Discover the best Electronic Dance Music you probably have never heard of | Hacker News Reader

Discover the best Electronic Dance Music you probably have never heard of

turnchannel.com

79 pointsshawnjanas76 comments

I click on 'House' and it plays Dubstep, and then cheesy trance, followed by more of the same cheese. It's just pop-music basically. I don't mean to bitch, but to claim "Discover the best Electronic Dance Music you probably have never heard of" - and then be presented with pop-music is a little disingenuous.

Where's the underground genres? Tech-house, minimal techno, dub techno, electro, etc...

There is nothing underground about Tech-house unfortunately.

6ft under would be a blessing though.

Without wanting to get into genre wars, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. There's a brand of music at the moment calling itself 'tech house', but it's basically also pop-garbage like the stream from the OP.

Tech-house as a term has been bastardised in the same way as 'trance' in the mid-90s. There's still some amazing stuff out there though, but you need to dig for it. Unfortunately I don't think the OP site is going to help if it purely filters tags on Soundcloud (if you're really unlucky you'll hear some of my tracks, ha!).

Some real tech-house classics:

Callisto - Resistance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THPQP0-yK54

Inner City – Ahnongay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0rhmECo_Xc

this link said nothing about providing 'tech house' see title for 'electronic dance house' which would show your distaste for music 'popular' enough to be used in a large dance/rave setting

I'm sorry, I don't follow your rambling sentence. My 'tech house' comment was purely an example of alternative genres which are not covered by this site.

The web and media is full of the kind of garbage streamed on this site. There's a real gap in the market in my opinion to nail the underground electronic music scene. Everything from leftfield electronica to techno.

Over the past 7 years or so I've seen the underground house and techno scene in London become so unbelievably huge. Which has just meant that opportunists jump in and create generic and bland versions of the music that I love.

Over the past 3-5 years its gone completely mainstream and the kind of garbage you hear in the charts is the same as from the OP. So it's not presenting me (personally) with anything.

I'm personally interested in a way to promote the better underground artists out there without having to hand pick each.

I don't have a solution for this unfortunately. I was hoping that the OP link would have been it. This is why I was disappointed. Because there are still lots of incredibly talented producers out there being totally buried by the torrent of sh*t that you hear these days purporting to be "house music" or "tech house" or "dubstep".

woah, we got ourselves a hipster here... man, if the devs were to put the undergound music here then it wouldn't be undergound anymore and you would probably boycott or ddos the site so no one else could listen to your precious dublectrance rahouse mixes ...

Not at all. The impression given by the title is that it's going to be obscure electronic music, which I thought would be excellent. I was pretty shocked to hear what came out of the speakers when clicking through.

I didn't realise when I first posted that it was streamed from Soundcloud. So I understand what the "you've probably never heard of" bit was about now.

I agree with the GP. It's pop trash.

which 'genres' if you are familiar with soundcloud, would you be looking for to listen to a mix of tunes you haven't been familiarized with?

I got the link off here a while ago, and listen to earbits for electronic music. earbits.com has around 40 different sub-genres of electronic music (they also have non-electronic genres with tons of sub-genres as well).

You did a great job with the Title,"Discover the best Dance Music." This is a critique on your music selection and not your project. The music under your "House" label was not house at all. It was pop-dubstep. If your going to entice music lovers, you will have to get the genres right. Know your target.

Personally, I was excited, then very quickly disappointed. I am always looking for some quality house to listen while working.

*nice deep house, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpopObJysQ4

Currently using pre curated tracks from http://soundcloud.com/dubstep/ http://soundcloud.com/drumandbass http://soundcloud.com/housemusic

I agree the genres are off. Will be working on improving them.

Soundcloud tags are not curation!

This comment makes me very happy.

The core product can't be based on a misconception like this.

THIS!

I like the project though. Real initiative here, but also great advice that must be heeded.

