

Show HN: Disco Fingers – Easily create funny beats - dagvonkr
http://www.discofingers.com

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baldfat
I run a Technology lab for close to 300 3-5 year olds for Head Start. I also
am the consultant on app purchases for our whole agency of over 1000 students
in over 50 classrooms.

I think you may have made the app I have been searching for. Pre-school
students needs apps that let them create and not just "glorified work sheets"
or some story told to them. I will let you know in the next few weeks how it
works in my classrooms :)

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DanBC
An evidence based blog of useful or not so useful apps would be very
interesting to me.

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baldfat
I think I might actually need to make that. I am starting to think I need to
spread out my consulting to outside sources and there really isn't anything
out there to get REAL numbers and real information on apps for pre-k through
3rd grade.

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ANH
Nice. I'm going to put this in front of our resident toddler tonight.

Bit of feedback:

* I would have been willing to put down a couple of bucks up front just to try it out, even without the extras available in-app.

* How about "toddler resistant" mode that disables the sharing, feedback, social buttons? Kids tend to touch and drag all over the place, often seemingly at random. The less they end up in a strange place and are able to figure out the core interface, the better.

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dagvonkr
Thanks for the feedback! The monetization is hard to solve. Only thing you can
do in the end is to try it out. Thanks for the tip regarding the "toddler
resistant" mode ! We'll consider that for a update.

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kremlin
1up that 'toddler resistant' mode; just got this for my girl's ipad, going to
have lots of fun with it and it will be more fun if the music doesn't stop
every five seconds because she hit the one button she wasn't supposed to hit
again.

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jastanton
Reading their launch diary is very interesting. Most notably they write down
how many downloads, and how much revenue they have had and how much is in
their bank. Having never done a startup by myself before and often wondering
what it's like financially this is a very interesting reading. I will be
checking back a day or two from now (their launch) to see what their numbers
our.

Also fantastic looking app, if I had an iPad I would download it :)

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mrborgen
Thanks! Part of the point with the blog was to show the frustrating situation
of seeing the end of the runway come closer and closer, without knowing if the
product will make enough money to finance the business by the end of the
runway :)

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spdustin
Cute and approachable app :) The music in first demo video, and the pattern-
based sequencing reminds me of when I used to compose Mod files on an Amiga
500, which reminded me of Information Society (there as an Amiga on the cover
of their "Hack" album), which brought back even more awesome memories.

Anyone else remember Mod files and the Amiga?

So, thanks!

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blacktar
Great to see more startups coming out of my native Norway. Looks like a fun
app. Looking forward to see where they are going with this one.

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kremlin
just paid for full features; i've always loved stuff like this. There's a web
app I always liked that was just a grid with one instrument only, just a
reverby mallet-sounding instrument (looks like they added drums now)
[http://tonematrix.audiotool.com/](http://tonematrix.audiotool.com/)

When you're restricted to just a scale rather than all 12 notes in the full
octave available to you, it's just so surprisingly easy to come up with little
riffs that sound good.

~~~
kremlin
feature request (hopefully this doesn't sound crazily absurd - also hopefully
doesn't come across as rude) -- the ability to string saved tracks together.
Run TrackA 4 times, TrackB 2, TrackC 1, TrackD 1, TrackA 4 again, etc. And
even perhaps the ability to loop over and reuse arrangements of multiple
tracks.

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zdmc
Is the revenue plan based on a monthly subscription model? If not, then I
don't know why you'd want to think in terms of "X USD per month"[1].

That being said, kudos, the app looks really fun. It seems to me that you
should charge the one-time d/l fee ($0.99 USD)

1\. "After 10 months of work, we have 100 days to get our unreleased app to
15K USD per month."
[[http://launchdiary.postagon.com/](http://launchdiary.postagon.com/)]

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mrborgen
It's not a subscription no. But if our retention mechanism works, and the app
is good enough, people who really like it will be able to spend money in it
regularly.

Our quote from the blog is more of a fact than a reference to our business
model. Cause if we don't make 15K in per month in average by mid-February,
we're out of business.

~~~
zdmc
I understand what you're saying, but it's not intuitive (for me, at least) to
map variable in-app purchases to a fixed monthly expense model.

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fsqcds
Android please!

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zrgiu_
Android only recently released APIs for sound that are accurate enough for
these kinds of applications. As the % of devices running Android 5.0 starts
increasing, we'll see sound mixing (and similar) apps there too.

~~~
corndoge
While Android's sound APIs before Lollipop did have a very high latency, you
could hack around it by doing your audio processing in native code and feeding
the APIs PCM. It just sucked.

That said, definitely excited for the new sound APIs. It's been far too long.

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dagvonkr
We've found a bug on iPad4: we're having trouble playing shared beats in the
web browser :´( We'll fix it tomorrow!!

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thewarrior
Do you restrict notes to the pentatonic scale like many such apps do so that
you always get pleasant sounding results ?

~~~
dagvonkr
Yes you are correct! We are gonna continue to come up with more concepts for
easily and fun composition tools. This was the first step:)

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Pistus
Fun app, got into it immediately. Will test it on my niece in the weekend

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niix
Really want to try this, when is the iPhone version coming? :)

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dagvonkr
That's next! We hope to make enough money to make the iPhone version. Follow
our launch diary to see what happens:)

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ja27
It's questionable whether it's worth doing an iPhone version. Most iPad kid
apps aren't but I think this one might be worth it, since it appeals to more
adults as well. The ability to make ringtones adds a lot of phone appeal too.
Certainly much easier and financially rewarding than doing an Android version.

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defied
Looks great! This is only available in the US app store?

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mrborgen
Thanks, no it's world wide. You can't find it? Should be able to be downloaded
through this link anywhere in the world: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/disco-
fingers/id809680953](https://itunes.apple.com/app/disco-fingers/id809680953)

Would really like to hear it if you're having troubles downloading it.

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hilem
Sharing songs isn't working and I would seriously reconsider limiting it to
iPad only. Offering an interface for iPhone would greatly increase downloads.

~~~
hk__2
They plan to release an iPhone version [1]

[1]:
[http://launchdiary.postagon.com/7wc9au7y1](http://launchdiary.postagon.com/7wc9au7y1)

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rglover
That lonesome cowboy video is great :)

