
Show HN: Lofimusic.app, an open source Background Music Progressive Web App - Maxence
https://lofimusic.app
======
filleduchaos
A bit of a tangent, but this sort of music actually makes it near impossible
for me to concentrate.

Instead, I have what I call "loop songs", which are selected favourite tracks
that span a range of genres from fairly heavy metal to Afrobeats. When I want
to focus I pick a loop song and set it to repeat (the ideal volume varies per
song, but is typically moderately loud). I can't explain how or why but it
settles my brain far, far better than any white noise or "chill" playlist I've
tried.

It's also a point of humour with my friends because they're horrified that I
listen to the same song hundreds of times over a couple of days, while I'm
perplexed that they can actually get tired of listening to a song to the point
of disliking it.

~~~
pwenzel
I have a very similar progress, but my favorite loop-genre to work with is
grindcore. Highly recommend Magrudergrind:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB290E30AC7EEFAFB](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB290E30AC7EEFAFB).
I have listened to this album many hundreds of times by now.

~~~
ddoeth
Tried it, definetly can't concentrate with grindcore.

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ayyy
I want to love this. I leave these stations on in the background anyway and
being able to change them like a radio station is a desirable feature.

It's missing 2 key features that will prevent me from using it and
recommending it to everyone I know:

1) No volume control. You could argue this is more a failure of my browser,
but it's easier if you just add a volume control. Bonus points if up/down
arrows controls work to control it. Really, all the youtube keyboard controls
would be helpful here.

2) YouTube sometimes detects my bitrate incorrectly and I need to manually set
it to highest. I don't know why this happens, but it does. Let me change that
somehow on your site. Even if I have to opt-in to seeing a full youtube player
to set it, that's ok.

I would also like a convenient way to get this on my TV. I wonder which
android TV devices can install PWAs now.

~~~
glalonde
have to appreciate the irony in worrying about the bitrate of simulated lo-fi
crackling

~~~
samoa42
same same

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jmiskovic
This is awesome! Looks very slick.

I'd have this open constantly if it had a pause button. Bonus points if
there's a easy keyboard shortcut.

This kind of music increases my productivity enormously. Part of it is there's
no lyrics and rhythm is interesting but steady. The other part is my brain
associates this music with productive coding so it's easier to get into the
zone.

~~~
nagarjun
+1 for pause button

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chii
the app needs a volume control. It's playing at the same loudness as the
system's volume, which is not right for a background music app. It prevents
you from listening to it while also listen to someone on a video call!

~~~
ChuckNorris89
I'm also starting to really hate this direction in software design where all
buttons are either flat with the UI or hidden through some cryptic menu or
swipe gesture or even worse, they're unavailable to the user, all for the sake
of _simplicity_.

If you were to teleport 2003 me into the present, I would have no idea how to
use most front ends of today's websites or smartphones.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
This is not a UI direction, its just a missing feature. Most websites with
audio have a volume slider.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
I wasn't referring to this website specifically but to an industry trend in
general of removing basic controls for the sake of simplicity and clean GUIs.

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TekMol
Is it in line with YouTube's TOS to embed them like this? Without displaying
the video gui? It also seems to somehow supress the ads?

~~~
ralphstodomingo
Asking the same questions, and some more:

I like the idea, and the app looks cool. I just wish there was a way to just
get the audio streams from these channels and have the video constantly
looping be embedded into the app or something.

The reason why I don't stay tuned to the YT channels is exactly because of
ads, and I don't like my bandwidth being consumed by video when I'm not
watching anything.

~~~
yellowapple
> The reason why I don't stay tuned to the YT channels is exactly because of
> ads

This is why God gave us ad blockers :)

~~~
FractalParadigm
I'm curious - are there good adblockers today that can block YouTube ads? I
vaguely remember uBlock Origin facing the problem of Google serving ads from
the same domains/addresses as the actual video, making adblocking on YouTube
virtually impossible.

