

Show HN: Tubalr.com, taking advantage of all the great music content on YouTube. - cjstewart88

www.tubalr.com - any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.<p>code: https://github.com/cjstewart88/Tubalr
======
alexholehouse
This is really cool - do you think it would be possible (I'm not necessarily
suggesting you implement it) to do some basic NLP to get artist/title from
YouTube video names, meaning you could search for an artist and see what's
available?

Clearly it wouldn't be perfect, but a reasonably consistent format seems to be
<title - band>. It might be possible to use a combination of "links to" and
video viewcounts to acts as indicators of authenticity? I mean, I've hardly
done much research into this, but I know when I look for music on youtube I
almost always use those metrics to determine which videos I'm going to listen
to, as it were.

~~~
cjstewart88
I might could throw in suggestions as your typing your search, so if you
started typing "Band of Horses" it would hit last.fm and pull back a handful
of their song titles and allow you to quickly choose from those if you wish.
Let me know if this is kind of what your talking about or if im way off.
Thanks a lot for the feedback.

~~~
bokonon
Since you're already using the last.fm api, might I suggest you add a simple
scrobbling feature. If I were to use Tubalr often I would really want to be
able to scrobble all the songs I've listened to through it.

~~~
cjstewart88
I'm thinking about adding a set of features that allow you to register, login,
and favorite songs. Maybe when you favorite songs they can also be "scrobbled"
if your account is connected with last.fm.

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jaredsohn
Songza.fm allowed you to listen to music from YouTube in 2007, although lacked
the Pandora-like features. In 2010, YouTube blocked their use of the API.

Interestingly, they pivoted into a 'better Pandora' where they license music,
allow playing similar songs, but also let users hand-pick songs for playlists
(that for licensing reasons can only be played by other people).

[http://evolver.fm/2011/03/30/songza-attempts-to-reinvent-
net...](http://evolver.fm/2011/03/30/songza-attempts-to-reinvent-net-radio-
despite-heavy-competition/)

------
Gertig
Very cool, good job. Clickable <http://www.tubalr.com>

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robinwarren
Very nice, a good idea cleanly implemented. One suggestion would be to query
amazon recommendations for similar artists to help work out what to play. This
is only because then you could also possibly allow people to buy or add things
to their wish list from your site. If you were thinking about revenue that is.

Good work.

~~~
cjstewart88
Good idea, I'll look into that, I've been thinking about putting a link to
either Amazon or iTunes for those interested in purchasing music. Thanks for
the feedback and I'm glad ya like it!

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joshmlewis
It's clean and simple and maybe useful but the only problem I see is it
replaying the same popular songs over and over. I put in Mumford and Sons and
Little Lion Man was in the playlist several times over just because it's one
of their most popular songs and there are variations and what not. If you
could put in some kind of function that doesn't show videos more than once or
twice that'd be handy.

~~~
cjstewart88
I agree this can be a bit annoying, some artists/bands have better results
than others. I'll look into sorting out videos that appear as duplicates and
replacing them with more videos. Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
joshmlewis
No problem. Do you have any way to weed out covers and other possibilities? I
haven't seen any come up but just curious how you implemented it or if it is
even a problem at all.

~~~
cjstewart88
I'll look into this, its a similar feature another user wants to filter our
the words "and" and "with". I've noticed its a problem if you search for
something like "Nine Inch Nails Acoustic", a lot of junk shows up that im not
interested in. Thanks for the suggestion.

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artursapek
Wow, this is wonderful. I have always been shocked at how commonly people
Youtube for music and how much better that system could be. You've chosen a
great problem to solve.

Feedback:

• I love the Similar button.

• Perhaps the links to the videos could be outline or something, right now
it's hard to distinguish them from eachother because it's a mass of text. I
mean of course the design of this is very minimalistic and the main focus here
is the function, but for now that would be my main design criticism.

• You should filter for the word "with" preceding an artist's name in the
video title. Also perhaps "and", or any sort of list of names after an
occurrence of "with," because I got one video for the query "Avi Buffalo" that
was "Look Out for My Love Jeff Tweedy _with_ Avi Buffalo, Solid sound August
15 2010," which is of course not Avi Buffalo at all.

