

ShowHN: Generate your own MTV (Last.fm+Youtube) - JonathanBouman
http://TV.ListAndPlay.com

======
david927
I had the same idea but dropped it after seeing GrooveShark and being too busy
with other things. Still, it has tremendous potential. A lot of people get
their music from YouTube, but there's currently no good mechanism to leverage
that.

Now, for the advice:

1\. On the front page show who's listening to what. Drop the How, What, etc.
Don't tell people. Show people.

2\. Allow people to create playlists with interjections, such as "That was
Little Dragon with 'Twice', and now..."

3\. Allow people to do insert temporal video casts: Sports, weather, news.

This could be really big if you hit it right. Find a designer for God's sake.
And feel free to drop me a line. My email is my profile.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks for the feedback David, I was thinking about a 99design contest in
order to improve the UI. Right now I see they don't accept 'html code/css'
contests, anyone aware of a similar contest site which supports JQuery/CSS
contests?

~~~
NEPatriot
Perhaps use a psd to html shop?

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mikedmiked
Love it. Wanted something simple like this without realising it. Its great for
room parties in a college dorm when you just have a laptop and some speakers.

If you want to improve it, you could do some clever check on whether the video
is actually a video or just some still images with the music on top - as 60%
of the videos I played seemed to fall into the latter category.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thnx, glad to hear people like it! It took me 2 months to realize the whole
thing (first the ListAndPlay.com concept and during the last 2 weeks this
Last.fm mashup).

The idea of checking for still images was something I've tried in a previous
version. I decided to remove the function because somehow there is a reason
why a video is popular on Youtube and is no 1 in the results (often good sound
quality). FYI: checking for still could be done by comparing the 3 different
thumbnails youtube generates for every video.

~~~
mikedmiked
Ah I didn't think of that. Well thanks for the speedy reply and neat tool - I
will be using this a fair amount probably.

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WA
That is a cool idea. I had no problems with the UI, just entered a song and
hit "go". But you definitely need an overlay presenting the song title and
artist name in MTV-style with a fancy fade-in and fade-out, that would be
awesome :)

~~~
JonathanBouman
Yeah that would be really cool! I tried to find some code examples of that
being done in JQuery, but couldn't find any. Anyone with a good idea how to
fix this? What about the cpu load or isn't that an issue?

~~~
WA
CPU load shouldn't be an issue at all. It is really easy with jQuery. You just
make a div with a high z-factor and trigger fadeIn(), fadeOut() whenever the
video changes: <http://api.jquery.com/fadeIn/>

~~~
JonathanBouman
Ok, I've got the fadeIn/fadeOut already running at this moment (top left).
I'll see if I can make it more fancy, any fancy JQuery examples of what's nice
is welcome :)

~~~
WA
Just make it big now, you don't need more jQuery, only CSS styling.

    
    
      <div id="overlay" style="background:black;color:white;width:960px;font: 24px 'Droid Sans';padding:20px;padding-left:150px;">Name of the Song<br />Artist</div>

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks, I've put it on the todo list :)

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johnboone
Great Idea !

Some points : \- The UI should adapt according to the screen size ( buttons
are pretty big on my laptop, and TOO small for my 24 inches. Maybe create 2 or
3 different sizes ? )

\- Being able to see the "playlist" and being able to "drag and drop" the
previews in the horizontal direction (like "which one will be next, etc").

\- About the UI, you should keep it simple, but also keep it as "close" to
standard player/TV UI. Like standard Play/Pause/Volume big at the center (
bottom or top )

\- You need a colorful/media Logo, definitely.

For later maybe : Like Spotify and others, being able to create & share
playlist of videos, ranking them, etc. and NOT only by artist. Let's say I'm
at a party, and I made a nice music video playlist at home, I just connect
thru facebook, and I can play my playlist, etc. Youtube is crap for that, and
that's EXACTLY the kind of "share tool" you would need I guess.

\- Being able to easily vote for music videos ( just a click, no more ) and
that would help then to provide the user with the best videos first (and kick
out the image music videos from the first of the search results).

