

Show HN: We made this 'Pandora for Music Videos', let me know what you think. - iloveyouocean
http://viddyjam.com

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huangm
Looks neat.

Couple suggestions:

1\. Add some suggested artists that let me click and immediately start
watching/listening. You want to demonstrate the value asap, so anything you
can do to reduce thinking will help. I spent awhile thinking, came up with
"Arcade Fire", then found that there were no results. If this wasn't a post on
HN, I would've bounced there.

2\. Keyboard shortcuts. But this is obvious, and I'm sure you'll get around to
it.

3\. The on-hover controls are ok, but there should be some indication that
they exist before I mouse-over. You could also use some basic icons to make
the controls easier to parse (especially arrows for next and prev).

4\. As it stands now, there's no way to surf videos easily. After clicking
"next", I have to move my mouse out of the central area, then move it back
over to click "next" again. The goal of a site like this is to facilitate
brainless and easy surfing, so you should try to reduce as many friction
points as possible.

~~~
32ftpersecond
This.

And the fourth video related to Radiohead was a 2 hour and 24 minute video of
the 4th meeting of the Bipartisan Fiscal Commission in the USA... a la
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSXhjjsRcCQ&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSXhjjsRcCQ&feature=player_embedded)

~~~
jpwagner
the selection algorithm is going to be pretty hard here. i had a different
problem, somehow getting stuck in a loop of two videos, back and forth
forever. new Jam!

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iloveyouocean
So, I moved to the Bay Area a few months ago and have been looking for work.
In my copious free time I worked on this fun little project.

There are such a huge number of great music videos and performances out there
that I was completely unaware of until I started working on ViddyJam. I feel
like I discover something interesting and cool every time I use it.

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cemregr
I liked the idea immediately when I saw the title :)

UI suggestion: Try making the Jam button bigger and slightly more button-ey
(even a 1px drop shadow would help), also maybe add a » too. Would make it
clearer that it's a call to action.

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tim_iles
Like it!

However it didn't find me anything for Weezer, surprised.

When typing, it felt really laggy, lots of JavaScript going on?

When I hit Donate, it opened in the current window, killing my music! Needless
to say I then hit back again to get back to the music, and didn't end up
donating... ;-)

Consider adding Gigs along with Amazon and iTunes? DISCLAIMER: my day job is
with GigJunkie.net, we could link your users to gig tickets and share the
affiliate. If you're interested, send me an email, tim.iles@gigjunkie.net.

Good work, nice project!

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ramidarigaz
The UI is a little finicky. The artist selection when a video is playing tends
to appear and disappear a little too easily.

Otherwise, awesome! I'll actually make use of this!

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kunjaan
It may be too early to complain about the recommendation system, but I think
you should invest some more time on a good one.

~~~
inkaudio
Nope, not too early, but it says they are pulling data from last.fm, Never
used last.fm, but it's seems like their system is not as good as pandora or
jango.com

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notphilatall
Can you sort for music videos as opposed to static images with audio? I
attempted to tackle this problem with youvj.com (a weekend project of mine) a
while ago, filtering for music video, official, etc in the description and
title (as well as popularity and other factors), but never got results I was
truly happy with.

~~~
iloveyouocean
YouVJ looks nice.

There are many songs that do not, and never will, have a 'real' music video.
Even songs that do have official music videos are often not allowed to be
embedded/streamed. [As I'm sure you know.] I chose to offer the largest amount
of music, at the expense of having actual music videos for each song.

Perhaps I could implement some type of pref that could toggle between 'all
music' and 'real music videos'.

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fsiefken
Great idea! I actually found some nice video's I haven't seen in 25 years.and
the recommendations are fantastic! Keyboard shortcuts obviously; arrow keys
and space bar so I can remote control it from a couch, bathtub, shower or
while dancing with a hmd.

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jianshen
Love the "lower the lights" feel when in stream.

I'd like to have a link to the specific channel (possibly the combination of
artist/song?) that i'm currently listening to in the URL so I can send to a
friend.

Great work!

~~~
iloveyouocean
You can use the 'Get Link' button to get a link to the current video, which
will then be used to seed a channel if someone follows it.

Perhaps we can make that clearer.

~~~
jianshen
Excellent! I assumed it linked to the youtube video url.

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Osiris
I noticed that when trying to change the artist name while watching a video
that the UI disappears when the mouse stops moving, so I can't see what I'm
typing in the search box.

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burgerbrain
Didn't totally pick up on my like of the artist"White Town" well.

~~~
iloveyouocean
I'm not sure what you mean. Did you attempt to 'Like' a video on Facebook and
have something go wrong? What happened?

~~~
burgerbrain
I went to the site directly and told it I like artists like White Town.

Does it not do as well with more obscure artists? It seemed to do ok with the
mega-popular stuff I threw at it (metallica, lady gaga, etc), but nothing too
profound.

~~~
iloveyouocean
Ahh, gotcha. Yeah, the more obscure the artist, the harder it is to find
videos for their songs. So if you are looking for something really obscure,
theres a good chance you wont find much.

~~~
inkaudio
The band Tool sounds nothing like Lovemongers, but Lovemongers is what I got
when I typed Tool. could be cool if it worked consistently.

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RyanMcGreal
I just did a search for Nine Inch Nails and got Rickrolled.

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geekfactor
Great idea. Didn't work on iPad.

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jasonwilk
im getting a lot of static cover art : (

Very cool app though

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ryanjmo
Autocomplete!