EDIT: Also, the ability to search while still keeping the current song playing
at the top would be nice.

~~~
cjstewart88
I agree with the playlist being a litte hard to read, I'll do some research
and figure out if theres a better way to show the playlist.

As far as filtering out videos with the keywords "with" and "and", I'll have
to do some testing with this and see if the results are better. My concern is
what happens when a user searches for something like "Coheed and Cambria",
tons of the videos would be filtered out. I guess I could only filter out
"with" and "and" if its not in the original search.

Can you elaborate on how you think searching while listening should work?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give me some feedback.

~~~
artursapek
Sorry, I just saw this. Searching while listening would basically work how you
have now but if there's already a video playing the system wouldn't stop it
and change it to the first result for the new search, until the user clicks on
a link in the results.

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wtildesley
Noticed the footer overlaps the playlist: <http://i.imgur.com/xjUxo.png>

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks for the tip, what resolution are you running?

~~~
wtildesley
1280 x 800

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks, I'll look into this.

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bkyan
This is awesome! I am trying to embed tubalr within a browser-based desktop
environment and have a pair of (hopefully) quick requests:

1\. I'd like to be able to pass in something via the URL that allows me to set
the wmode of the video to be opaque or transparent. This is to prevent z-index
conflicts when I have two separate tubalr iframes that overlap each other when
I drag those iframes around.

2\. For the initial video that tubalr loads, I'd like to be able to pass in
something via the URL that controls whether the first video autoplays or not.
This is to prevent multiple videos from playing at the same time when I have
multiple tubalr iframes on a page.

Example Interface: <http://beta.mindcast.com/ui/4kug9iozh54y>

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks for the feedback and interest! The YouTube player is pretty finicky
with z-indexing, so I'll need to play around with what your wanting and see
how I could pull it off. As far as setting an option for auto play, that
should be fairly easy to throw in. If you'd like to talk more about some
features your interested in seeing feel free to contact me via cjstewart AT
gmail DOT com

~~~
bkyan
Oh, the z-indexing worked for me with the following update to the parameters
of your swfobject:

var params = { allowScriptAccess: "always", bgcolor: "#cccccc",
allowFullScreen: true, wmode: "opaque" };

~~~
cjstewart88
I didnt have a way to test it besides just seeing if it didnt brake anything,
and it didnt, so its pushed up to prod. Let me know if this fixes the issue
for you. I also looked up the param and it does in fact seem like the solution
you where looking for :) Thanks for experimenting with tubalr!

~~~
bkyan
Thanks for putting that in! It's working great for me!

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jtheory
This is pretty cool! I use YouTube for music all the time -- I'm not quite
sure. I keep finding music apps that aren't quite right, and don't have what I
want to hear (or not set up how I want to use them), and I end up back at
YouTube, which indeed sucks for this.

No useful advice at the moment, beyond a vague suggestion to revisit the
domain name choice (if somehow you're not wedded to this one by now, and you
see many other folks with reactions like mine). I'm still not quite sure of
the intended reading, but first I saw a slightly jumbled "tubgirl"(!), then I
saw "two-baller"; now I'm stuck with a reference to "tubal" (as in tubal
ligation? ...) with a flickr-style ending. Maybe just put an "about" link
somewhere that gives a hint?

~~~
cjstewart88
I'm surprised your the first one to bring up the name, I've had friends
question me about it... but no worries, I have a reasoning/meaning behind it.

I originally liked the word Tubular(used mostly in the 80's, or by people
mocking the 80's to describe something 'awesome' or 'excellent' ie, good.);
however, that domain was taken. Then I started thinking about variations of
the word, and went with Tubalr. I went with this version of the word because
it has the word Tuba(a musical instrument) in it and in my head sounded cool
:P. So with that in mind, I thought it was cool to have a name that came from
a word meaning "awesome", "excellent", or "good" AND have a musical instrument
in the name.

Hope that clears up the name a tad bit. Oh, I pronounce the word something
like: Tube-u-ler

~~~
tangentcity
"Tube" in French (from France) also means "a hit" on the radio, a top-40 song.
Plus, Tubalr has great Michael Oldfield resonance (Tubular Bells was the first
record I ever bought). Ace name.

