

Show HN: I made a social network for musicians - pud
http://fandalism.com/home/

======
ThomPete
pud

great work. May I come with one suggestion.

The main problem in comparing with sites like dribbble and devian art is that
you are dealing with two very different senses.

One of them you optimize i.e. you can learn to quickly read through hundreds
of pictures in a matter of seconds.

With sound/music there is no way to optimize for faster listening. 10 seconds
is going to take 10 seconds.

This means peoples browse frequency is going to be much lower.

So I had an idea.

Why not start with a time limit of say 10 seconds or maybe 16 bars or maybe
even less. That way it forces the musician to really cherry pick what part
they want to showcase.

If something gets upvoted that musician earns the right to have longer and
longer sound samples.

That way you will force the users to listen to more and upvote if they want to
hear more.

Maybe that's a way to get some traction going.

~~~
pork
FWIW, as a musician, this is a really good idea. If you do implement it,
please do post a link back on Hn.

------
sambeau
It looked good until I needed to agree to all this before I could actually see
how it worked:

* Access my basic information: Includes name, Profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends and any other information I've made public.

* Access my Profile information: Likes, music, TV, movies, books, quotes, About me, Birthday and Current location

* Send me email

* Post to Facebook as me

* Post status messages, notes, photos and videos on my behalf.

* Access my data any time

* Access my data when I'm not using the application.

WTF? No! Sorry.

~~~
pud
I know FB Connect is a deal breaker for lots of HN readers.

From a product standpoint, I decided that requiring FB Connect (for now, at
least) is one of the best things I could do to make sharing more frictionless,
which will help the site grow hopefully.

~~~
sambeau
Is there no way to do it with less? I just get very twitchy when I see that
level of permission. We're getting to the stage where a FB profile is
important to life, work, family… well everything. We have parents,
grandparents, children, mother-in-laws and bosses linked in there… and some
near explosive issues always bubbling near the service.

Can't you take the minimum and ask me again when I want you to do something
more sophisticated for me? If you have built my trust and have demonstrated
the trade-off I will almost certainly grant you more permission.

But, dude, you're asking for the key to my front door and we've never even
drunk a beer together!

~~~
thenewgreen
"But, dude, you're asking for the key to my front door and we've never even
drunk a beer together"! -Well put. I'm a musician and would likely love to
utilize the site but I'll never find out because I won't support this sort of
intrusion. F_ck fb. You can grow without them... in spite of them even!

------
phzbOx
1\. Please let people prop even if they're not logged. I'm not saying to let
every feature for no-member, but saying +1 to an artist is important in a new
social network.

2\. I _hate_ it when the page loads and I'm aiming at a video in the screen,
but it then randomly starts to scroll somewhere else, and it'd make me
mistakenly click on the wrong video. To use the website, I had to let it load
the page, count 1-2 in my head (while it'd scroll I don't know where
randomly), and then I'd click on the video I want.

3\. About the connect with facebook and share with facebook. For some reasons,
it really scare me the way it's done. It should somewhat tell me what action
does what. For instance, after registrering, there's a popup saying "Now share
your profile on Facebook" [share] [cancel]. Will [cancel] cancel my
registration? I had no idea.

Otherwise, great job! I'll use it and look forward to it :)

About the #1, I think it requires maybe a bit more explanation. I wanted to
say "This artist is good", but didn't want to be involved into all the
facebook connect, creation process, etc. Would be good to have the user helps
promote the video but only force him to create an account if really necessary.

------
randomdrake
You should re-consider making Facebook your only option for logging in and
signing up.

[http://bijansabet.com/post/16980728547/why-facebook-
connect-...](http://bijansabet.com/post/16980728547/why-facebook-connect-
shouldnt-be-your-only-sign-in)

And the ensuing discussion, here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548081>

~~~
pud
I understand that FB Connect is a turn off for many people (myself included
most of the time).

But requiring Facebook makes certain viral features (like sharing with your
friends, posting to your wall etc) much more frictionless.

I think there are 3 ways a site can become popular. 1) Through viral channels.
2) Through word-of-mouth. 3) Through marketing/pr.

I'm going for all three. #1 is a lot easier if you require FB Connect.

------
tmrggns
Nice idea. What if you incorporate the 10,000 hours rule as a sorting method
for the interface to sort more highly trained musicians near the top? You
could weigh total music practicing, practicing with that instrument and
practicing with those band members. You might end up needing to compare
instrument similarities, but finding, for instance, a performer highly skilled
in two dissimilar instruments would be intriguing to listen to.

------
freshlog
A quick Google search reveals that pud created Fandalism in 2006 as a site for
"uploading and sharing your tunes":

[http://hemiolesque.blogspot.com/2006/10/fandalism-youtube-
fo...](http://hemiolesque.blogspot.com/2006/10/fandalism-youtube-for-
musicians.html)

Now it's an "invite-only directory of good musicians".

Would love to hear your story how you took your time to launch Fandalism :)

~~~
pud
In 2006 I had a different site at the same domain.