So under the hood, it is just random tracks curated from existing blogs using their soundcloud pages?

http://soundcloud.com/dubstep/

http://soundcloud.com/drumandbass

http://soundcloud.com/housemusic

So I guess the next genres to be added are: -Electro.NET -Moombahton.NET -GlitchHop.NET -TrapMusic.NET -FutureGarage.NET -HardDance.NET

Essentially yes

I'm not knocking you for using those sources btw, that's a decent way to ignore the hard part of a problem to get to a minimum viable product -- plus licensing tracks is soundcloud's problems. Soundcloud is also ripe for disruption because their interface of overlaying comments on the waveform while playing tracks is at best distracting and at worst causes my web browser to crash all the time.

When listening to soundcloud I use this bookmark to turn off comments on the page:

   javascript:(function(){$("a[class='comments-toggle']").click();})();

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Do you have any additional filters on your sources, or are you straight-up playing the streams as-is?

I'd suggest putting in min/max song lengths (to strip out the 2min previews of tracks that sometimes get posted). Although I think your sources are clean enough to handle that. You probably want a 15 min maximum to skip over mixes that sometimes get posted (or better yet, give a playlist for listening to continuous mixes)

If the soundcloud api provides favourites you could use that as an input as well.

---

You could pretty much create a simple version of last.fm by using a "similar artists search" and then mutiplexing the individual soundcloud pages for artists.

So you could have a "sounds like Skrillex", "sounds like High Rankin", "sounds like Knife Party" etc where all it does is randomly play tracks from similar artists.

The only filters I have now are tracks larger than 10 minutes since I wanted to avoid including long mixes for now. Never thought about tracks possible being previews. I will look into that as well as thanks for the suggestions.

>Soundcloud is also ripe for disruption because their interface of overlaying comments on the waveform while playing tracks is at best distracting and at worst causes my web browser to crash all the time.

The beta of the new SC interface doesnt do that anymore.

Link to the beta: http://next.soundcloud.com/. But it seems there’s a waiting list to use it; that page just lets you put yourself on the waiting list.

A little UI weakness is not going to allow disruption of a strongly networked, community-driven product like SoundCloud.

http://www.youtify.com

yeah man, its all about catering to the user, why bother going to all these different websites when you get it all rolled into a delicious efficient piece of sushi that is turnchannel?

secondly, i think the devs are going to make a playlist style feature or something, along with a volume slider, so users can discover all this new music, save it to a playlist in a user-friendly environment with community aspects such as comments on tracks and the ability to share with simplicity ....

improving on old processes, why invent the wheel bro?

Do many people listen to electronic music a track at a time? I only listen to mixes, which can be up to 2 hours at a time. Essential mixes are great for this.

Essential mixes are great but I still buy a lot of single tracks (from Beatport) and create my own playlists in iTunes. Occasionally I find myself listening to single tracks (usually on YouTube) of newly released stuff I like.

wouldn't a playlist feature be awesome on this site, if you like what you hear tack it to a list and show it off to your buddies or go back to it to buy the song or w/e.... thoughts?

+1 for this. I'd happily pay for that feature alone. Even just a simple starring system to keep track of songs I liked.

connecting your soundcloud account is probably the quickest way to do this since that's where the music is from

I agree, I instantly thought of three people I wanted to share a song with. Also, I know I would want to customize my experience, because I don't like all electronic music.

EMs are great, and I've listened to ~30 of them, but I feel like I'm 'out' of mixes to listen to given what my tastes are. My tastes are definitely pretty diverse, too.

I've been hitting youtube for mixes, and you'd be pleasantly surprised at the quality. Goingquantum is very good.

Try the Fabric blog for some quality mixes:

http://www.fabriclondon.com/blog

Shameless plug:

http://www.fabriclondon.com/blog/view/audio-paul-louth-fabri...

Thanks for the link, tried to download your track, but the download link failed.

Nice concept, seems well done too. Any chance you could add trance in addition to house, dub & dnb in the future?

I am planning on expanding the genres in the near future.

Keep on improving. You've done great. Make sure you monetize it too.

