

Show HN: Find new music with your friends - snikolic
http://flock.fm

======
estel
Is it really the best idea to auto-play music? It feels like a web design
cardinal sin.

~~~
rmatteson
thanks for the comment -

i'm the ui/ux designer on the project, so if a cardinal sin has been
committed, it's mine to pay for. snikolic makes all the magic happen on the
backend.

normally i would totally agree with you - but the whole point of this site is
to listen to music - and it's been paramount to us throughout the project to
engage our users right off the bat. it's pretty easy to change tracks or stop
playback if you don't like what you're listening to - but part of the fun is
hearing things you may not have before. we haven't received a whole lot of
negative feedback from our current users about this aspect of the design, but
if that starts to change, we're totally open to revising the way things work.

~~~
bonobo
By negative feedback do you mean people emailing you, or any automated metrics
you're using? Are you guys doing some sort of A/B testing on this?

I find it terribly annoying when I open multiple tabs and one of them starts
playing anything and I have to find which one is the culprit. And when this
happens I usually leave the site immediately. IMO it would work better without
the autoplay by default, allowing it to be turned on using a very visible play
button at the right side of the list or something like that.

By the way, nice project, I love the idea. I once used a site called
muxtape[1], and all I hope is that you guys don't have the same fate they had.

[1] <http://muxtape.com/story>

~~~
rmatteson
So far most of our feedback is users emailing us - which has its limitations,
but we've got a pretty active and vocal base right now. I'd love to do A/B
testing in the future, but we're limited by resources right now. It's been
more important to roll out new features than do intense refinement.

I can definitely empathize with the annoyance of having to play musical tabs..
I'm going to be giving this aspect some serious thought in the coming weeks.

Great link to the muxtape story - thank you for that.

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jianshen
I'm confused by where this music is coming from. After digging into the about
page, I finally understood that people are uploading music but it wasn't
readily apparent when I first arrived. For me, music discovery has a lot to do
with discovering where the music comes from.

Great job on the visual design. :)

~~~
rmatteson
thanks! it's come a long way since the first iteration. it's been a real
challenge balancing what's fun and sexy with what's easiest to use..

i'd appreciate any suggestions...

~~~
snikolic
I should add that we're beginning work on a new system for uploading tracks
(or just pasting URLS to audio files or SoundCloud). That should make it much
easier to share, and much more clear where the content comes from. It'll feel
something like Twitter's "What's happening?" or Facebook's "What's on your
mind?" sharing boxes.

We just got anxious to "launch" (if you can call a Show HN post a launch) and
get some feedback before pushing too much further.

~~~
jianshen
A music sharing box sounds great.

Congratulations on launching (even if it's a post to HN).

~~~
snikolic
Thanks! :-)

------
snikolic
Any feedback appreciated! This is definitely a work in progress.

I have a lot of music enthusiasts for friends, and we're constantly
overwhelming each other with word-of-mouth music and band recommendations. I
decided to build something that felt like my Twitter timeline, but for the
music my friends were listening to and recommending to one another.

It's been a private site for close friends, but we recently decided to open it
to the public and submit it to the EchoNest's Social Music Competition
(<http://developer.echonest.com/devcontest/>).

Thanks for checking us out! We're excited to hear what people think. :-)

~~~
sniW
How do "cool points" work? Also, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to
search for specific artists or tracks.

Otherwise, I like the idea and had some fun discovering new artists.

~~~
snikolic
Think of cool points as HN karma. You get points if things are hearted after
you heart them (double if you were the original person to share them).

Search will come soon...that's another beast. :-)

Glad you found some good music! That's what we're aiming for.

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brackin
Aren't <http://Console.fm> doing this with genres and other features? What
does this do that's different? Are the playlists based upon anything?

~~~
snikolic
Think of the playlists as your Twitter timeline or Facebook news stream. They
are chronological lists of what other people are listening to.

If you login and make an account, you can follow other users and find your
friends, and the playlists will be lists of what they're hearting and
listening to.

If you're not logged in, the feeds are just lists of popular music and
activity from all users on the site. Maybe this is confusing/misleading for
new users, and doesn't make it clear that the site is about _your friends'_
activity and music recommendations?

I might be wrong, but my understanding is that console.fm is recommending
music to you (by genre) based on the editor's choices and what the general
public is hearting. We are showing you a chronological list of what your
friends are hearting. We think your friends' tastes and discoveries are way
more interesting than music curated by an anonymous editor, or worse, the
general public.

