
Show HN: Discover, Listen and Discuss Classical Music - ClassicalmOnly
https://classicalmusiconly.com
======
ClassicalmOnly
Hello HN! I am really excited to show you Classical Music Only, a social
website dedicate to discover, listen and discuss classical music. I actually
tried to do a "show HN" thread 6 months ago when the first alpha release was
published but somehow the link was dead and nobody saw it except me:D. Now the
website is in beta phase and has become much more mature since first
published. The website has many features that you can be interested in, among
them:

    
    
        * Create classical music lists, listen to them and share them to the whole world
        * Ask for work recommendations and let the community answers you by adding and voting for classical works that are relevant to your question
        * Discover new works through personalized recommendations on your homepage, using the categorized basic lists filtered by periods, composers and genres or using community list
        * Open discussion and start debates about your favorite composers and works
        * Review classical works, read others' reviews
        * Discover the most favorited recordings for any classical work. Add your favorite recordings
        * Follow your friends and favorite users to see their posts on your homepage
        * See latest posts (discussions, reviews, recordings) of your followed composers on your customized homepage feed
        * Share stories, blogs and news about anything related to classical music
        * Listen to top works filtered by period, genre or composer. If you're bored, you can listen to a random masterpiece using a magic button on your homepage!
    

I am really excited to read your feedbacks and happy to answer any question.

~~~
StavrosK
Pretty long and off-topic shot, but would you (or anyone else) happen to know
this piece? We've been looking for a name for years:

[https://soundcloud.com/stavrosk/unknown-piece-from-
brewsters...](https://soundcloud.com/stavrosk/unknown-piece-from-brewsters-
millions)

On-topic, how can I listen to a performance? I clicked through to a few lists
but haven't found any buttons to do that on the site.

~~~
p1esk
If you can produce a MIDI encoding of this piece, I can run it through a
classifier trained on a large dataset of classical composers, and identify
most similar pieces.

Alternatively, you can ask someone who trains deep learning models on audio
files, and has a large classical dataset.

~~~
StavrosK
The person who transcribed it was kind enough to send it to me, I'd be
grateful if you could search for it:
[http://mormolyke.com/stuff/brewsters.mid](http://mormolyke.com/stuff/brewsters.mid)

~~~
p1esk
Ok, I will email you when I run it.

------
MrJagil
Hey, just a quick note,

I'd personally enjoy a big fat action button on the landing page that just
says "Play" (just like the "i'm feeling lucky" button on the "TV" page). I
know you have higher ambitions with the site (social, etc), but, anecdotally,
i'm studying for exams right now and don't really have the motivation to parse
all that text and creating a new user, but you could've easily had me
listening for an hour if the content was easily, immediately accessible. good
luck!

EDIT: Who am I kidding, I'm procrastinating so I might as well procrastinate
right: It would be nice if the linked videos used youtubes timecode function,
to skip intros. It was a bit jarring to hear the presenter in this video, for
instance:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=IInG5nY_wrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=IInG5nY_wrU)

~~~
jdlyga
This is why I love Youtube live channels. They just play a constant stream of
music without having to sign up or do anything else complicated.

~~~
dogruck
What are your favorite YouTube live channels?

~~~
schuetze
Not OP, but I'm personally a fan of chill-hop stations, such as Lo-fi Hiphop
Radio 24/7\. This kind of music lends itself to studying and working, as it
has very little lyrical content. Find it here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBh9soLSkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBh9soLSkI)

------
timmonsjg
Coming from someone who's not very familiar with classical music and who
signed up to start getting into it...

Why am I forced to 'star' 5 composers and 5 works upon registration? I
recognized a most of the top ~10 composers but I'm sure most people will just
click the top 5 and move on which really defeats the purpose doesn't it?

And then once I'm at the homepage, I don't immediately see where I can review
/ change my stars.

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Hi timmonsjg, the welcome page has 2 main purposes:

1\. you see posts on your homepage feed of composers you followed (of course
you can see all other posts without leacving the feed but only posts related
to your followed composers are loaded by default)

2\. Get work recommendations based on your followed composers and starred
works.

You are right that it sucks if you know little about classical music. A skip
button will be added soon.