I don't really have much free time, but could give you a hand. Kinda have a
"final working product" in my head, and it looks great.

Good luck

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mortenjust
Funny, made this one two years ago <http://playmymusicvideos.com/>

~~~
tfh
Very nice. I find your project better than the on posted. It's the more
minimalistic approach that I liked. Very good work.

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wanderr
This is awesome. :)

I'm wondering, do you have any plans to monetize this? If so I'm curious as to
how, I'm not sure about the terms of the YouTube API but the last.fm one says
it's strictly for noncommercial use.

~~~
JonathanBouman
For me it's impossible to monetize it yet. I'm located in The Netherlands and
I've got to deal with a RIAA similar organisation called Buma/Stemra. If I
monitize it I've to pay large amounts of license costs (I'm just a poor
medicine student). Since a half year Buma signed a deal with Youtube which
finally allows me to embed (music) videos for free, as long as I don't
monitize it. Last.fm API is free, but they want to see money if you're getting
rich by using their API. Youtube doesn't seams to be a problem. Youtube
doesn't seams to be a problem.

tl;dr Not at this moment. Dutch RIAA problems if I do. Last.fm wants money if
you are getting rich.

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phoboslab
I love the idea! The layout/UI however needs some work.

Why do I get a second HUD (upper right corner) when I'm in fullscreen mode?
Why are there two buttons to toggle fullscreen mode? Why is there a tick icon
in the search box? Why do you have the "Generate your own MTV, click here!"
text still visible, after I already searched for an artist? Your "Why? What?
How?" text is also pretty nondescript. And why am I able to resize and move
the floating box anyway?

Again, the idea is great, but the UI is very confusing. There's too much going
on. Try to simplify it!

~~~
JonathanBouman
UI needs to be simplified indeed. It's a bit complicated because I used the
original ListAndPlay.com UI to start with.

Second Hud: those are the 'most often used' buttons, removing duplicates is a
good idea indeed. The 'generate' text is visible to give you a way to enter
artist search mode in non-fullscreen mode. The search bar above the link (with
tick in it) is for searching through Youtube directly (instead of using
Last.FM data). The tick is to show all the ajax is finished, a loading
animation is being shown while busy.

Why What How is maybe not clear enough, what would you suggest as intro?
Resize & move is incase someone got a low resolution and couldn't see the
dropdown.

Thanks for your feedback phoboslab :)!

------
jeroen
When I type the name of an artist the list of songs that is displayed seems
randomly sorted. That makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.

After selecting a song nothings seemed to happen, until I noticed the progress
indicator in the upper right corner. Center screen would be a more visible
location.

The most practical problem seems to be the difference in volume levels; I keep
having to adjust the volume. I realise that that could be hard to fix, but
it's what made me switch back to the radio.

~~~
JonathanBouman
The list is sorted on 'most popular' according to the Last.fm DB.

The reason why I immediately close the overlay is because I want to avoid
users to click other songs while another ajax search is still running and I
want to give the experience of the thing going 'fast'. ('overlay closes, hmmm
something happens, ah there is my MTV!' instead of 'selected artist, mmm what
is it doing? searching, mmm does it work?, reclick, reclick').

Volume could be a problem in some occasions, I've already tried to find a way
to measure the volume level and normalize it, problem is that I can't get the
values from the Youtube Flash player API. Is someone aware of other ways to
fix this?

------
scrame
I'm generally very wary of these services because they usually lump a lot of
stuff I don't like into it, but the results starting from Nas' Memory Lane
have been great so far.

It'd be nice if there were a better way to tell if the youtube video is
actually the video or just an mp3 with a shot of the album, but since its just
playing in the background, it hasn't been too much of an issue.

Also, it would be nice if there were a restart, or some way to scrub the
actual video.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Repeat is on the todolist, for now press the close button and reselect the
video from the bottom bar. See comment below for reaction on mp3/still image
issue, hard one to solve.

