Ask HN: Need feedback for SoundCloud Wall | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Need feedback for SoundCloud Wall

3 pointskarangoeluw6 comments

So SoundCloud Instant [1] was a huge hit (thank you HN). For a few weeks, I've been working on a very simple yet powerful problem - how do you discover new exciting music faster. So I made SoundCloud Wall (http://karan.github.io/SoundWall/).

It pulls music from SoundCloud and shows you multiple tracks at the same time - but all are muted. To unmute a song, you simply hover over it. The simple interface makes it dead-easy to search for, listen to, and discover music.

There were a lot of problems with making the app, and I tried to fix those. I am not ready to launch it yet, so I'm asking for your feedback.

Please use it and do tell me what you think of it. I'd love to improve it as much as I can.

Thank you HN! :)

[1] http://karan.github.io/scInstant/

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Actually this is pretty cool. I don't like that it's simultaneously playing multiple tracks, and would prefer if it just showed multiple tracks with hover-to-play. Also, the wave form is uninteresting - could you display them as a grid (just the covers) instead?

I'd love a tap-to-play app version for my Android device.

Thanks for the feedback.

So the main idea is that multiple tracks play at once and you can just hover over to judge which one you like. Is there any particular reason why you don't like all playing at once?

> - could you display them as a grid (just the covers) instead?

I could and that's what I started with. But the issue was that the covers are all squares and the grid has to be a rectangle (almost all screens are rectangular). I am not a design guy so I'm not really sure how I would do it. Any suggestions?

I don't like that they're playing simultaneously because it's jarring when I hover over another track that's playing in the middle somewhere (related: when I change tabs, it jumps to another track (in the middle) that I didn't select). I don't feel "in control" when I'm listening to something in the middle.

It would be different if you provided a cross-fader, but it doesn't seem like you want to make an n-way DJ tool.

> Any suggestions?

http://isotope.metafizzy.co/

EDIT: Also, playing multiple at once implies a lot of wasted network traffic.

Ok I just completed the port to HTML5 audio which is 5 times less heavy - http://karan.github.io/SoundWall/

Wow, that is cool. Nice job on the grid (and the lock).

EDIT: If one of the covers is locked, and I do a search, then the page refreshes and I lose my locked cover. I'd love to see the locked cover stay and the others be replaced.

If you could put 40 covers on the screen, and allow me to pin/lock covers and make search replace the unpinned covers, then I think you'd have a pretty compelling discovery tool.

Clickable link: http://karan.github.io/SoundWall/

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