Show HN: burn.fm - A new way to listen to music on Youtube | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: burn.fm - A new way to listen to music on Youtube

burn.fm

44 pointslunarlia43 comments

I'm probably stupid, but it took me far too long to realize how to play a song :)

Other than that - really neat project!

That makes two of us. Perhaps an autoplay after adding first song would be helpful.

Three now. How is the most basic action so hidden? Awesome design though, I think you should add a way to import and save playlists.

I still don't know how to do it.

I was stumped for 10 seconds and closed the tab.

I feel I started playback by accident.

Edit: It kind of makes sense to click title to play it, after all.

As someone who uses YouTube a lot to listen to music: thanks for this!

I have some comments + questions, though:

Comments:

1.The video feels too small for such a large screen estate. Perhaps add an option to resize it? Or relocate it to the bottom of the screen or top of the playlist, instead of using the corner..

2. You should add an option to directly copy-paste the URL. As I see it now, I can't even highlight it.

EDIT: 3. How do you determine which video gets played? Sometimes the video I want is not the one as the top result, but #4 or even #5. Maybe add an option to use the next video in the search results?

Questions:

1. How did you create it? What do you use for the frontend and backend? Are you planning to release the code somehow? (just curious)

Again, thanks :)! It feels very slick and I like the color scheme.

2. Copy/paste.

Right click on the flash player, click on "Copy video URL."

I used nothing but a text editor to write the frontend, and the backend is entirely yourls: yourls.org. Song lists are stored directly in URLs using iTunes IDs, and yourls shorturls them. A very preliminary version was piggybacking on a third-party shorturling service. I plan to release the source on github in the next couple of weeks.

The top result on a YouTube search for 'song title+band' is played. The Fail button cycles through the next few results.

I agree that the video is a little too small. I've experimented with making that a resizable window on the screen -- I'll try that again.

Copy button! Yes!

Thanks for the feedback!

Awesome stuff! But wont you get into trouble with Google for this site? Because it is like Spotify, except much better. :) Previously, I used http://www.youtube-mp3.org/ to conveniently listen to music on youtube, but it apparently ran into legal issues.

Anyone have any more info on this? I have an idea for a similar service with a bit of a twist, but I've been put of as I thought this type of thing was against youtube TOS.

Also, I've queued up and played a few tracks, but not seen any youtube adverts, have I just been lucky or is there some way of removing them?

Where do the tracks come from for a tag?

Getting some good punk tonight! Well, aside from a Minutemen track that was in there! ;p

Definitely some design challenges ahead. Make +Artist infinite scroll, put it in the very upper left. Make +Genre into #Genre and put it one column right of that. Put all the playlist controls in the third column, New/Random and Shuffle/Loop. Cram the main header & social feeds right of that, include the Add Tracks in the lower part, and then the video in your fourth and last column.

That's my suggestion at a first pass anyways. There are three different tools for adding songs, and knowing you need to click & do something with them is priority #1 for new people, and needs to be minimal. The big search box doesn't help, as it takes to much brain power to see something happen. The +Artist and #Genre columns top left are to try to condense & make apparent their utility, stress the need to do one of them asap. Search is more advanced, people seeking shall find.

Great functionality! Love it. What's it coded in? Would be happy to rejigger your front end code for the above.

Man, you.fm is so 5 minutes ago. But seriously cool project :-)

While people are giving advice on burn.fm, there was a similar project submitted here just a few hours prior that may also be of interest called YouFM.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4404007

HN has templates for submissions now? Both titles read exactly like this:

  Show HN: $MYAPP - A new way to listen to music on Youtube

(that was not a critic to either submission)

Want some unsolicited UX advice?

Watch people use your interface (observational research/ usability testing) and then iterate. They idea is great and the interface looks good but it seems you haven't honed in on the mental model of your users and how they use the interface.

How to usability test:

(Insider tip: Don't ever call it User Testing, you are not testing the User, you are testing your interface. This my seem subtle, but it is not.)

- Develop a test plan

- Choose a testing environment

- Find and select participants

- Prepare test materials

- Conduct the sessions

- Debrief with participants and observers

- Analyze data and observations

- Create findings and recommendations

Read this article - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/usability-testing-demysti...

Congrats on the launch! It's always interesting to see different executions of the same idea - I had actually launched something very similar earlier this year: http://www.deskamp.com

I read the other day that most teens listen to music through YouTube, something like 64%, so there is definitely a market out there for YouTube music apps.

Related: Something I made awhile ago - http://www.tunesicles.com It allows you to do the same thing but also search by album and add all of the songs off it instantly!! But cool project. I like the hashtags feature.

The UI is a mess. You need to do some work on that in order to compete with other services.

Yeah, im not much of a designer. I'm working on it. But im not planning to make money off it so its not getting my full attention right now. But if any designers would like to work together. Let me know! I think it could be a cool service!

Shamelessly going to plug my app, YouTunes Live, which lets you create YouTube audio playlists on iOS, as some readers may be interested: http://youtuneslive.com/download

It's fast and simple which is good.

When I want to share a track, I use toma.hk beaucse it does not care about the content source. It can resolve tracks using a lot of different providers, making sure my contacts will always be able to listen to it.

This reminds me of the original 2007 version of songza - http://web.archive.org/web/20080111032427/http://songza.com/

Nice start. I'd recommend a way to add songs by bulk, though. One at a time can be very inefficient when you want, say, everything by your three favorite artists.

You can do this at burn.fm. Click the + button after you've added a song =]

Check out http://www.tunesicles.com ! You can add all songs off an artists album at once.

Oh, great to see link here. I suggested site to couple of friends, we loved it and then it went dark. Thought it was gone, wouldnt recheck.

Awesome! Yeah went out of town and my server crashed. :( Should be good now.

Liked the clean UI. Very useful stuff. But it stopped after playing few (-5) songs everytime, the youtube player keeps showing that the song is still buffering.

A similar project that I created a couple years ago:

http://viddyjam.com

The idea was to create a classic MTV meets Youtube meets Pandora.

I type cyrillic text in: [барто готов] press enter, nothing happens.

This uncovers at least two problems. Poor unicode handling? No indication leading to confusion?

Didn't Google just shut down a couple of sites that ripped MP3s from videos? I guess this is different because it only streams?

Since we're listing similar sites, here's another one: http://tubalr.com

This is great. It looks like what I would have made for myself, if I had the chops and the design skills. Congrats.

Looks Great - your UX needs a lot of work though, It took me a long time to figure out what to click

The message that pops up when you try to add a song twice made me laugh. Solid site, well done.

Well, the UX is kinda confusing. By the way... lyrics... please.

Question for the class: What was the first song you added?

The Strokes - Alone, Together

Gimme Shelter, Rolling Stones

365 is my number - Sunny Ade

Rodriguez - Sugar Man

Awesome :) any plans for last.fm scobbling integration?

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