------
subb
Great! Pandora(-ish) for the rest of us.

Something you might want to address : I've searched for The Prodigy, and I got
"Amanda Bynes' 2010 Maxim Cover Shoot". I'm not sure where that came from!

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks! Ya, sometimes unrelated videos will slip in, I'm always thinking of
ways I can mitigate this. I'm sure you didnt mind the Cover Shoot video though
;)

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city41
AOL Radio used to offer single artist radio stations. Now that AOL Radio is
powered by Slacker, they dropped this feature. As far as I know no other
internet radio service offers this. Now your tubalr does (at least, in a
sense). Which makes it stand out, at least to me. Thanks for the nice site!

EDIT: I see if you reload the site and pick the same artist again, the same
videos come up in the same order. Some randomization would go a long ways.

~~~
cjstewart88
Just pushed this to prod about an hour ago, thanks for the suggestion!

~~~
city41
Awesome! Looks like I've got a new radio station :)

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canadiancreed
Loving the similiar feature. Already found three bands that I had never heard
of before that have tunes that are right up my alley. Very nice work.

One thing and I dont' know if it's possible, but is there a way to have it
where if the video is flagged as no longer there, it's not returned in the
results? I get about a 25% to 50% rate where the video is listed, but doesn't
play.

~~~
cjstewart88
Awesome, glad you're enjoying it! As far as filtering out the videos that dont
allow embedment, I should really look into that and eliminate those out of the
playlist. Thanks!

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tangentcity
Cool. My first impression is that this is also a good tool to get news on
artists - because the first band I looked up was the Stone Roses; and I was
gobsmacked (as the English say) that the first hit was of their press
conference announcing their reunion. Big news to me, and way more important
than rewatching an old video!

~~~
cjstewart88
Thats pretty sweet, for the hell of it I've searched stupid shit such as
"people falling" or "lol". Glad ya like it!

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Geee
Thanks!! I have been waiting for this. There's lots of stuff on Youtube that
isn't anywhere else. Suggestions: Let me search for Youtube playlists.
Somehow, songs could be connected in a network of similar songs by mapping the
playlists. Also, let me create link for the current playlist/song.

~~~
cjstewart88
Hey Gee, I plan on adding an easy way to get the url of the current playlist
so you can share with friends. The URL's currently exist, just no way to
easily copy them for sharing.

Example URLS: <http://www.tubalr.com/just/Muse> OR
<http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Jack+Johnson>

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jaredsohn
Unfortunately, it may be against YouTube's Terms of Service since it strips
the video from the content. [http://evolver.fm/2011/03/25/how-youtube-radio-
disappeared-f...](http://evolver.fm/2011/03/25/how-youtube-radio-disappeared-
from-the-itunes-app-store/)

~~~
cjstewart88
It appears that the app your talking about only played the audio from the
video, stripping the actual video out and any ads that might have shown up.
They also used YouTube in their name and where making money off the app. I'm
not sure what Terms of Service I've violated, I'll have to take a closer look.
Thanks for the heads up.

~~~
jaredsohn
I think you're okay; I posted that a little hastily since it was linked to
from the songza article that I posted elsewhere, but as you noted, your app
doesn't have those same problems.

The one thing that I am confused about is why the old songza disappeared. If
the only problem was that they weren't showing videos, they easily could have
started doing so, and I remember that at least for awhile they were doing
that.

Wikipedia says "However, in late January 2010 Songza had to put their music
streaming service on hold due to problems with YouTube's API (which is what
the site uses to play back songs), YouTube blocking the site from using its
API, presumably because YouTube could be sued for supporting a free music
service without adverts[citation needed]." It looks like Songza had ads, so
maybe that was the issue. Regardless, you may find reading up about Songza
interesting; TechCrunch reports they were acquired for high six figures to low
seven figures.

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kittxkat
Pretty cool and simple. How do you get the "similiar Artist" feature?

Also, that is a pretty great font for your logo. For anyone else interested he
uses "Pacifico": <http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/pacifico>

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks, glad ya like it. As far as how the similar search works, heres how I
do it. First I hit last.fm and grab the top 20 similar artist, then I simply
hit YouTube's API and grab the top video for each artist and throw all the
videos into one playlist.

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johnnyjustice
Can you make it so that I can send my friends a URL of the Artist i have
chosen on Tubalr

