

Venture Pimp: Mixest is like Pandora but without all that thinking attached - markchristian
http://venturepimp.com/post/773644355/mixest

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michaelcampbell
It's interesting, but one of the big draws of Pandora is the ability to
like/dislike a song and have a station get more and more tailored to what I
like. This seems to just be a random sampling of indie stuff.

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hugh3
It's much more niche than Pandora, but I can see that if you like the kind of
music it plays (mostly poorly-recorded very-indie rock songs of about two
minutes in length, as far as I can tell) then you might like it better than
Pandora, which has the downside that it seems to wind up playing a fairly
small subset of songs on rapid rotation, at least in my experience.

Pandora aims to replace radio. This just aims to replace one radio station.
Good luck to 'em.

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drenei
One vertical to begin with isn't a bad strategy. I think the one they've
chosen is a good vertical to start with — the genre has a strong online
community looking for new things. If it works with indie music, Mixest can
broaden out.

Of course this might not be what they're intending to do at all.

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hugh3
If I understand correctly, they're playing unsigned garage bands who want
extra exposure and not paying any royalties. That will limit their ability to
expand outside genres where such bands are common.

I wonder what kind of quality control they have. Will they accept my five-
minute _a capella_ nose-singing version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow?

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drenei
In the 2 minutes I've spent on there I've seen a number of artists I don't
know (which could be unsigned garage bands) and number that I do including Of
Montreal and Animal Collective — both well respected and successful groups.
I'm not sure what quality control they have, but it doesn't seem like all
they're looking for is unsigned groups.

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Locke1689
Pandora is allowed to license and stream music based on a contract and DRM
restrictions built into Flash. If this gets at all large it may be shut down
by the music industry. Right now I can go into the source, find the URL of the
mp3 file and just download it to my hard drive. I'm not sure if streaming
rights have been given by the authors and if they know that their music can be
downloaded.

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DTrejo
Hey Locke, the music we play is gathered from indie music blogs - we figure
that if there are already direct links to the mp3 file then it is ok to stream
as well. We could be totally wrong though.

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Locke1689
It is a precarious legal ground... technically you don't have reproduction
permission unless they explicitly say so. Still, thanks for the great answer!

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jamesbkel
I think the idea of Mixest is great, but I also don't see it as a replacement
for Pandora or even something like HypeM.

It's great to have the serendipity factor, but sometimes I just want to listen
to 'custom-tailored-shuffle' ala Pandora, rather than actively managing the
playlist.

To clarify: I find myself distracted by skipping a song much more often on
Mixest than Pandora.

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nickpinkston
It's run by Wasabi Ventures' - perhaps an effort to do something neat to
attract attention to their program and companies?

I've never heard of them, but it looks like they're a mix between VC and
startup consulting firm - taking very active roles. Many of their portfolio
"companies" even say Wasabi Ventures in the copyright - interesting.

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jbgoddard
I get new music ideas from friends, I would never use this. What I want is a
webapp where you type in a band name and it just plays that band, not
pretending to have any idea what else I would like. If only that were legal.

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Terry_B
Grooveshark.com

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silvertab
I like it (although I must admit I love indie rock to begin with), but isn't
it quite similar to <http://www.thesixtyone.com/> ?

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ivey
Except that T61 destroyed their usability in the name of a shiny new design,
and drove away a ton of active users. I loved the old T61, but find the new
site completely unusable.

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Qz
What thinking?

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minalecs
simplicity in exchange for choice, imo .. is not really that compelling (I
really don't find pandora that complicated to start with). I would like to
judge this service a year from now, to see how compelling the use case is.

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sprout
Pandora gives a lot less choice than it really claims... it's very easy to
listen to songs I like that Pandora has, but they very quickly get to playing
the same ones over and over again.

I'm willing to take a more niche selection if it means it's easier to find
fresh stuff.

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hugh3
What we really need is for Pandora to change its algorithm. Remember that it
played song X just yesterday, and relax its constraints to find me a song I
haven't heard before.

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Infomus
Would like to see album covers.

