

Ask HN: Review my startup, GetPlaylists - talentless
http://www.getplaylists.com

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tptacek
Like the idea. Wanted to do something like this a few years ago. It's an
actual pain point: I have thousands of albums, and it's a pain to mix them so
that I enjoy them and listen to most of them regularly.

Hate HATE the stock-footage girl on the front page.

What's with "My cart (0)"? I went hunting for the thing that costs money. Is
there one?

I assume I can upload my iTunes playlist and you'll fit it to what's in your
database, that being the value prop.

I assume your key viral loops are Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting to
friends portions of playlists.

~~~
talentless
Thanks for the feedback. That is definitely one of the pain points we are
looking to relieve. Good to hear that it resonates.

Yeah the stock photo is probably a bit too market-y, will work on replacing
with solid content.

You are able to add any songs you don't own to your shopping cart for
purchase. The downloadable software not only allows you to upload and share
you itunes playlist, but it also allows us to provide you with purchase
protection so you don't buy music you already own. The software also syncs
playlists from the website with itunes or windows media player.

I am definitely hoping that Facebook and Twitter turn into viral loops.

Thanks for your feedback. It is much appreciated.

~~~
samdk
Playlists are not something I have much use for (I prefer listening to whole
albums at a time), but as a graphic designer I'd like to second the thing
about the stock photo.

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luchak
As other people have said, the stock-photo girl has got to go. It makes me
feel like you're trying to sell me insurance or tooth whitener or a mortgage
or something.

My main issue after poking around the site for a couple minutes is that I
still can't tell what you offer that I can't already get from iTunes and sites
like Pandora/Last.fm/etc. The iTunes "Genius" feature works well enough for
assembling quick 'n dirty playlists out of my current music collection. If I
want to share my music tastes with my friends, I'm already on last.fm. If I
want to share a specific playlist with my friends, I'll burn them a CD or
something, since their collections don't overlap with mine much.

Maybe I'm not your target audience, but, regardless, here's what I'd like to
see: really interesting curated playlists. I can't find any on the site right
now. The playlists I can find now are all very, well, functional, but they're
not compelling. Ideally these playlists would be more like mixtapes than
unordered jumbles of songs. It seems like it wouldn't be too much trouble (or
too expensive) to get some good online or college radio DJs to assemble some
quality content for you. You could also just use show track lists as
playlists, but the results wouldn't be quite as nice.

(It'd also be neat to get suggestions for playlists that contain mostly, but
not entirely, music I already own.)

That's the smallest delta from the current site that I would find motivating.
I'd argue, though, that there's still nobody who really does music discovery
"right", so there's a lot of room for innovation. I'm glad to see you're
exploring the space.

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alex_c
Saw you demo at SF Musictech today - good demo, and very solid product.

I don't think the stock photo on the front page is that bad - people who work
with websites might cringe, but other than that it's not so bad.

My one criticism is that it's not immediately obvious why I should sign up or
that I need to download a client. This page [1] is an excellent explanation,
but it took a bit of hunting to run across it - at a very superficial first
glance, it looks like I'm supposed to buy the music from you. It should be a
lot more obvious that it works with my existing music collection (maybe say
that instead of "works with your digital music player" on the front page).

[1]
[http://www.getplaylists.com/sync/download/?next=/playlist/11...](http://www.getplaylists.com/sync/download/?next=/playlist/1198865)

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marltod
I would like an app that would scan my mp3s then generate a few Pandora
stations from that. "Rap Music I listened to in High school" for example

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dryicerx
Interesting idea, I like the site, although might want to clean the design,
it's a tad bit busy.

The only crticisim I see here is you only get 30 second previews instead of
the entire track, and I don't feel like paying up $100 for a playlist...
Grooveshark solves this by allowing playlist sharing and full track playbacks
which solves that problem. Any thoughts about that?

~~~
talentless
We don't currently have the rights to stream full songs, but it is something
we would love to be able to do for our users. We would need to find a way to
make business model work for us.

You do have one other option (as alex_c pointed out our message on this was
unclear). You can listen to the full playlist with your music collection. If
you have the software installed then we can match the playlist to your
collection.

We are working on cleaning up the design. Is it too busy visually or is it
more information overload?

Thanks for the feedback!

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akc
3 points for 2 cents:

1\. I didn't get within 10 seconds what you offer. Work on that.

2\. I agree with some of the other commenters; curated lists (from a trusted
source) would be a great idea, if thats the direction you want to head in.

3\. It would be great if I could buy a track without having to create an
account. You'd probably make more money too.

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bvi
1\. Looks like a pretty good product. 2\. Clean up the page. Make it simple!
It looks so cluttered, I've no clue where to look. Way too much text, and too
many moving flash images.

