
Ask HN: Is there a HN for music? - Wesmax27
I have been thinking about this recently and thought I would throw it out to the group.  Is there a destination online that has meaningful discourse around music?<p>Hype Machine is the first thing that comes to mind, but I'd love to hear more thoughts about any HN or Friendfeed type conversations that are going on out there.  Perhaps even suggestions of Twitter or Friendfeed people to follow to get a better idea of what's going on in the music world.
======
theoneill
<http://thesixtyone.com> may be what you're looking for.

~~~
stern
it seems like a lot of that music is pirated.

~~~
PStamatiou
as a long-time 61 user - no. a _ton_ of it is indie music. it just happens
that the few pirated songs on there get popular very fast and flood the
homepages.

------
edb
I did a radio show for two years, and all the recommendations on this page are
a great way of finding music, but by no means are they better than just
reading interviews and articles on your favourite artists, find out what makes
them tick. Heck, go to a concert at your local (smaller) venue and chat with
the band if you liked what they did.

That was always the best way I found music, lots and lots and lots of research
and discussion with like minded people, mostly at shows.

... at least until www.last.fm came about. :) This, in my opinion, is the best
way to find music that's in line with what you listen to. It takes what you
listen to and finds people who listen to the same thing. It then finds out
what they're listening to that you're not. Yes, you have to feed it your
listening record, but once you've done that, your life won't be the same. I
don't know why it's so neglected.

In fact, I always thought this would be the best way to run HN. Take all the
articles I've upvoted, find people who've upvoted the same articles, look at
what they've upvoted that I haven't and show me THAT on the main page.

The main problem with a HN for music is that music is too subjective and
immeasurable. In hacking, you can argue stats, performance, visitors, etc.
Music is different. More people listen to Brittany Spears than North of
America, she also made more money, but there's no fully logical way to argue
why she sucks. It's all a matter of perception and emotions. You can't wrap a
webapp around that, nor can you get a group of people to agree on what's good
and what's not because tastes vary so greatly.

~~~
Wesmax27
Thanks for the insightful post. One question though: don't you think your
highlight about last.fm and approach to HN is a little too homogenous?

While I can appreciate music suggestions that are in line with my taste, that
is easy enough to find on my own (through the methods you suggested). What
isn't easy to find are bands that sound nothing like what I've heard, but
could be just as brilliant as the bands I know and love. This is where I think
the suggestions in this thread are most useful.

And I would go even further to argue that because music is subjective and
immeasurable it would make an even more interesting discussion.

Thanks too for North of America - I haven't heard them but will definitely
check them out.

~~~
edb
It may be a little shortsighted, but it's hard to sum up all my thoughts in
one textarea.

The long story short of it is that in my experiences, a real life discussion
about music among 5 knowledgeable people always turns into a festival of egos.
I think if you put it on the internet, it's going to magnify that worse than
what you could see in the hacker community because everybody who loves music
thinks they like the music they do because their perception is unique and more
insightful than yours (I'm guilty of this too). We could talk music for hours
but as soon as you namedrop that band that I think is trash, I no longer
believe your opinion counts.

If you can solve that problem, then by all means, I'll be a believer. I think
that's why last.fm is so good. Yes, there's alot of echo, put in a band like
Mono into the 'radio station' feed without logging in and you'll see there's
not a whole lot of variety. However where it excels is if you listen, for
example, to a lot of classical music, when you put in a post-rock band, it
will find the post-rock music that appeals to you as a classical music fan and
will inspire you to dig deeper into the genre.

This is what I think news sites need. The problem with them is that as more
people sign up, you see the lowest common denominator trickle to the front
page. What would be better is if, for example, I'm a big rails fan and I upmod
an article that shouts the greatness of PHP, I'd like to then start seeing
more php related articles on MY (not THE) front page. Initially they would
start off being very rails influenced, but as I upmod more php articles, the
system would wean me away from the ror crowd and more towards the php crowd,
unless I'm the type who only upmods articles titled "php is great when it's
like ruby", in which case I don't really care for other opinions anyways, so
who's losing?

... in a nutshell

~~~
Wesmax27
I guess it's all in what you want.

An analogy: when I want to meet new people I usually go to parties that my
friends are having because I figure that if my friends like the guests then
chances are I will too. However, every now and then I go to completely random
bars and gatherings because I want to be exposed to a completely new circle of
people who have no common relationships with me or my friends.

Similarly in music, there are times when I want to discover things that are
similar to what I have liked in the past, but also times when I want to
discover things that are completely random and unrelated to anything I have
ever heard or liked.

