

Feast Your Ears On Fresh Jams From Musicians You Love At Hipset (YC S12) - schlichtm
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/hipset/

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guynamedloren
I have huge amounts of respect for the Mazy + the Tracks.by team and believe
they can do big things, but...

This is disappointing. I would normally not have signed up for this service
given that it requires facebook login, but I was just about to pop open
pandora and figured I could use some new music. So I gave Hipset a shot. A few
seconds later I see this:

<http://imgur.com/UvB9s>

Music discovery? What? They just pulled in a bunch of status updates (ie
noise) from musicians/bands I already follow on facebook and laid them out
pinterest style. Really? This is music _discovery_? Well, it turns out their
site doesn't even mention music discovery... Techcrunch added that bit of
editorial magic.

Hmmm... so no discovery... but at least music.. right? Nope. There's no music
on that screen. There are some tabs, though: recent posts, photos, videos,
statuses. Nothing mentioning music. I don't really care about any of that. I
came for music. And I'm gone as quickly as I came.

~~~
schlichtm
This is just the beginning and it will get better. There is SO much still to
do.

For now, to discover new music you can go to a couple sections of Hipset:

1) New Videos from artists all around the world
<http://hipset.com/all/videos/>

2) New Videos from artists you follow <http://hipset.com/following/videos/>

3) New Videos from artists in different genres Hip Hop:
<http://hipset.com/genre:hiphop/videos/> Rock:
<http://hipset.com/genre:rock/videos/> Indie:
<http://hipset.com/genre:indie/videos/> Electronic:
<http://hipset.com/genre:electronic/videos/> Country:
<http://hipset.com/genre:country/videos/> Pop:
<http://hipset.com/genre:pop/videos/>

~~~
guynamedloren
Cool, thanks for pointing this out. Wish it was more obvious :)

Keep up the hustle.

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dylanz
I know this has been discussed a million times here, but: "Connect with
Facebook". No thanks, tab closed. Sorry!

~~~
AznHisoka
Agreed. I got rid of my FB account years ago.. and can't use it. What a
shame.. least they can do is add a link below to sign up the regular way.
Don't give me "we don't got time" excuse.. this isn't like building an iPhone
app but not an Android version

~~~
brackin
No offense but the crowd they're targeting is less the HN crowd. Almost all of
the people I know (18 - 25) still spend a lot of time on Facebook and most of
their time on the internet is spent on Facebook. They have all of their likes
on the service so as a launch strategy it makes a lot of sense to target FB
rather than just email so the user doesn't have to input hundreds of likes.

~~~
jarek
If only there was an online service to automatically log music I listen to and
perhaps tracks I particularly love.

~~~
Mazy
Hey Jarek, Using last.fm is a great idea! We'll add that as an option for
users signing up without Facebook and use it to pre-populate the artists you
follow based on your most scrobbled artists on Last.fm.

Other ways to sign up are coming very soon, we just wanted to get this out the
door as soon as it was usable.

------
WiseWeasel
The integral dependency on FaceBook for this service makes me wonder if this
is built with the goal of eventually being acquired by FB.

~~~
Mazy
This is just version 1. We launched with Facebook connect only because that
was the fastest way we could launch it in a usable way. When you connect, we
grab the artists you like on Facebook to generate your personal feed. There
will be other ways to sign up soon!

~~~
WiseWeasel
So if you sign up with another method, then you can manage which bands you
like on the service itself? Will we also manage relationships with other users
on the service? From the way the TechCrunch piece was worded, it almost seemed
like FB integration was central to the value offered to users and artists.

~~~
Mazy
Yes you'll be able to manage it yourself. We are working on a tool to let you
search for artists to follow and to suggest you similar artists to follow.

~~~
WiseWeasel
OK, that changes my impression of the service quite a bit. Do you guys have a
blog? You might want to make more such information available there and put a
link to your blog or about page on the landing page. Relying on third parties
like TechCrunch for communication might be problematic. Rock on!

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sciurus
Do you have any plans to integrate with services that track a users's music
listening history, such as last.fm?

I used to list a set of my favorite artists on Facebook, but I stopped doing
this after facebook made a number of changes around pages and activity. I can
see value in a service that gives me a dedicated place to view aggregated and
deduplicated social media updates from artists I like.

~~~
Mazy
Using last.fm is a great idea! We'll add that as an option for users signing
up without Facebook and use it to pre-populate the artists you follow based on
your most scrobbled artists on Last.fm.

------
schlichtm
Link to Hipset: <http://hipset.com>

------
schlichtm
BTW: For those wondering, we have not yet turned on the Facebook Open Graph
Actions. It will not auto share with your friends when you look at content
right now (and when we do turn that on you will have the ability to easily
turn it off).

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ramanujam
"Uncaught The Javascript Facebook SDK must be loaded before calling init.". I
have Facebook Disconnect installed and all i see is a big blank page.
<http://i.imgur.com/KlK8n.png>

~~~
mark_h
It is shocking how many pages break because of this (usually, you check the
console and it has thrown an exception because FB is not defined)

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chrischen
Looks very slick guys! How do I specify the artists I want to follow? As great
as it is pulling the data from Facebook it's outdated and I'd like to add
more.

~~~
Mazy
Hey Chris,

We're working on a page that suggests people to follow based on your
interests, and a way to search for specific artists.

For now, you can follow artists from the all page - <http://hipset.com/all/>
and any of the genre pages under Popular.

You can also go to a specific's artist page and follow them there, like
<http://hipset.com/lilwayne>

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jansen
I love the idea, congrats to Mazy and team!

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brackin
Only complaint is that it looks blurry on the Retina MBP. All of the text and
images, mostly the posts rather than the menu bar. I like the product but
would love more discovery features as other users have said.

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SeoxyS
What is it with every startup these days being named /Hip[a-z]+/?

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chrisdroukas
I'd love to check it out, but it's crashing the page in both Chrome
22.0.1229.6 dev and Safari 6 on Mountain Lion.

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bitsweet
The execution here is excellent, well done Tracks.by

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gitarr
I use a chrome extension called disconnect, that blocks tracking from
facebook, google, twitter, etc.

When I open hipset it looks like this: <http://imgur.com/9hEX5>

Nada, nothing.

When I allow facebook I can see the site.

This and the facebook only login, made me instantly close the site and forget
it. Btw, I work two jobs: Programmer and musician. And that site was just
disappointing on all fronts.

