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Comment by GotAnyMegadeth | Hacker News Reader

Hello, I made Playlistful because I like hosting parties where everyone gets to contribute to the music, but hated people skipping each others songs, accidentally deleting the whole playlist, and queuing up 3000 songs so that no one else gets a turn.

This is the first web app I have ever made, and my first time using any of the languages/tools involved.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot

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At the risk of suggesting anything Microsoft on HN, have a look at the Xbox music API. It has search functionality as well as streaming (for people with a music pass). It will also give you some artwork to display as the song is running. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn546671.aspx

Thanks for suggesting it, I hadn't even heard of it! I'll take a look. It would certainly make sense to use more than one source for the music so that the whole thing doesn't go down when YouTube change their mind on who can use what.

I'm currently working on something similar called MyJam, which lets you collaboratively build playlists and vote for the favorite songs which then rise to the top of the queue. We won Startup Weekend Ottawa! Check it out here: http://myjam.co/

Wow, that looks great, I'll have to give it a go. Where were all these similar apps a year ago?

Side comment: There is a site called https://www.thisismyjam.com/ might get confusing, not sure who was first though. It's pretty hard finding a unique name in this space, took me AGES to come up with Playlistful.

You should give more details about what music can be played : from guests clients device and streamed to the host or solely music stored locally on the host computer ? I expected to find that info in the FAQ. An introduction video/screenshots on the front page would be good to. Love the idea!

Agreed. I had to run a test party and login as a guest in order to find out it expected a YouTube link. That should probably be more visible. Since the sources seem similar to Blip.FM, you might check how they handle this.

Good point, thanks. It just searches YouTube at the moment, though I am considering how best to add other sources.

Also, the FAQ is a bit bare as I haven't had many Qs yet! I'll start working on that

Love how simple and focused it is. Would be great to learn more about the process you went through and the tools you used to build it!

Thanks! I tried to make it as simple to use as possible. I might do a blog post or two if people are interested in how it was made and the design process. In short: Python using Flask on Google App Engine; YouTube API V3; GIMP for images and logo; Notepad++ for coding; And then loads of battling CSS.

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