
Ask HN: Please Review My New Social Music Website - leftnode
http://leftnode.com/review-my-new-website-httptuneto-us/
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statenjason
Clicking the "Browse" link takes me to "Browse Random Files". First, I don't
believe that the uploaded songs should be thought of as "files." People want
music, tunes, and tracks. "Files" almost makes me weary of having to download
something. Second, there needs to be some structure to browsing - by artist,
genre, year, popularity, etc. Presenting a person with a few random tracks
when your database has 1000s of them makes it difficult for users to find
anything specific.

On profiles, the url pattern needs some work. You mention in your blog that
you would like bands to say "check us out on Tune To Us." However, if they're
uploading their songs and want people to hit their profile they'd have to say,
"Check us out at Tune To Us slash profile slash view slash 2934." Perhaps
adjusting to something shorter with more significance. A band/user should be
more than just a number.

I believe your site's has potential, but it also needs some work to make it
useful to the masses. Good luck with it. I'll keep an eye on where it goes.

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unignorant
Your idea seems solid, and the site looks fairly good, considering only 5 days
of work.

That said, I found the UI to be a bit cluttered. In particular, the landing
page seems a bit unordered, with variable spacing between the various textual
lines, and really, just too much there.

If I were you, I'd go a bit more minimalist on the front page. Just my 2¢.
Good luck!

~~~
leftnode
Thanks! I'm by no means a designer, and purchased the theme on ThemeForest.net
so I could have _something_ and just customized it from there.

Hopefully I can afford to hire a designer in the future.

I appreciate your feedback.

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mtalantikite
You need some sort of search function right on the front page.

I agree using YouTube for sharing music is a bit overkill, but it's nice to be
able to just get to YouTube, search for some obscure band, and find random
tracks immediately.

By not focusing around search you're forcing your users towards functionality
in which they personally upload tracks to send to their friends. I find myself
less wanting to upload tracks to share, but rather wanting to share links of
stuff that already exists in the system with my friends.

Make that piece of functionality prominent and you're letting visitors easily
leverage the work of the people that actually want to be a part of the system,
as most users probably just want to be casual users.

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JangoSteve
I like the idea and it looks really clean and professional. But if your
purpose is to allow people to simply listen to things that are otherwise
uploaded to YouTube, why not just create an application where you can type in
the URL/GUID of a YouTube video (except on your site) and it plays back the
audio from that YouTube video, rather than making people upload things to both
YouTube _and_ your site.

(Keep in mind I'm not familiar at all with YouTube's API, so I'm not sure if
this is either possible or in compliance with their TOS, so if it's not
possible, then I say great job, looks good!)

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obsaysditto
Like what others have said, improve the UI... even with so few songs it was
hard to navigate and see the artist/song title...

Also, the ability to que songs

~~~
leftnode
Thanks for the review.

Great idea, something like queuing songs shouldn't be too difficult.

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dirtbox
Perhaps you could add a radio stream like Pandora where you can select your
preferred genres and have it randomly pick tracks. Once the library grows it
would be good way to keep older uploads from being buried.

You're going to get a LOT of copyright infringing uploads, so be sure to cover
your ass and put a few safeguards in place.

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jrdcarter
I like the idea, getting the audio only off videos could be really useful.

However, I agree with unignorant, the UI needs work. When you get more tracks
it could become hard to browse.

Plus, have fun when you start getting hit by DMCA notices every day!!

~~~
leftnode
Cool, I'll see if I can work with a designer friend to get some tips.

Yeah, I'm hoping if I can orient this towards people uploading their lectures,
or something where bands can have a place to upload their music (I know,
places like that exist), then I won't have to worry about DMCA stuff as much.

Thanks for the review.

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chitchcock
It looks like you require a user to create a login that is specific to
tuneto.us in order to use it. If the goal is to share music via social
networks, why not provide a way to use Twitter or Facebook to authenticate?

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Flankk
Youtube costs two million dollars a day to run. If you are planning on hosting
music, better sites like www.grooveshark.com already exist. Furthermore,
everyone is fine with uploading their audio files to Youtube. All the lectures
I listen to are through iTunes U along with all other audio files. Indie bands
can distribute their music through iTunes using sites like www.cdbaby.com.

The url is horrible.

You want to be Youtube for lectures and music and have a social media aspect
and be last.fm with a radio functionality and twitter integration. Your idea
is too broad.

Apologies for being overtly negative. You seem to have your idea thought out
so I thought I'd give you some perspective.