~~~
edb
Good point. In the case of both last.fm and HN, maybe they would benefit from
a "Lemming" feature that could be turned on and off. :)

------
moxy
While I'm pretty sure this doesn't offer the intellectual discourse you're
looking for, <http://cherrypeel.com> utilizes a very reddit-style voting
system to promote underground, independent music. I've discovered some
fantastic new artists from this site.

~~~
wastedbrains
right after I posted I saw that I had missed you already recommending this
site. Yeah not the disourse, but a well done and interesting way to find good
new music.

------
kf
The forums at www.waffles.fm -- I have never seen a place better to make a
post "I like such and such obscure bands/types of music; please give me
recommendations." I've also discovered a great amount of new music by watching
the internal top10 lists.

Email me, I have some invites...

~~~
moxy
Any private music tracker forum will do. I have invitations as well, if anyone
is interested.

~~~
rms
Yes, what.cd is equal to waffles, are there other ones?

~~~
moxy
Yes, to say the least. But they are far more specialized, and more difficult
to invite people to. And, you probably wouldn't be interested anyway.

However, What and Waffles are the largest and most content-oriented.

~~~
rms
Any that might have reasonable amounts of non-Western classical music? Email
me, please...

------
zacharye
Music is such a polarizing topic, if there is a place that has managed to put
together a community of reasonable people and consistently interesting/civil
discussion I will be surprised and impressed.

~~~
staunch
If we can deal with programming languages, text editors, and operating systems
here then music people should be just fine.

~~~
jamesbritt
"If we can deal with programming languages, text editors, and operating
systems here then music people should be just fine."

I certainly hope you posted that from a Ruby script written in vi on Ubuntu.

------
ionrock
There is also <http://pandora.com/>

It doesn't have voting, but for finding music it can be alright.

------
delackner
I would think part of the spirit of HN would manifest in a music site as a
focus on music that in some way feels like it brings something new to the art.
Almost all the music that becomes popular today, even within specific genres,
is not that inventive.

Yet there are some artists that, at specific times, try something that really
feels new. In the dance music space for instance, about 2001(+- 2 years)
artists discovered they could for instance loop over a segment of their song,
then shorten the loop until it became a stuttered noisy instant, then continue
with the rest of the song. This sounded amazing at first, then everyone copied
it, now people are used to it and a song has to use it creatively to make
people smile.

------
inimino
<http://rateyourmusic.com/> has a nice rating and recommendation system and is
a good way to find new music (and procrastinate).

They also have discussion forums, which I haven't tried.

------
Wesmax27
If anyone is interested in chiming in further while we are here, I'd be really
curious to know the top ways people are discovering new music right now.

For me it is: Sirius XM U (formerly Left of Center); Hype Machine; Pitchfork;
Songkick (for finding shows in my area); URB Magazine; Fader Magazine; OHHLA
Top 25

~~~
nicefishfilms
I'm enjoying- <http://noisetrade.com> <http://grooveshark.com>

~~~
Wesmax27
Thanks. Noisetrade is pretty awesome.

------
hhm
I like <http://thefeelgood.com/>

------
espadagroup
<http://mog.com> is a great music site that is more centered around the
community writing about music as well as sharing it.

------
tricky
Not much discourse, but the guy at <http://www.audioindie.com> is really up on
the indie music scene.

------
brightscreamer
You're looking for I Love Music. Seriously. www.ilxor.com

------
wastedbrains
voting and such just like reddit, HN, or DIGG but with embeddable songs to
listen to...

<http://cherrypeel.com/>

------
yan
I came here to suggest hypem.com, but you just mentioned it. Maybe follow some
blog posts listed there?

------
dmix
<http://contrastream.com>, my previous startup.

~~~
stern
I checked that out about a year ago. How come you moved on?

~~~
dmix
I wrote up a blog post with the story, it was on HN earlier this year
[http://dmix.ca/2008/06/7-reasons-why-my-social-music-site-
ne...](http://dmix.ca/2008/06/7-reasons-why-my-social-music-site-never-took-
off/)

------
jaytee_clone
Start one.

~~~
Wesmax27
Thinking about it. But I can't code. :(

~~~
alex_c
That's no excuse :p You can use something like <http://slinkset.com/>

~~~
Wesmax27
And that is why I love this community. Thanks for that suggestion.

------
unalone
"HN for music?" What does that mean?

Hacker News is a place for people who are passionate about a subject to talk.
The equivalent would most likely be a forum discussing classical music, or a
form of music that requires similar dedication.

