
Facebook Employee Reveals Killer Facebook Music Feature In Deleted Tweet - rblion
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/21/facebook-music-listen-with-friends/
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blader
Wow, can't wait for this.

4-5 years ago, for my first startup idea, I actually spent a few months and
built a client that will scan your complete MP3 library, extract and normalize
ID3 tags, and sync with a web frontend.

The frontend lets you control and listen to your library in real time, and
also multiplex your stream to as many listeners as you want. You could also
browse and control your full music library through this.

Relevant news.yc thread from 1631 days ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8753>

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Raphael
I believe this concept was popularized by Shoutcast.
<http://www.shoutcast.com/broadcast-tools>

Icecast is the open source version, from a similar time, 1998 or 99.
<http://www.icecast.org>

~~~
blader
Yeah, I actually used Icecast as the backend. What I built was a downloadable
client that scanned your music library and gave you a nice iTunes like-web
frontend to broadcast and listen remotely.

~~~
buro9
You built SqueezeCenter. That's impressive.

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georgemcbay
These obviously planned "leaks" that occur just before a company announces
something to get the hype machine in gear are really starting to get tiresome.

At least try something more subtle than having a high ranking creative
director "accidentally" tweet the feature.

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snprbob86
Although I'm sure there are a great many leaks that are planned, I suspect
that the frequency of leaks lately are more likely caused by companies being
more open and more internally communicative. This is a meta-trend in
businesses and loss of some secrecy due to accidentally flapping lips is a
small price to pay for the benefits of enhanced collaboration that internal
openness brings.

~~~
georgemcbay
I don't doubt that true leaks happen, but this one smells very strongly of a
controlled hype leak. It also isn't even the first time this week that
Facebook music's imminent arrival was leaked.

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uptown
One man's "that's neat" is apparently another man's "mind blown".

~~~
amcintyre
So I'm not the only one that saw, _"The 'Listen with your friend' feature in
ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE."_
and thought, "Why does that impress anybody that much?" Sure, the details are
probably technically interesting, but I don't see how this is mind-blowing in
any way. (Of course, I'm also over 40, so maybe my reaction is not
surprising.)

Is this just marketing hype, or do people genuinely get that worked up about
things like this?

~~~
tobtoh
I guess it's horses for courses - but I do agree with you that it seems rather
bland. I much prefer something like last.fm where I can listen to tracks that
others with _similar_ tastes to me are listening to.

~~~
flyt
Listening to the same thing as your friends right now makes a great demo,
increases time on Facebook.com, and is a first step in gathering new data that
can be associated with facebook uid's.

Once Facebook has the data for what every person in the world (already close
to 1 billion active users) listens to at all times (via FB Connect) then an
entire ecosystem will emerge from this data set and the graph API alone.

It might even save last.fm, if they can build something compelling on top of
that data.

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flyt
Also take note that the CEO of Turntable.fm is scheduled to speak tomorrow at
Facebook's f8 conference.

~~~
earbitscom
About mobile/social applications...not necessarily music.

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stuhood
I'd say this is completely and utterly overshadowed by Google's hangouts API
allowing you to embed content in a hangout... their first example was shared
Youtube video watching.

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flyt
I know right? All my friend on Facebook are talking about Google's new
hangouts API. Nobody has even mentioned the new ticker and if they like it or
not!

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tete
What's so great about it when you hear the same stuff as someone else?

Either you don't like that music: You ignore it

Or you are a fan of that music: You most likely have it already

Neither of them is true: Share a YouTube link. This even allows you to choose
when you want to hear it

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scrrr
The best killer music feature I've ever enjoyed was working for a startup
where everyone shared their iTunes library on the network. I tuned in to
interesting new music everyday. :)

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est
It would be cooler if I unplug on phone from dock to leave, the desktop
computer Facebook music would switch to mobile device seamlessly.

~~~
dwynings
Checkout <http://fivedetails.com/seamless/>.

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alex_c
Aw, yet another thing I wanted to build several years ago but never got around
to it. I even got a cool domain name for it, just never started coding. It was
meant to be just a link you can share with friends, and have it pipe your
local audio to them.

My (and my friends') workaround ended up being just sending a link to the song
on YouTube to whoever I want to listen to it. Not nearly as seamless as a
"proper" solution, of course, but simple enough.

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zmanji
I have been wanting a feature like this for a long time. The ability to share
the listening experience even if you and your friend are not in the same
physical space is awesome beyond belief. I hope that it is international and
has a variety of tracks to choose from.

Even better would be the ability to listen to a communal playlist at real
time. This way two people can toss tracks back and forth and just spread the
joy of their favorite tracks.

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pycassa
this can really be a killer app if done right. this increases the average time
spent on fb further. currently fb and twitter are not doing anything about the
users past activities like, likes/tweets/status updates etc., except for
images in Facebook. if i wanted to look up an interesting thing i tweeted or
shared in the past it is really not that intuitive and most of the time i give
up. this music thing can be really huge similar to the images app, not just
the live listing feature, currently there is no way to have all my liked music
from various apps to be in one place.they may introduce a music tab, they also
have my favourite artists, so they may fill my music tab with their songs if
available. if done right this can be really huge, the most used app next to
images. i hope they can deliver.

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pycassa
lol, i just realized myspace used to do this? anyway i hope the music
experience wont effect fb negatively. i can also see fb coming on top of all
the current cloud based music services if done right

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Elhana
Killer feature would be watching porn with a friend. Rest is overrated.