~~~
cjstewart88
Thats on my list of things to do; however, for now you can do this:

<http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses>
<http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes>

Also, a simple API I threw together:
<http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses.json>
<http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes.json>

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
captn3m0
also, get a favicon. Nice work

~~~
cjstewart88
This is done, thanks for reminding me to do this!

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soho33
very nice, simple and sleek design. I really like it.

the only downside i see which i noticed other people mentioning as well is
when i search for let's say "Coldplay" the first 2-3 songs are the same which
would require me to play next. it's a lot simpler than the Youtube playlist so
once you add the playlist functionality and some algorithm to get rid of
duplicates it'll be a very useful service.

How are you planning to monetize this? or are you doing this just as a hobby?

~~~
cjstewart88
Glad you like it. After having duplicates brought up several times over the
weekend I think I'm going to make that my next task to tackle.

As far as monetizing, well... I have no clue. I started this app for practice
and so I'd have something to show when I went for my first job interview,
having just graduated. I messed around with adding a "Buy This Song" link that
would send you to the Amazon MP3; however, I removed it because it was just
more clutter I wasn't interested in, specially seeing it wasnt getting used as
I thought it would. I'm open for any suggestions if ya have any :)

~~~
soho33
for starters i would keep it ad free. but once it picks up momentum and you
are getting a lot of visitors, i would maybe incorporate a video advertisement
in between songs. so maybe after 5 songs it would display a video/audio
advertisement of some sort etc.

~~~
cjstewart88
I think I want to stay away from interrupting listening. I know there free so
complaining is kind of pointless and lame, but I cant stand it in other music
services. I might look into a service like <http://carbonads.net/>.

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edkennedy
Chrome 14, 10.7 OS X. Was only able to get the first video to play when I went
to ONLY. I watched a video in entirety. Clicking a video title or next would
not switch videos.

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kvnn
Where are the javascript and css files in the repo? I can make a good and
quick pull request for you if they get included / I find them.

~~~
cjstewart88
public/javascripts and public/stylesheets :)

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citricsquid
Needs something that signals it's processing when I enter a value, I figured
it was broken as it takes ~5 seconds to respond.

~~~
cjstewart88
Just finished this about an hour ago and pushed it to prod, thanks again for
the suggestion.

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zalew
I did something similar, but, well, different ;) congrats on shipping, mine
got stuck in the 'almost finished' stage.

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks man, I find that to be one of the most difficult things when playing
with a new idea, actually sticking with it until its "finished".

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kvnn
This is absolutely perfect for me. Thanks!

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jianshen
I love how mature these api mashups are becoming. Formal deployment process
and maintainable code. Well done!

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ramanujam
Nice! Mapping the right and left arrow keys to prev/next would be a small but
very useful addition.

~~~
cjstewart88
Another task on my todo list! Currently the only keyboard control is 'space'
to pause :)

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helen842000
Love it! The simplicity is the winning factor. I can see that I'll be using it
a lot!

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mariust
this rocks, I wanted to make something like this in the past but the idea died
I hope you get a lot of users. What I would do is add an auto complete like
the one on youtube.com just to make things a lot simpler Good luck

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks man. I'm definitely wanting to add some type of suggestions as you type
or auto-completing.

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kikaider05
I love using this when I'm at work and have told many co-workers about it

~~~
cjstewart88
Thanks a lot man!

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tbdr
another similar site is <http://fermademuzica.ro/> (.ro only) that has
playlist, thumbnails, similar artists, top songs

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kurt_
I like it, maybe show the thumbnails for the next videos !

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fezzl
Really neat! Can you add a "next" button though?

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pxtreme75
Very nice indeed. Simple, clean and enjoyable :)

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rshm
Nice and clutter free.

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foxhop
Nice work, I dig it

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jaypreneur
Freaking awesome.