~~~
data_scientist
A short optional sample of every composers and songs would be nice, just to
get an idea of the music. I can't remember music in my head (kind of
Aphantasia for music), so it's really hard for me to choose just from the
list.

~~~
NTripleOne
This is a great idea tbh, most people actually know far more classical music
than they think they do - but they couldn't tell you the name of a piece or
its composer for the life of them.

------
ajnin
At a quick glance, a few remarks about the onboarding :

\- the "I'm feeling lucky" button you mention in the comments here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489))
is nowhere to be found, maybe not on the home page ? I did a ctrl-F to be sure
but nothing.

\- You ask me to choose 5 of my favorites composers, but you only show me the
top N most popular ones ... it feels very rude, you basically ask me to lie,
imagine if on a regular music site I could only like something in the current
top 40. Also consider that the probability that the 5 favorites composers of a
given person are all in the top 40 is very low. I feel like presenting them
that way is only going to make the most popular artificially even more popular
which I don't think is something that you want.

\- It seems even worse for the "favorite pieces" list. The probability that a
person's favorite pieces are all in the top N you selected is very very low.
The majority of the pieces in that list were composed by composers I didn't
choose just before.

\- The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) was in the list 4 times, and The
Rite Of Spring twice, as well as Chopin's Nocturnes (which is several pieces,
by the way).

Apart from that I like the high-density layout, a welcome departure from the
usual sites composed mostly of empty space.

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Hi ajnin, thanks for the thorough feedback

> \- the "I'm feeling lucky" button you mention in the comments here
> ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489))
> is nowhere to be found, maybe not on the home page ? I did a ctrl-F to be
> sure but nothing.

It's on the TV page
[https://classicalmusiconly.com/tv](https://classicalmusiconly.com/tv)

> You ask me to choose 5 of my favorites composers, but you only show me the
> top N most popular ones

> The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) was in the list 4 times, and The Rite
> Of Spring twice, as well as Chopin's Nocturnes (which is several pieces, by
> the way).

These 2 points are totally valid and I am aware of them. These 2 points are
connected to each other due to some technical difficulty (or maybe a bug?) in
Django. We had difficulty to get unique random set of filtered items. That's
why you see probably some duplicate items. Other users may have not experieced
it because it happens randomly. That's why we ordered composers by some other
metric. However, you can follow/unfollow any composer at anytime later inside
their profile pages or on the TV page while listening a work by that composer.

> It seems even worse for the "favorite pieces" list. The probability that a
> person's favorite pieces are all in the top N you selected is very very low.
> The majority of the pieces in that list were composed by composers I didn't
> choose just before.

Because The starring stage doesn't depend on the followed composers' stage.
It's rational because you may want to star works within a bigger set of items
and not be bound by followed composers only.

------
jdemler
Just tried to find two "modern" composers: Vasks and Gulda. You have neither.

Peteris Vasks [0] is "now is one of the most influential and praised European
contemporary composers."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks)

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Thanks jdemler for reporting, you can also add composer requests in the
website itself at
[https://classicalmusiconly.com/request/composers](https://classicalmusiconly.com/request/composers)

I will add all pending requests before the weekend

------
galobtter
This seems mostly like a social site for discussing/reviewing classical music
+ a fancy way to categorize youtube clips. The recommendations doesn't seem
that useful as I've already listened to many of the pieces, and youtube
provides recommendations which are pretty useful

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
> The recommendations doesn't seem that useful as I've already listened to
> many of the pieces

Good for you! Currently there are some 500 works that are marked as
"masterpieces". Not necesarrily all of them are Mass in B minor or Mozart's
requiem tier. You may be surprised that you can discover some great work you
didn't know about using this button. I am currently planning to add some
filters so you can get a random work from a filtered set (Genre, period,
century, composers' country). Of course, it will be improved as more works are
added. But for now, it works totally random from a filtered set of works that
are marked as masterpieces.

~~~
galobtter
Haha I just clicked the random button for masterpiece and it gave me Mozart's
Requiem. I was looking at the recommendations based on the pieces I chose
anyhow. I personally like to listen to various pretty obscure pieces by
composers I like (dvorak's symphonies 1-4), and don't really go by genre,
period etc. Maybe others will find it useful

------
taserian
Slightly off-topic, but is there a resource that collects the music cited in
Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach"?

