

4 weeks in the zone = my latest app (just for fun).  - agentbleu

I just finished working on a 4 week project that seems to have turned out pretty OK.<p>http://www.myplaylist.biz/lyrics/<p>Do let me know what you think...
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jobeirne
Thanks, I've been holding out for a lyrics site that doesn't make me feel like
my computer just contracted the clap.

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agentbleu
yes spam sites seem to dominate this space. Thought it could do with some
respectability. hehe

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forsaken
Yea, I've written some similar code to this for fetching the lyrics based on
arbitrary parts of the song. It's a fun challenge, and getting the correct
lyrics is also hard. Well done on that account.

I see that you are using a flash player to display Flickr photos, presumably
appropriated tagged, while playing an mp3 of the song?

I like the site though, well done!

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agentbleu
The flash player is custom built, I built it using the bones of the first app
which is on myplaylist.biz (main).

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timcederman
Some great data sourcing, which really makes it compelling. Do you mind if I
asked where you got the db from? (just out of curiosity)

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agentbleu
erm. Being a hacker... have a guess. (i.e would like not to say). Hope this
does not sound rude.

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pistoriusp
<http://www.myplaylist.biz/Coldplay/Lost/269837>

this was displayed on the page above:

array(1) { [0]=> array(2) { [0]=> string(8) "coldplay" [1]=> int(0) } } here1
coldplayhere2 coldplay

And if I take the lyrics from this page, "Just because I'm loosing" or Just
because I'm loosing, it doesn't find Coldplay. Am I incorrect in assuming it
should find this?

I think it's pretty cool, but I would give the user the option of "playing"
the song rather than doing it automatically. In my experience most people are
already listening to the songs which they are trying to find the lyrics for.

This page also produces an error, I don't think Sting did a Wu tan song, but I
could be wrong on that as well:

[http://www.myplaylist.biz/Sting/Wu-Tang-Cream-Team-Line-
Up/1...](http://www.myplaylist.biz/Sting/Wu-Tang-Cream-Team-Line-Up/165567)

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agentbleu
u just caught me checking something hence the array. looking into the search
problem now. thanks

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agentbleu
Turns out in FullText search In boolean mode, there are many stop words,
"it's" "I'M" are just 2 of them. Seems I have hit a limitation there on the
tech. It will have to be as good as it gets I'm afraid. Short of putting in a
custom search engine, that's as fas as the tech allows for them moment, unless
I build in a workaround to change all single quotes something else then change
back. I will sleep on that...

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shawndrost
Cool stuff! A few bugs: under the "recently viewed" header, the same song
appears twice in a row. You're getting text encoding funkiness --
[http://www.myplaylist.biz/Coldplay/Cemeteries-Of-
London/2698...](http://www.myplaylist.biz/Coldplay/Cemeteries-Of-
London/269836)

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agentbleu
'You're getting text encoding funkiness --??' please explain what you see, all
looks good here?

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ra
Same here - characters in the lyrics aren't displaying correctly - like the
character encoding is incorrect. (Firefox on Windoze xp)

You need to sanitize the text you are storing to unicode. Here's a cut and
paste:

Singing la lalalalala la lÃ©â€¦ And the night over London layâ€¦

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agentbleu
hmm thanks looks like a db rash. I will have a look at that. cheers

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nir
This is very cool :)

By default, if the search string consists of more than 1 word do you do an OR
or AND search? It seems OR from the results I'm getting, but most people now
are conditioned by Google to expect an AND search (which really makes more
sense..)

Great work, either way.

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agentbleu
It is boolean enabled, so you can add in operators such as + = and - = not ""
to get actual etc.

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deathbob
Found all three songs I looked for first try, but site is getting pretty slow.
Might try whittling down the number of results returned. Also saw text
encoding funkiness. Really nice tho, bookmarked. How are you getting the songs
and pictures in the flash on the left?

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agentbleu
hmm, site getting slow. I have to be careful about robots, they can kill it,
as its all generated dynamically thus memory is an issue and I just downgraded
memory as I like to run a tight ship.

The flash widget I built, its all custom, Images from Flickr and MP3s sourced
through Seeqpod, both have shit hot APIs.

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deathbob
Well the flash thing is really cool, it's awesome to have the song to listen
to and because the images are pulled from wherever sometimes they're hilarious
:). Really nice piece of work!

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asnyder
Pretty sweet service. Where did you get a lyrics web service? I was looking
for a lyrics web service some time ago for the following idea: certain times
when listening to a song it would be useful/more entertaining if the lyrics
would follow along with the song similar to karaoke, this could be done by
running the song through some speech recognition software such as nuance to
get the approximate words/time during the song. You would then tie that into
the lyrics through the web service and would be able to display the lyrics
along with the song for almost any song. This would be helpful to me anyway,
and I think add an extra level of connection and understanding to your songs.

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agentbleu
there are some lyrics sources about, one i found after was:
<http://lyricwiki.org/Main_Page>

But mine come from other resources :)

Nice idea, yours, but too complicated me thinks for my style, I prefer
elegance, as in not trying to do too much but do what you dodo well.

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mannylee1
Awesome. A barebones site that does what it is supposed to do. Great job.

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dc2k08
yeah i liked this. searched for hooker in minneapolis, and not only did i get
the correct lyrics but i also got sweet version by neko case to hear. i have
been looking for it for ages..whata bonus. nice one. just to nit pick. i would
out-source your logo. try 99designs for $150-$200.

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agentbleu
Sorry m8, I know the logo might be a bit cheap (30 mins work) as I am, but I
really could care less about the logo, I'm more fanatical about making it
actually work well.

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dc2k08
you have the ring tone but you could always link the sheet music for another
source of revenue

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agentbleu
yes good idea. many thanks

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dime
I would highly suggest you get a license to feature the lyrics on your site if
you intend on going mainstream. Aside from legal troubles you could face, I
think intellectual property should be respected. Using someone's copyrighted
material without their consent is never ok.

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anewaccountname
>Using someone's copyrighted material without their consent is never ok.

Sometimes it is fine.

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rms
It is almost definitely fine if you live outside of the USA.

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tstegart
Are we supposed to comment on the coding or the business model? Not bad for
four weeks coding. Might have a little trouble making money with the copyright
issues involved.

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agentbleu
feel free to give your thoughts regardless

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tstegart
The work is good. The interface isn't very polished, but it sounds like you
haven't really worked on it yet, so I assume you'll polish it up later.

On the copyright side, there have been issues in the past
([http://news.cnet.com/Lyrics-site-negotiates-copyright-
issues...](http://news.cnet.com/Lyrics-site-negotiates-copyright-
issues/2100-1023_3-221354.html)). I'm not sure how they were worked out, or if
a defense of "everyone else is doing it" justifies reliance. You should look
into any updates in the area, and also be aware that one day someone might
disagree with you on if its ok (and by disagree I mean sue).

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agentbleu
yes that was like 10 years ago Published: February 8, 1999 11:25 AM PST

I think things have gotten out of hand since then.

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kleevr
Nice.

I vaguely remembered a song by Cake, knew it contained the phrase "prize
fighter". Found the song "Shadow Stabbing" almost instantly.

Nifty.

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bharris
Also interested in where you got the database, it seems to be missing a lot of
my favorite artists. Bon Iver for example.

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agentbleu
I have about 300K currently, I will add in more soon.

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glhoffman
Pretty cool. Thanks, just bookmarked it.

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Raphael
I'd like the volume control bigger.

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agentbleu
in full screen mode controls are more visible, its really best in that mode.
So I encourage that rather than bigger more invasive controls

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auston
Really Great!

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paulsb
Very nice.