How exactly are you determining the next track? I like House and I disliked the first 5 tracks. How do you determine that I've never heard of it? Is there anything Pandora-like to keep track of what I like and dislike?

Is it me or is it not possible to adjust the volume on their player? I'm using standard iPod headphones right now, and even with my system volume turned down to its lowest setting the output is too high.

Good to know. I will add a volume adjuster.

That's another feature that makes this "better than soundcloud" because they don't provide a volume adjust on their site.

Really annoying for those times when I've been playing soundcloud in the background with some other audio source in the foreground (like a video game, or even just mail notifications going beep)

They do, but its in the top-right corner of the page. Took me months to notice.

You're awesome, thank you. I would have never found that.

We're so conditioned to look for the volume UI to be near the play button.

yeah agreed, i have an in with some of the devs on this - the volume slider was a secondary feature and is on the list last time i heard, stay tuned (haha) for the next release,

I like it! The site works great on the iPad as well.

I understand you're sourcing the music from SoundCloud. Is it manually curated? Please share how you built this!

The site doesn't work nicely with on-demand plugin usage like click-to-play or flashblock, although it is possible that I could be doing something wrong.

Surprised to see the site worked on my iPhone. You must definitely need to make a responsive/mobile web version!

HTML5 ftw! In the workings.

Very nice site. Very effective and simple to use. I'm sure you'll expand to add more killer features :)

Meh. I prefer http://www.AudibleCoffee.com

It's a little early for EDM here, so I'll give it a try in a bit.

Care to share what it's built in, what your inspiration was, if it's open source/are you looking for help, etc? I'm curious if you curated the lists or if there's some AI on the back end.

Dubstep, DnB, house ... Why only these 3 genres, most of the top djs (http://www.djmag.com/top100) play trance, deep trance and electro. Seems like a weird choice to me.

its just a proof of concept and i think the devs are aiming to dump tons of content (that can be accessed within license) into the sleek and efficient usability of turnchannel.

I was listening and thought 'hey, I actually like this track' (rather than just being something to listen to) but there was no 'buy' or 'like'/'thumbs up' etc.

Thanks for this site!

there is a tweet/share on FB that is how i track the tunes im like 'holy smokes' too until the playlist feature is released

Currently working on playlists and expanding genres. Follow @turnchannel or add me on skype: shawnjanas to be notified! Thanks for all the great feedback!

Nice! Now if anybody came up with a way to setup system-global shortcuts so that I don't have to go back to the browser page to pause or skip a track...

Sounds great. SC -badly- needs curation like this, and the ultra-simple interface is fine so long as the music is too. Good luck!

Nice, first track already a success. Thank you.

Slightly hyperbolic link title, but great website nonetheless..

I also hope for an expansion of genres in the future

Nice alternative to http://www.di.fm/ and Grooveshark.

Never heard of di.fm. Thanks for the share!

This kind of blows my mind. They've been around for 13 years and do live broadcasts weekly from famous DJs. You're in for a real treat :)

this site has been such a wicked hit at both the office and the party scene, whoever came up with this is genius, thanks for making my musical tastes in such a quick, fun and easy to use package!

Glad you are enjoying it.

created: 2 hours ago

are sockpuppet accounts frowned upon around here?

talking about what the devs are planning and also giving rave reviews in the same thread, huh?

This is great thanks for building it. Where do you get the music from?

Soundcloud

I can't skip forward within the tracks on Firefox 6.

if you multi-click the timeline, the current time will change to NaN:NaN. And why can't you change the current playing position?

Did you make this?

Yeah I did.

I love the concept! When I first got to the site, I figured everything out easily, except I found myself wanting an explanation of what it was. For example: "Listen to music from up and coming EDM artists." or "All the top EDM hits in one playlist." Something to give me a definitive idea of what it is I'm using, and maybe explain where the music comes from.

how is the music licensed?

All music is produced by independent artists and streamed off of soundcloud.

meh.

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