------
JonathanBouman
Some technical details: It's a mashup of Last.FM data & Youtube. Futhermore,
there is a Facebook integration (you can discover new music through your
friends) and it's easy to create playlists of all the (new) music you find.
Playlist urls are being stored as a Bit.ly url. Everything is clientside
JQuery code, so there are no scalability issues. Any feedback is welcome!

------
aniket_ray
Okay, I love it! Thanks for building this. I had been toying with the idea but
I never seemed to be getting the time.

It seems very simple to use. I did have to try out a few different songs since
it wasn't able to generate its list based on the songs that I initially tried.

I will have to spend more time in understanding the playlist aspect of it
though.

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nailer
Great idea, but didn't do what it said on the box. The page asked me to enter
a specific song, which isn't what last.fm does - why not just ask me for my
last fm login? Also no videos played, with no error message why. It might be
because I'm on a iPad and you don't support HTML video, but please just print
some kind of error - all I saw was black.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Ah yeah that's indeed the problem. iPads are not supported yet, but they will
as soon as Youtube releases the HTML5 video support to the public! I'll put
the 'error' on the todo list.

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acangiano
It doesn't seem to work with certain foreign songs and artists. For example,
it couldn't find Hotel Supramonte by Fabrizio De André which is available on
YouTube
([http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hotel+supramonte...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hotel+supramonte&aq=f)).

~~~
JonathanBouman
I tried to do a lookup for Fabrizio De André, Hotel Supramonte is not in the
top tracks of Fabrizio (at least not in the Last.fm db), I selected Via Del
Campo:
[http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Fabrizio%20De%20Andr%...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Fabrizio%20De%20Andr%C3%A9%20%7C%20Via%20del%20Campo~~)

Btw: problem with some of the videos on YT is that a small amount is not
embeddable, that could explain why a video doesn't shows up on sites like
listandplay.com

~~~
acangiano
Thanks Jonathan. This is an excellent project. Funky UI, but excellent
nevertheless.

------
olios
Great! but interface is a bit confusing. i still do not understand it fully.
:(

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thnx! Yes, UI is a pitty one, I could use some good advice on that.

Main problem: I'm trying to combine the 'MTV functionality' with the original
functionality of listandplay.com (generate playlists in a few clicks). I
thought about splitting up both projects, but I want to avoid that... What
would you do?

~~~
phoboslab
I really think it should be as simple as possible. Split both projects.

Your UI could be just a search box, where you enter the artists name, and the
App then creates a continuous stream of music videos. Not more, not less.
Maybe add the Skip button and count (server side) how often a video has been
skipped, to create a "blacklist" of bad videos, that won't show up anymore.

Look at the UI of <http://www.mixest.com/> for instance - I think they nailed
it.

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dentonbros
My advice would be to make this a Roku channel. The SDK is available, the API
is fairly easy. This would win you MAJOR brownie points within the Roku
community (forums.roku.com). I'd love to be a beta tester.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Roku sounds good, I see they use BrightScript, do they support any javascript
or do I've to recode everything?

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czstrong
My friends and I always talk about how cool a site like this would be, awesome
work! This is pretty much exactly what we were thinking of; we referred to it
as "Pandora with music videos."

------
ig1
Neat product, how do you match up the song title with the correct video on
youtube ? - from my experience with searching for song titles on youtube the
top hit often isn't the one you want.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks, the workflow is: 1. User enters artist name 2. Top tracks of Artist
shown as dropdown (Last.FM) 3. User selects track 4. Max 150 Similar tracks
fetched from Last.fm according to that song 5. Fetch for every track the first
hit from youtube (yes, 150 ajax calls) 6. Merge jsons, produce 1 big list 7.
Start MTV!

Somehow this approach works for 99% of the times.

------
fara
Great Idea! One rule of thumb should be not repeating songs of the same title
(ie. covers). If I search Where is my mind from the Pixies, the next song is
Placebo's cover.

~~~
JonathanBouman
I guess you are using the regular search, that one shows the top 40 results
from youtube. I'm not able to build in filters since it could be used for
other things like checking out bbc news reports.

