Show HN: Demiba - Get the most out of YouTube music | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Demiba - Get the most out of YouTube music

demiba.com

51 pointsAlexWD39 comments

The idea is simple: There's a ton of music content on YouTube and Demiba let's you take full advantage of it like you never could before. Demiba finds automatically the best quality versions for each song and offers many ways to listen to and discover music. Customizable radio stations that learns your preferences offer a great way to listen to your favorites and discover new ones. Exhaustive playlists allow you to instantly get complete playlists for artists and albums. With a personal library you can save your favorites for viewing at any time. Every page is live, so send a link to a friend and they can join the experience. A chat box will even open so you can communicate.

We're a small team of two developers who have been working on this for a while and now we're looking to get some feedback. We think we've made a pretty compelling music experience around YouTube and we're curious what you think.

"Demiba finds automatically the best quality versions for each song"

sorry but on multiple tests i'm getting obscure solo-guitar covers of songs and sometimes shoddy quality live performances. just because something is in 720p doesnt mean its good quality!

example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S...!

thats probably not the best white of the clash - white riot on youtube

Our algorithm attempts to filter out things like covers and live performances, but admittedly it's not perfect. It works pretty well but there's definitely room for improvement. We're constantly improving this aspect because of how crucial it is to the product.

Thanks for that example, it'll help me tweak the algorithm to fix that occurrence. Thanks for the feedback!

alex, I've been working in music-tech now for a few years now, and I've been wanting this exact service for as long as I can remember. You really nailed it on the MVP. I've thought about this idea now for a while, would love to see where you're going with this. Also, with the right angle, I just know artists can get on board with this (especially since Youtube is the one of the only revenue sources that's actually growing for artists, across the board). Maybe that's thinking a few steps too far ahead, but this is really cool stuff and I can't help but to think of the possibilities for you :-)

I have lots of ideas of where we can go from here. We're just getting started and I think there's a lot to look forward to. I'm glad you like the idea. I've been waiting for this for a long time too. I'm just building the service that I want to use.

I've used tubair before and liked it, also will use your application but I wish you could have user voted results rise to the top. For example neither site shows the user the best version of the "The doors" song 'the end' because the best version on youtube is the clip from Apocalpse now. the studio probably cleaned it up when they made the movie. Also would like an application like this that could work with the screen off so I can use it on mobile phone. Thanks!

Been using http://www.mytubio.com/ for my tube mix parties.. I'll try this service, It would be great if there was a way to ensure videos are from VEVO and not a user submitted video that simply displays the lyrics.

Well the idea is that we have an algorithm that tries to select the best video in terms of quality. It's a natural consequence that we often select vevo videos, but we don't have a bias towards them, if there's a more suitable video available that is just lyrics we'll select that.

Nice feature finding the best quality version, I will try your service and check how it compares to http://musicplayr.com/ that I'm already using

Very nice idea, but I can't find some artists that I know are on YouTube. My first two attempt failed. Also if I can see what's coming next and I already know don't like it I would like to be able to skip it in advance and not to have to wait until it started playing to skip it.

I guess the product isn't finished yet, but they are attacking a real problem and trying to do something people (or at the very least, me ^^) do want. So I hope it will improve!

Our music information comes from Last.FM, so if an artist doesn't show up it's because Last.FM doesn't have them in their database. Last.FM's database is pretty extensive and even relatively obscure artists can often be found, but sometimes you will run into one that isn't there. Multiple and alternative sources of music knowledge is definitely something we're considering especially for more obscure artists that Last.FM might not have. That being said, the search can be fickle, so if you enter half of a name it might show no results but if you enter the full name it might show up, so there's a chance that you could be tricked into thinking an artist isn't there when it is.

The ability to remove what's coming up next preemptively is a good idea. Expect to see this feature soon.

The product is definitely not finished, but we're constantly working to improve it.

Thanks for the feedback!

I did enter the full name of the artists, and one of them exists on Last.fm (I just checked). For the record, I am talking about the French hip-hop bands "Fixpen Sill" (which is on Last.fm) and "Botaniks Crew" (which is not). The third one I tried, "5 Majeur", did work.

> The ability to remove what's coming up next preemptively is a good idea. Expect to see this feature soon.

Great! :-)

Hm, interesting. Yeah I can't find "Fixpen Sill" in the search, either. Manually creating the link for the artist playlist does work though: http://demiba.com/artist/fixpen-sill

I love it. I think it's the first Show HN that I've bookmarked and will use!

Could you queue up the next video so that it's already loaded when the current one ends?

It seems like it should be easier to make a playlist and share it. Also, I would to be prompted to switch to an alternate playlist based on "favorited" songs, if the one I'm on is boring me.

Again, great work! I've been waiting for something like this.

Glad you like the site!

