess I could only filter out "with" and "and" if its not in the original search.
Can you elaborate on how you think searching while listening should work?
Thanks a lot for taking the time to give me some feedback.
1. I'd like to be able to pass in something via the URL that allows me to set the wmode of the video to be opaque or transparent. This is to prevent z-index conflicts when I have two separate tubalr iframes that overlap each other when I drag those iframes around.
2. For the initial video that tubalr loads, I'd like to be able to pass in something via the URL that controls whether the first video autoplays or not. This is to prevent multiple videos from playing at the same time when I have multiple tubalr iframes on a page.
Example Interface: http://beta.mindcast.com/ui/4kug9iozh54y
var params = { allowScriptAccess: "always", bgcolor: "#cccccc", allowFullScreen: true, wmode: "opaque" };
No useful advice at the moment, beyond a vague suggestion to revisit the domain name choice (if somehow you're not wedded to this one by now, and you see many other folks with reactions like mine). I'm still not quite sure of the intended reading, but first I saw a slightly jumbled "tubgirl"(!), then I saw "two-baller"; now I'm stuck with a reference to "tubal" (as in tubal ligation? ...) with a flickr-style ending. Maybe just put an "about" link somewhere that gives a hint?
I originally liked the word Tubular(used mostly in the 80's, or by people mocking the 80's to describe something 'awesome' or 'excellent' ie, good.); however, that domain was taken. Then I started thinking about variations of the word, and went with Tubalr. I went with this version of the word because it has the word Tuba(a musical instrument) in it and in my head sounded cool :P. So with that in mind, I thought it was cool to have a name that came from a word meaning "awesome", "excellent", or "good" AND have a musical instrument in the name.
Hope that clears up the name a tad bit. Oh, I pronounce the word something like: Tube-u-ler
Something you might want to address : I've searched for The Prodigy, and I got "Amanda Bynes' 2010 Maxim Cover Shoot". I'm not sure where that came from!
EDIT: I see if you reload the site and pick the same artist again, the same videos come up in the same order. Some randomization would go a long ways.
One thing and I dont' know if it's possible, but is there a way to have it where if the video is flagged as no longer there, it's not returned in the results? I get about a 25% to 50% rate where the video is listed, but doesn't play.
Example URLS: http://www.tubalr.com/just/Muse OR http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Jack+Johnson
The one thing that I am confused about is why the old songza disappeared. If the only problem was that they weren't showing videos, they easily could have started doing so, and I remember that at least for awhile they were doing that.
Wikipedia says "However, in late January 2010 Songza had to put their music streaming service on hold due to problems with YouTube's API (which is what the site uses to play back songs), YouTube blocking the site from using its API, presumably because YouTube could be sued for supporting a free music service without adverts[citation needed]." It looks like Songza had ads, so maybe that was the issue. Regardless, you may find reading up about Songza interesting; TechCrunch reports they were acquired for high six figures to low seven figures.
Also, that is a pretty great font for your logo. For anyone else interested he uses "Pacifico": http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/pacifico
http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes
Also, a simple API I threw together: http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses.json http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes.json
Thanks for the feedback!
the only downside i see which i noticed other people mentioning as well is when i search for let's say "Coldplay" the first 2-3 songs are the same which would require me to play next. it's a lot simpler than the Youtube playlist so once you add the playlist functionality and some algorithm to get rid of duplicates it'll be a very useful service.
How are you planning to monetize this? or are you doing this just as a hobby?
As far as monetizing, well... I have no clue. I started this app for practice and so I'd have something to show when I went for my first job interview, having just graduated. I messed around with adding a "Buy This Song" link that would send you to the Amazon MP3; however, I removed it because it was just more clutter I wasn't interested in, specially seeing it wasnt getting used as I thought it would. I'm open for any suggestions if ya have any :)