I've never been good at reading music notation, so those sections of the book
(which I need to re-read sometime soon) are glossed over, and I feel I'm
missing out.

~~~
genieyclo
[https://open.spotify.com/user/rspeer/playlist/3q3TsI67o6rUfS...](https://open.spotify.com/user/rspeer/playlist/3q3TsI67o6rUfSdjJTyNvT)

------
cellularmitosis
It is such a shame that _Adventures in Good Music_ is no longer syndicated on
the radio.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haas#Adventures_in_Good_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haas#Adventures_in_Good_Music)

------
tequila_shot
Just tangetial : if you don't know anything about classical but would love to
learn a lot, then Colorado Public Radio does a fantastic job.

Listen for yourself:
[http://www.cpr.org/classical](http://www.cpr.org/classical)

------
Raphmedia
Very good. The only missing feature would be a way to be able to navigate with
the music still playing. Perhaps a simple "open in popup" like a lot of radio
website used to do would work fine. Ideally having the website as a single-
page-app.

------
dvt
Hey, awesome project! I'm a huge fan of classical music and can definitely see
myself using this. I'm going to share it with my dad who's also a big
classical aficionado.

Anyway, my question may get lost, as this post really blew up, but here it is.
I'm launching a project I've been working on soon-ish, and I'm wondering: what
steps did you take to gain traction? My project is somewhat socially-oriented
like yours (i.e. there's no paid product), so I'm wondering if you can share
any insight into how to get it out there and get high-qualify contributors.

Thanks, and again, awesome job :)

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Thank you for this awesome feedback! I didn't take any special steps. I just
made a show HN thread and frankly I didn't expect to be that successful since
most successful threads I saw were SaaS or other technical projects. I am
truly indebted to HN and the community for featuring the thread. I also
submitted it on ProductHunt but it failed miserably :D

Thanks again and good luck with your project.

------
guiomie
I like to listen to random classical music, but I know nothing about composer
and songs. This means, that quiz at the beginning to know my preference,
should there not be a way to skip it for users like me?

------
yawn
I know this is a wall of questions, but I'm really impressed with your
accomplishment. I'm interested in the origins of the site, how you chose the
tech stack, any scaling issues you might have, how you create the content on
YouTube, how you are handling cost, etc. I've been wanting to create something
similar for a different domain and worry about scaling and costs. Have you
written about any of this anywhere? Thanks for any answers, and good luck!

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Thank you! I hope you really enjoy it. The main stack is Vue for frontend and
Python/Django + Golang for backend. I might share my pleasant experience in
the future with vue enthusiasts since I became one myself!

------
lerie82
Was disappointed to see it was based around YouTube clips, however, a
wonderfully great idea.

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Listening using YouTube is just one feature among many other features like
creating lists, asking for recommendations, discovering top recordings for any
work, discover top works ranked by users' stars and filtered by genre, period,
composer or century. It's intended more to be a social website than something
like Spotify for classical music so you can discover new works, review and
discuss classical music.

------
Raphmedia
[https://classicalmusiconly.com/auth/social/complete/facebook](https://classicalmusiconly.com/auth/social/complete/facebook)
gave me an error 500

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
That's weird, I will look into the logs and see what can be done. Thanks
Raphmedia for reporting.

~~~
Raphmedia
Using create by email gives me (in chrome network console) "account already
exists" and trying to log with that account sends a call which is never
answered. Perhaps it's the HN hug messing your website up...

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
You cannot create a new user by email currently. This is for already
registered users who want to login only using their emails because they forgot
the password or username or don't want to type them.

~~~
Raphmedia
What about this here :

[https://i.snag.gy/1jPRFW.jpg](https://i.snag.gy/1jPRFW.jpg)

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Yes, this is the old way if you want to: (username + password + email), do you
have a problem registering with this method also?

~~~
Raphmedia
Yes. I get {message: "account already exists"} but when I try to connect with
that account, I only get an error 400.

------
j7ake
Is it possible to listen to classical music on your site without registration
?

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Yes. You might want to register to get work recommendations based on your
taste from your followed composers and starred works.

------
geff82
Cool someone cares about the special needs of the fan of classical music!
There is another cool site, too: www.idagio.com . It is a Spotify for
Classical music.

------
Freak_NL
How do users pay for their use of this site? Are the free users loss leaders
for the premium subscriptions, or is the user's data monetized?

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
The website is totally free. There is no premium subscriptions. Users data are
not monetized. If you want to support the project, you may donate using
Patreon or bitcoin.

~~~
deadmetheny
I would just like to say that I appreciate that you're doing this purely with
donations as the income stream. I really dig the social aspect, and more
people discovering the joy of classical music is always a good thing. Cheers!

------
camhart
After you sign up you're forced to pick favorites... I don't have any because
I don't any.

------
benob
What's the point of following a dead composer? As if they were going to
compose new work...

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Hi benob, following composers serves for 2 main purposes:

1\. you get posts on your homepage feed of composers you followed (you can
also see other posts on your feed but the default is filtered by your followed
composers)

2\. Discover work recommendations based on your followed composers and starred
works

------
shenbomo
Does the web application provide APIs for searching certain work based on tags
etc?

------
vermooten
Great idea, will keep looking in on it for content. Thanks OP!

------
gondo
are all the entries linking only to youtube videos?

~~~
ClassicalmOnly
Currently yes. But if there's enough interest. I shall start working on
compiling Spotify albums. YouTube will remain the default option though since
it's open and doesn't require registration.