If you want the MTV functionality: press 'Generate your own MTV, click here!'
below the search bar, enter Pixeis, select Where is my mind and there you go!
[http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Pixies%20%7C%20Where%...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Pixies%20%7C%20Where%20Is%20My%20Mind?~~)

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dhs
This works great for me! The "MTV" function covers a need I didn't even know I
had. Thanks a lot, and rock on!

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AlexMuir
Outstanding. This is going to fly.

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kjksf
Nice project. Would be perfect in combination with GoogleTV.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Yes, would be great to use on the television. Anyone here with a GoogleTV box?
Does the site work?

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pierrefar
Really doesn't work with FF and Flashblock. I can't even enable the flash
object because it keeps catching the click even and displaying an alert.

~~~
wilgert
You can disable Flashblock for a certain domain from the Flashblock context
menu.

~~~
wilgert
Go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Flashblock -> Preferences tab Whitelist and add
listandplay.com

------
javierguillen
congrats, by i do it this at my site <http://fliis.com> time ago, and more
options.... example
[http://www.fliis.com/?radio=Madonna&fine=Like%20a%20Pray...](http://www.fliis.com/?radio=Madonna&fine=Like%20a%20Prayer)

------
robchez
MTV Circa 1993

------
muffinman2010
Hey Jonathan I was thinking about getting youtube music videos, but I got
scared off when I read about <http://www.muziic.com/> getting in legal
problems my music studios : <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/20/muziic/>

I was wondering what your thoughts are on that? I'm still young and in
University atm, but our profs scare us like hell when talking about law suits,
and they can ruin your entire life...etc etc, so I've been to scared to act on
the youtube music api. Can you guys drop your thoughts on the issue?

~~~
JonathanBouman
There are a few interesting points about this:

First, my server is located in The Netherlands, as far as I know only the law
applies of the country where the site is being hosted.

Second, our RIAA (Buma/Stemra) made a deal with Youtube that ensures every
Dutch citizen can embed YT videos without any problems (see:
[http://www.bumastemra.nl/en-
US/OverBumaStemra/Actueel/Buma_a...](http://www.bumastemra.nl/en-
US/OverBumaStemra/Actueel/Buma_and_YouTube.htm) and this from their FAQ
<http://i55.tinypic.com/svi1jt.jpg>). It says that I don't have any problems
as long as I don't monetize it. Since I hate banners and my costs are really
low this ain't a problem.

Third, I actually don't store _any_ data or playlists. What I've done is
coding a few scripts that let you crawl Youtube and Last.fm in a smart way. In
that POV i'm not different to a regular search engine with a 'share your
results' button, futhermore my server does totally nothing after you received
the javascripts, it's just your browser and the other sites.

Last but not least, it's impossible for me to measure how many and what kind
of videos are being played. All this stuff works with # anchor urls, my server
simply can't register that.

I'm very curious in what other people think about this, can you ask your
profs?

~~~
muffinman2010
I'm in Canada so not sure if I can do the same, my service would require you
to at least create a playlist like thing, so in essence you can find our how
many plays have been made from youtube. Youtube really needs to write better
guidelines for their youtube api for music. I'm still contemplating whether I
should do it or not, my site would also be free to use...but have a lawsuit
during my school semester would really get in the way.

What do you guys in HN think about the issue? Can we use youtube api to freely
grab music videos? Can we store index to the url (for playlists?)

------
tickle_me_elmo
Hot Chip - One Life Stand:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPXPIx1LlPY>

It doesn't show up in your search results. How come?

~~~
JonathanBouman
<http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/mPXPIx1LlPY> gives <yt:noembed/> as
response.

In other words, they disabled the embedding of that specific video. Just try
this one:
[http://listandplay.com/#Search~Hot%20Chip%20-%20One%20Life%2...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Hot%20Chip%20-%20One%20Life%20Stand%20original~~Videos~wif8DAyXkVc%7C~~)

