

Show HN: Napster.fm, Napster reimagined for the modern Web - buu700
http://napster.fm/

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DanBlake
This wont last very long. Youtube is serious about enforcing the size limit on
their videos. They actively contact people who do this type of thing and block
their IP/API access.

They find out about it in 2 ways: 1: When a youtube employee notices it
manually 2: When automated API's detects there are no ad clicks.

Also, using the napster brand is stupid. That company still exists and would
be thrilled to take your domain : <http://www.napster.com/>

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tuxidomasx
How would they do this for client-side applications? I made a desktop
application that essentially streams & rips (to mp3) Youtube videos but
doesn't show any of the video data at all-- never had any issue with blocking
or limits.

To do so would mean blocking regular browser access too (since the app behaves
like a browser, even to the level of requesting other page resources). I
imagine it would be difficult to tell the difference using heuristics.

~~~
DanBlake
It does not work for desktop applications, since all the requests come from
clients IP. If your product got popular enough, I am sure they would send you
with legal motivation to stop.

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jamesgagan
Pretty sure not displaying the video is a violation of the YouTube API TOS:
<https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms>

Also have a feeling the owners of the napster trademarks won't like your
domain name much!

~~~
chime
So then it is exactly like the original Napster, reimagined for the web.

~~~
alpb
Haha this was so good.

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volaski
So... you're saying it's like Napster because it's open source? No matter how
you want to package it, when you build something on top of a centralized
system or content source, it's called building a castle on sand.

~~~
buu700
_So... you're saying it's like Napster because it's open source?_

Well, no; I didn't say that. Napster wasn't open source, as far as I know.

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epenn
Ryan, I would _strongly_ encourage you to rename this. For obvious reasons.

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Aaronneyer
So to show it's more modern, you take the name add .fm...

Alright then

~~~
buu700
_So to show it's more modern, you take the name add .fm..._

No, I don't believe that there is anything about the .fm TLD which in and of
itself implies modernity.

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dbz
I don't see how this is reimagined. It offers nothing that spotify or
soundcloud doesn't. It's also slower, but you're on the front page of HN, so
that's forgivable, but I wouldn't wait 10 seconds for something to load if I
wanted to use it regularly and there were great alternatives (check out
soundcloud). There are much much more important features in a music player
than real-time syncing.

~~~
nnnnni
Grooveshark is also good

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sauerbraten
I get this blue ball spinning and spinning and nothing happens... Chrome
26.0.1410.63 on Ubuntu 12.04.2.

Also, the name is not really fitting.

~~~
buu700
That's odd; I've actually been primarily developing/testing this on
Chrome/Ubuntu. How long did you wait for the application to fully load? It
usually takes ~5 seconds.

(I'm hoping this ends up being better feedback on my UX than my performance,
because the site randomly not loading at all would definitely be a problem.)

The name was chosen because Napster.fm is meant to be a very close
approximation of the Napster UI design and feature set (and then some).

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yashodhan
I too am nostalgic about my Napster days. But if what others are saying is
true, that either YouTube or Napster will come after you, I think you could've
been a bit smarter about this.

Also, have you considered using the Grooveshark API?

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diziet
<https://www.youtube.com/disco> works a lot better at this point

~~~
buu700
Looks interesting, thanks. I'll have to look more into that and see if it
could be a useful path to adding in "radio" functionality (one thing I'd
really like to see in Napster.fm at some point).

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weego
locked my firefox, concerned brow, and pressed back as fast as I could.

~~~
buu700
Sorry? I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the application does usually
take ~5 seconds to fully load.

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earbitscom
Just fyi, this is 100% broken on my galaxy s3.

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buu700
Yep, that's my bad. I forgot to put in a redirect for mobile devices to
another page explaining that they weren't yet supported, but I'll throw
something up now.

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shacharz
I'd call it video-free youtube

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imperialdrive
did we all just get rick-rolled like that?!!!

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buu700
Yes.

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Toshio
The title should be:

"Rick-rolling, reimagined for the HN crowd."

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ihuman
You can select other songs; the default when you first start is a rickroll.

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Toshio
I tried looking for "22" by Taylor Swift, song not found.

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ihuman
I guess not every song is in its database. "Human After All" by Daft Punk
worked for me.

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DanBlake
The 'Database' is just a youtube search with no visual video player, no?

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timerickson
Correct.

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buu700
Not exactly; as mentioned in the About section, the database I'm using is
actually Discogs: <http://discogs.com/>. YouTube is only used as a source of
music.