The old Fandalism ("YouTube for music") was basically exactly what SoundCloud
is today.

Except that people starting uploading a lot of copyrighted pirated stuff that
I didn't want to deal with (hosting was expensive back then). So I shut it
down.

Fandalism today is a completely different site (though I suppose related), but
with the same domain. I launched this beta 12 days ago or so.

~~~
freshlog
Wow. Just 12 days ago?

How did you get people to engage with the site?

Tried looking for inspiration at your Fandalism blog
(<http://blog.fandalism.com/>) but it seems to be password protected now.

Looking forward to learning more from you, pud!

------
iKnowKungFoo
Wasn't that called MySpace? :)

~~~
pud
I would compare Fandalism more to Dribbble or DeviantArt, but for musicians.

------
joshmanders
Love the use and customizations of the Twitter Bootstrap, pud.

~~~
pud
Twitter Boostrap was a godsend for me. My design skills are relatively weak
but Boostrap really helps make the site's design passable.

~~~
joshmanders
Yeah, it is a godsend to all developers who aren't great designers.

------
revorad
pud, I'm impressed with your product-shipping record. This looks really cool
too, I'll be sure to pass it on to all my musician friends.

~~~
pud
(i'm not sure if HN etiquette allows me to say "thank you." but i'm worried
i'd appear ungrateful if i didn't reply. so - thank you! i am grateful and i
hope your musician friends enjoy it.)

------
killnine
The 'Apply' takes me to facebook login?

~~~
pud
I realize that's a little awkward. Good point. I should write something there
about how Fandalism uses FB Connect and promises not to spam etc.

The entire site is FB Connect for now, which I know turns off many HN readers.
But it made some things easier for me and for users.

------
prawn
pud, the "f" in the logo reads as an "i" or "j" for me at first glance. Maybe
you could tweak that a little bit?

What about a mode whereby you can randomly discover artists by queuing videos?
I like the dribbble for musicians comparison.

( Nefarious Drumsticks! \m/ )

------
iamgilesbowkett
I'm sorry but I think this is a failure of strategy.

Musicians use social networks to reach existing fans and acquire new ones.
Speaking as a musician, ten years ago we were all about Myspace. These days
we're on SoundCloud, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. We don't use Myspace
because nobody else does either. We use YouTube, FB, and Twitter because
everybody else does, and we use SoundCloud to share new music with hardcore
fans and with each other.

If you're looking to share your music with as many people as possible, you put
it on YouTube, not SoundCloud. If you want people to go to a show, you talk
about it on Facebook or Twitter, not SoundCloud. If you want to get a label to
sign your new track, or you want your hardcore fans to be able to hear your
newest music right away, that's when you go to SoundCloud. If you're on
SoundCloud, you're either a musician, a hardcore fan, or, more often than not,
both.

What I'm basically saying here is that a social network for musicians gets
something very fundamental backwards, because of the four social networks
musicians use, SoundCloud is the least important, the least promoted, and also
the only one which was actually built for us.

I'm not trying to denigrate SoundCloud, it is in fact awesome and incredibly
useful, but it's so much more important for a musician to be where the fans
are. Also, if your goal is to occupy a smaller niche like SoundCloud does,
you're still more likely to succeed building tools which make it easier for a
musician to graduate their fans from the "hitting Like on YouTube" level to
the "downloading everything on SoundCloud" level.

I think this is kind of like, "I want to make a social network, what's a
topic, musicians, ok go." Rock on, it's good to stay focused and keep
shipping, but it's better to make stuff people want, and believe me, what
musicians want is to be able to make music as much and as often as possible,
and that means making money from music, and that means either fans or
students.

~~~
pud
I hear you but Fandalism (despite its name) isn't designed to help musicians
connect with fans or make money.

Fandalism won't be good for that.

Rather, Fandalism is designed to be a community of musicians showing their
chops to each other. Kind of like a big "Show HN" but for musicians. Or
Dribbble.com or DeviantArt.com. Or ModelMayhem.com, sort of.

It may still be a failed strategy, but the strategy is different than what you
surmised.

Here's my profile (I'm a drummer and sometimes ukulele player):
<http://fandalism.com/pud>

~~~
thenewgreen
I think it's a great idea and looks like it's well put together. You may have
seen my criticism above about how to "login", this is more a criticism of FB,
not fandalism (but change it, make it optional).

Also, fantastic homage to the Bee-Gee's on your Uke! Have you seen this?
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrXlVPn0DI>