~~~
yellowapple
I use uBlock Origin on Firefox and it seems to work fine for blocking YouTube
ads (to the point where I frequently forget YouTube _has_ ads until I make the
mistake of trying to access it on a browser lacking an ad-blocker, lol).

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captn3m0
Great work. Suggestions from a small device user (iPhone SE):

\- A reminder to open in Safari and how to add to home screen. I opened in
Firefox and the music pauses as soon as I switch tabs.

\- Test the design on a small device please. The shuffle button gets on top of
the other buttons.

\- No obvious way of getting out from the hamburger menu. Figured out I can
click on the title, but it wasn’t obvious.

------
MuffinFlavored
What does it mean that members of society have evolved to constantly need
audible stimulation? I feel like there has to be some sort of mental effect
from listening to music constantly.

~~~
bonchicbongenre
I don't have an answer for you, just wanted to pile on with my own experience
and questions in the same vein.

I find that a background noise app really helps me stay calm/lowers stress and
anxiety, and I get a huge productivity boost out of it. Something about being
at peace hearing natural sounds really does feel like it's deeply engrained in
me, and I assume other people also. I wonder: (1) if there's a difference
between the effects people generally get from various noise types (lofi,
natural sounds, white noise etc), (2) whether something relevant about the
individual correlates with preference among these, and (3) what is universal
among these that makes background noise so commonly helpful.

(I use Noice for free nature/background sounds, off f-droid. I highly
recommend it)

~~~
scns
Tried noice, uninstalled since it would stay open in the background, even
though i closed it. Display used 36%, Noice used 11% of power! Was open for 36
minutes, ran 1:3X:XX.

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Maxence
Pause button, volume slider... lets code it :) thanks for the feedback!

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toyg
They have the radios on Spotify, your smart tv probably has an app for that.

If you mean the video part, wouldn’t it be a bit distracting? Still, I think
webos-based TVs (LG) have a webkit browser that might be able to handle it.
Edit: nope, they are not. Sadface.jpg

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MasterOfCone
You need a pause button, I can't use this without it.

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jermeh
This is so close to being a tab I'll constantly have open for coding. Simple
volume and pause controls make this a 10/10 site. Awesome job!!

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eyyeyeyeyeyeye
The tiny drop shadow on the text looks really good.

I enjoy a most of the music in this genre. But a lot of the tracks use effects
that makes me nauseous, heavy stereo panning and some sort of woomwoom feeling
sound (is this "ducking"?). Makes it impossible for me to listen with
headphones. Bearable on low volume on laptop speakers.

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dharma1
would be nice to see what each track playing is and who made it, rather than
have it reduced to anonymous muzak

~~~
wazoox
Some playlists have the info, some others don't.

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quantumwoke
I don't know if it's just my Chrome browser but this website doesn't load at
all for me and just hangs on a black screen. The only relevant extension I
have is uBlock and uMatrix.

~~~
vaccinator
uMatrix breaks many websites if you don't mess with it constantly.

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monkeycantype
I'm looking for almost this, except I don't want music, I would like the white
noise of people in a public space where don't speak english. Any
recommendations?

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nowledge
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qA0nelfNc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qA0nelfNc)

doesn't get any better than that for me.

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konart
I need some sort of extension that would "cut" out the beats from all those
lofi music so I can actually concentrate.

~~~
soylentcola
Just the kick/low-end drum beats, or all of the rhythm (only leaving the
melody)? Just curious. Sometimes I listen to relaxing music or videos on
headphones when I can't sleep and I use the EQ on my phone to cut low
frequencies. If it's all of the drum/rhythm that distracts you I don't know of
a good solution other than finding music that's all melody and no rhythm.

~~~
konart
Just the most distinct ones. I'm not agains drums or anything like that (hell,
I usually code with heave metal in my headphones), but it's one thing when
it's part of the picture and a whole different thing when the music goes like
this:

____..__._A_.___.___

Where A is the beat.

I'll try to do something using EQ (never though about this option for some
reason)

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terrycody
I love this soooo much!

