
Ask HN: check out my new web app lystener.com - kilian
http://lystener.com
======
jrnkntl
I like the idea! Couple of things:

* Supply the user with an URL that he/she can use like lystener.com/user/username so it can be a bookmark

* Poll the user feed so it updates the lyrics when you start listening to another song

[edit] o, actually it does this, but it didn't work at first.

* Find an API that supplies more results because:
    
    
      Now playing: Paparazzi by   Lady Gaga
      We don't have lyrics for this song :(
    

Seriously? :)

Good luck!

~~~
kilian
1\. <http://lystener.com/?username=yourname> :) but I'm implementing a
<http://lystener.com/#!username> soon that will get set by the form.

2\. it does that, but every 10 seconds as to not completely destroy everyone's
api's :)

3\. Ouch. Working on it. The API seems overloaded.

------
kilian
Lystener.com takes your last.fm username and display the lyrics for the song
you're currently listening to. By simply selecting the lyrics you like you can
post them to Twitter or Facebook. Clean interface, easy to use website.

In the future I want to expand it to saving your favorite quotes, making top
ten lists of songs and artists, but for now, this is an app I made in about a
weekend (with a week of tweaking) and I'm pretty happy with it :) I wrote a
blog post with a longer explanation, for those interested:
[http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/web/a-web-app-in-a-weekend-
lys...](http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/web/a-web-app-in-a-weekend-lystener-
com/)

Let me know what you think!

~~~
lotharbot
I should be able to tell, just from going to lystener.com, that it will
automatically grab lyrics for whatever I'm listening to on last.fm and let me
share them. The site doesn't communicate that very clearly; I had to read your
post here to figure out exactly what the site did.

~~~
kilian
Good point. I displayed the information after the first lyrics are found,
because it becomes useful then, but I've made it immediatelly visible now.

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tom_ilsinszki
I love rap music, and have been looking for meaningful and deep rap lyrics on
the web more than once in the last couple of years (haven't found a webapp for
that yet). I'd love to have a place on the web, where others (or your webapp)
could recommend such rap lyrics to me as a user, based on my listening history
for example. Also, you could also let people discuss lyrics.

I might be biased, because I'm a rap listener myself, but you could add any
other genre to your repertoire, that has a lyrics-aware fan base.

~~~
joeyo
If you haven't found it already, check out the online hip-hop lyrics archive
(<http://ohhla.com>) for your hip-hop lyrics needs. I've been going there for
lyrics for as long as I can remember and never quite understood why it doesn't
rank higher in google searches for lyrics.

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Bootvis
I think this app has potential, but:

Your lyrics database is too small or I am unlucky, I just listened to Muse,
The Smiths, Jacques Brel and Muse again and it didn't find any lyrics. (For
some reason it seemed to miss the Brel song entirely).

Furthermore Amarok does not update last.fm quickly but this should be an easy
fix.

~~~
kilian
It's the api that's the bottleneck here. Implementing caching and queueing now
to see if that helps some :)

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ddrager
As the others have noted, no lyrics have been coming up for me.

But on the flip side, it does pick up my 'currently listening' song from
last.fm very fast. I use Spotify, it must publish currently listening pretty
quickly. I think its only about 10-15 seconds.

Just a couple of 'ideas':

\- Fix the lyrics api issue

\- Show the last X songs played so you can go back and search the lyrics for
them.

\- Enunciate what the site does better than the text box on the side. From the
text on the site it looks like it is just a lyrics search engine... display
what sets you apart.

Great idea!

~~~
kilian
I thought the description in the text box on the side was okay. What would you
say sets lystener apart?

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dionidium
You'd be my hero if you included tabs/chords. Your interface would be a great
addition to what's otherwise a cesspool.

~~~
kilian
That's actually a great idea! Now to find a tabs API (or build it into the
site myself)

By the way, I find Ultimate-guitar.com to be pretty good most of the time.

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lebinh
I created a similar app a couple of months ago :D
<http://nowlyrics.appspot.com> It was also featured on last.fm,
<http://build.last.fm/item/481>

~~~
kilian
If I may ask, how do you get full lyrics out of lyricswiki?

~~~
lebinh
I used lyricswiki's api to get the url for the lyric's page, then parse it's
html to get the lyrics. hope that helps ;)

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studioprisoner
Looks great, and can see it being used. Just tried it. Love Last.Fm, glad it
has that integration. but it couldn't find the lyrics for last song i listened
to: Rhinoceros by The Smashing Pumpkins

Good luck! Bookmarked!

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earnubs
I think you need to relax the timing of the event listener action on the input
box a bit, wait for me to at least finish what I'm typing. (Unless the disco
light effect is intentional.)

~~~
kilian
I hadn't made the timing of the event listener pretty yet, it just checks
after every keypress now. Will change!

Edit: fixed :)

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d0m
With chrome, it doesn't seem to work for me. Whatever I enter in the box,
sometime it goes green/red, but nothing more.. no about button, no "What is
lystener"..

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kilian
So, I think you all are bringing the lyrics API on it's knees :( I just
implemented caching that should alleviate it some, and next up is a queueing
system.

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daleharvey
this was fun, I couldnt think it would be something I use but it was fun to
sit and watch what I was playing come up (or in most cases not found)

finding lyrics isnt something I particularly need a lot, but the
interapplication communication was very smooth, I have spotify scrobling to
last.fm to update your web app which is pretty impressive, seems like you
could make a pretty good karaoke app out of this.

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rogeriopvl
Got the "We don't have lyrics for this song :(" message in every track I
listened...

The idea is very interesting, but you need a better lyrics database.

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nkohari
I love the idea, but you should look into the legal implications. Copyright of
lyrics can be a little touchy.

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paulnelligan
nice app, what's the revenue model?, or is it a 'just for fun' app? ..
unfortunate that it doesn't have more lyrics, but it's in beta and rome wasn't
built in a day ... best of luck with it!

~~~
kilian
Just for fun for now, but the obvious revenue model would be buying songs or
cd's. I want to expand it, first :)

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wa0
three letter nicks doesn't work :|

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TheSOB88
Sorry, but this seems incredibly useless to me. It's dependent on two other
services (Last.fm and Twitter), and it provides no value other than the ego-
boost that comes from posting to Twitter. Additionally, the problem it solves
is not really a problem; if you're on Last.fm I assume you can type in the
title and artist on Google and get the lyrics that way. You have to deliver
value to your users, and I'm just not seeing how this would accomplish that.

Perhaps there's something I'm missing here, though, because everyone else
seems to love it.

~~~
kilian
Here my take on it, from the blogpost I wrote about it:

 _Finding lyrics has been a longstanding pet-peeve of mine. A lot of music
players don’t allow to you easily copy the title and artist so you have to
manually type them into Google. Once you’re there, most sites are cluttered
and spammy. Way too annoying._

As for posting lyrics To facebook or Twitter: This is something a lot of
people (mostly teens) do. Having to do the above, copy and paste it (if the
website doesn't use some stupid iframe-trick!), formatting it and then going
to facebook or twitter to post is annoying, Lystener is a nice shortcut. :)

