

We just launched Beluga, a free analytics tool for musicians - grooveshark_hn
http://beluga.grooveshark.com

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burrokeet
Instead of Beluga, how about launching a nice tool that with one click lets
content owners remove all of their unlicensed content from Grooveshark, block
all of it from being re-uploaded ever again, and send us a cheque for any
revenues earned when it was there.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Hey burrokeet, aspects of the content management functionality you mentioned
will be part of the new artist platform. You can request early beta access
here: <http://greenroom.grooveshark.com/?beluga>

We do pay royalties to licensed content holders - please email
licensing[at]grooveshark[dot]com for more details

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physcab
Congrats on the launch! I remember when we (I was a former groovesharker)
started working on it back in November of 2010! Great to see that you stuck
with the project through what I'm sure were many ups and downs :)

I'm curious to know how you see the product benefiting people. What do you see
people actually using it for?

Right now it seems like a cute demonstration of a data mashup though not
entirely factually correct. For example, if I search for "Coldplay" it says
85% affinity for Asian Indian and 82% Plastic Surgery and high Z-score for
Hindi? How do you ensure the accuracy of this data?

I think you need to display the results of this data differently to users. If
its correct, people without statistics backgrounds will get confused because
not everyone can interpret what a z-score means, nor will they understand how
it is useful to them.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Hey physcab, good to hear from you! We miss you, and we hope everything's
going well.

We addressed some of your questions in the faq, especially different ways that
artists can use Beluga: <http://beluga.grooveshark.com/faq.html>. Essentially
we wanted to give artists a powerful - yet free - tool to let them understand
their fan base.

As for data accuracy; although Beluga constantly surprises us with its
insights, further investigation has always confirms those insights, at least
as far as being solid statistics.

We toyed around with a lot of ways of displaying the data before coming to the
final design. Oviously not everybody's going to know what a z-score is, but
hopefully the interface is useful for those who don't and even more useful for
those who do. We sprinkled helpful tooltips throughout the app to give some
context to what's being displayed.

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback!

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cozykozy
I find it mindly amusing that there is super-high confidence that fans of Cat
Power will own a cat. Owning a horse comes in at a distant second.

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grooveshark_hn
We'd love to hear what you guys think. Everyone at the office spends all day
on hacker news :)

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gmig
I was having trouble using this on Firefox 13 (beta). I keep getting "Invalid
referer." dialog boxes when entering the artist in and three "Invalid
referer." dialog boxes when going to a Artist Report. The only information
loaded on the Artist Report is the Biography.

Just loaded the site in Chrome and works great.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Hey gmig, thanks for checking out Beluga. I just tried in Firefox 13, and I
couldn't reproduce the issue. Do you have anything that could be messing with
your referrer, like addons? On api calls, as a safety precaution, we check to
make sure the browser referrer is correct.

~~~
gmig
I don't have any add-ons/plugins that change or block the referrer. I disabled
the add-ons/plugins I did have and still got the error. Though I created a new
profile under Firefox 13 and the site worked fine on the new profile. Must be
something wrong with my regular profile then.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Glad to hear it's working for you. Thanks again for your feedback :)

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qeorge
Really cool, but I'm worried about your sample size.

[http://beluga.grooveshark.com/artist_report.php?artist_name=...](http://beluga.grooveshark.com/artist_report.php?artist_name=pill)

100% male?

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fleeno
Not that it matters too much, but why did you call it Beluga? Beluga is a
pretty famous Facebook acquisition, and is the first thing I think of when I
see Beluga, besides the whale!

~~~
grooveshark_hn
We really like using aquatic references at Grooveshark, and since the
beginning this project's code name was Beluga. We really liked the name, and,
since Facebook absorbed the Beluga you're referring to for their talented
employees, we decided to keep the name.

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splatzone
I find it interesting how the title of this post is tailored to the technical
HN audience where as the Reddit post made reference to them getting sued:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/ucumx/hey_reddit_were...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/ucumx/hey_reddit_were_grooveshark_music_streaming_site/)

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jonathanjaeger
From underground metal bands to mainstream pop, it seems pretty accurate from
the demographics and highlights sections. Some other interesting tidbits in
there about device usage.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Thank you! We hope that this data can help independent musicians connect with
their fans more confidently.

~~~
caryme
It would be really cool if you had demographic information on sexual
orientation as well.

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sbmassey
It doesn't seem to have any data for "The Beatles", oddly enough.

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treetrouble
This isn't music analysis, it's musicological analysis

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ScottWhigham
Loving it - fun stuff. Don't quite know what I, the musician, would do with it
but it's pretty cool.

~~~
grooveshark_hn
Hey ScottWhigham, thanks for the kind words. We've made a couple suggestions
on how to use the data in our faq at <http://beluga.grooveshark.com/faq.html>.
We want to offer musicians like you tools such as Beluga to help you connect
with your strongest would-be fans. In fact, Beluga is just the beginning.
We're building an awesome new platform for artists like you to manage content,
connect with fans, and get more out of Beluga all within the main site
(grooveshark.com). You can sign up for an early invite at
<http://greenroom.grooveshark.com/?beluga>

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niels
Grooveshark is blocked (at the DNS level) in my country (Denmark). Annoying.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
I understand it's also blocked in the offices of at least one major label. Not
surprising given certain legal action, but must be annoying for Grooveshark
that their potential big customers are actively blocking them.

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kyt
First search was "Foster the People." Looks empty.

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youngdev
Nice UI.. Are you guys using bootstrap by any chance?