Queueing the next video is an interesting idea. I know there is a way using the YouTube player API to queue a video but I know that it doesn't actually start loading the flv until playVideo is called, so I'm unsure if that would speed up the process. Another idea would be to have multiple youtube players that can load videos separately and then switch between them as necessary. This might add unnecessary bulk and slow down the page, but I'm not sure if it would be considerable. I'll look into this.

Right now there shouldn't be much delay between videos, has it been enough to be annoying for you? There might be other ways this transition can be smoothed as well.

Better support for playlist creation and sharing is something I agree is crucial and we should get to that soon. Improving recommendations to make music exploring and discovery is something we're constantly working to improve.

What about a double buffer system? Make two players, one hidden. The hidden one loads the next song. Switch players when the foreground one ends.

I've looked at the other sites mentioned here and yours is the best. Please keep going. I'll tell my friends about it.

Good job!

Well, the best (read: cleanest/simplest, fastest, and best get-out-the-way approach) way to listen to music on youtube imho is: www.deskamp.com

Just put in the music you want to hear, hit enter, and it'll add the best match to your playlist. Dead simple.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affilated with them, I just enjoy their service.

I really like the idea of fetching artist info and database from last.fm. Neat !!!

Couple of months back I worked on http://youtube-related-music.appspot.com . On viewing Demiba i'd also like to rework on my app. Thanks for the inspiration...

Really nice design, but i got this from all the videos i tried to watch (i tried about 10 songs)

This video contains content from [COMPANY]. It is restricted from playback on certain sites.

ps. i got one song working :)

Ouch, that's awful. It should automatically filter out videos like that. I'll look into it. Thanks for pointing that out.

This is almost like tubalr[1] with niceties like prediction algorithm and apparently a better way to select videos from the YT.

[1] http://www.tubalr.com/

I think a crucial difference stems from the fact that we incorporate music knowledge from Last.FM. This allows us to do things like easily create full lists of songs for artists, full album playlists, etc.. It creates, I think, a more complete and music-oriented experience. This music knowledge is also what allows us to create radios, give recommendations, etc..

You're right, a difference between my service and yours is the fact that you use Last.FM. I use The Echo Nest though, it's an amazing service. Tubalr uses The Echo Nest and builds playlists based on artists top tracks.

Tubalr used to use Last.fm but found out that the last.fm api went down a bit to much for my liking. After switching to The Echo Nest I've had 0 downtime due to the API I use.

Tubalr also creates "radios" in several ways. Check out the explore page(http://www.tubalr.com/explore). You can browse top genres, subreddits, and a huge list of genres.

As far as recommendations, type in an artist and click the similar button and you'll get a playlist full of artist similar to what you searched. (http://www.tubalr.com/similar/My+Morning+Jacket)

Example Genre Search: http://www.tubalr.com/just/indie+rock or http://www.tubalr.com/just/dubstep

Example Reddit Search: http://www.tubalr.com/r/metal or http://www.tubalr.com/r/realdubstep

That's awesome. I did notice that Last.FM used to go down fairly often but I don't think it has given me any troubles in at least the last several months, luckily. How have you found the quality of the data from Echo Nest compared to Last.FM?

I didn't realize how extensively you use music semantics in tubalr. I'd say that's not as big of a difference between our products as I originally thought.

Man, EchoNest is the way to go without a doubt. Their library is gigantic and have a free api for non-commercial use, up to 120 request per minute!

Their API has been incredibly easy to use and I feel like the quality of results is far better.

I honestly think we will continue to see apps that take advantage of YouTube's Music content until YouTube can nail their music experience, and I'm not sure if they even want to.

That's nice, but it doesn't help me circumvent German YouTube censorship. Still, I think in other countries this probably works well. Good job! Also on the UI.

Are you getting the "This video is restricted in your country" error? The website should automatically filter out videos that aren't available to you to only provide ones that work. I haven't tested this much though and so it might not work perfectly.

No I'm not but it is obviously skipping those errors.

Great idea! When the next video/music is unavailable (deleted or unavailable for my country) the queue stops foverer and I need to start over :(

If you just skip it doesn't continue normally?

Optimally the site should find a video that works for you. I'll be fixing this soon.

Nop, I tried to skip, but nothing happens!

Also, I searched for Gentle Giant's music and there was a video with an oldman showing a sculpture!

Anyway, great website! :)

I'll get to fixing that ASAP.

The video selection algorithm isn't perfect either, but we're constantly improving that too.

Thanks for the feedback and for pointing out those issues.

Looks great, but the name isn't very catchy.

It's easy to spell and remember though.

All the pages are also live, so you can link a friend to your session and chat while listening.

Does it Scrobble?

Very very smart, thanks a lot for this.

Thanks! I hope you enjoy using it as much as I do.

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