
Show HN: Blynde – A new way to listen music on Youtube (user:demo, pwd:123456) - jeremylevy
http://blynde.com
======
fragmede
I looked into doing a similar project, but just FYI you might want to take a
read through youtube's TOS:
[http://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms](http://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

Particularly section 4, General Use of the Service—Permissions and
Restrictions.

What you've got is way cool though.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks. I use the Youtube API. I read Youtube's TOS, YouTube API's TOS :
[https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms](https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms)
and Branding Guidelines
[https://developers.google.com/youtube/branding](https://developers.google.com/youtube/branding).
Please, tell me if you think I didn't comply with any of this .

~~~
chacham15
I think hes talking about 4D in his link. You appear to have no way to
monetize such a thing due to that clause. Its really beautiful though, good
job!

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! :) Yes, of course, but ads are displayed by YouTube and iTunes links
aren't affiliated.

------
mandeepj
Really great piece of work. UI is neatly polished.

Youtube's recommendation list sucks. They only auto-play your lists not their
recommendation lists. That sucks even more.

It will be great if you can add channels like house music, electronic, trans
etc then you can pose threat to Spotify :-)

I had same idea as your's but for android. My friends disagreed with me saying
it won't work but I will still do it :-)

We can use youtube as a database to create great interfaces which suck less to
listen to music in pain less ways.

Would you mind sharing your tech stack?

Again, great job. Execution done with brilliance

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! I will see for channel :). For, tech stack: DEBIAN, PHP, NGINX,
MYSQL, REDIS, JQUERY, JQUERY-UI, BACKBONE.JS.

~~~
mandeepj
Thanks for sharing details. Did you use REDIS to store user playlists, search
history and other user data?

~~~
jeremylevy
For the moment, only country top are stored to REDIS for 24 hours. Search
history and other user data are loaded once at startup and given by MySQL. The
call to external APIs (to search, to retrieve playlist and so on) are made
directy through your browser. (thanks to JSONP) :)

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squidi
Overall it's really good. I'm going to have this running in a tab for a while
:)

Some thoughts: \- A couple of times the audio dropped. Each time I noticed the
mute button was engaged and even unmuting the audio did not come back. Not
sure what happened. \- The progress bar caused a usability issue for me. It's
so instinctual to hover at the bottom of the video and I didn't realise why
nothing was responding. \- Is it possible to have thumbnails for the videos in
the playlist? \- How do I scroll in the playlist? I could not figure that out.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks, for this ! Can you tell me your OS / Browser version ? You think video
thumbnails should replace album covers ? You don't see the black scrollbar
next to playlist ?

~~~
squidi
Windows 7 with Chrome (Version 28.0.1500.52 m - latest version). I cannot see
the scroll bar: [http://imgur.com/bkHWj9d](http://imgur.com/bkHWj9d)

Maybe album covers are better in general. It's just that on the OK Computer
playlist most of the videos were imitations and it would have been easier to
see if I could preview them ([http://en-us.blynde.com/#!ok-
computer](http://en-us.blynde.com/#!ok-computer))

Good luck with it!

~~~
scrapcode
The scroll bar is there, but it's black.

I agree that you should do something with that. Other than the minor issues
this whole project is pretty perfect. It works exactly as I could imagine that
I'd want it to, and there's no fluff. Beautiful execution.

------
dubcanada
I think you should get a new logo, the "cloud" logo is already used by tons of
companies, and this doesn't really have anything to do with clouds or cloud
storage. Regardless of that though it seems very well done. I'm a little
confused with the top thing. It's on US I click it and it goes to UK. Though
it looks like a select menu.

When you click HD, what happens? It would be cool if you could select the
levels like you can on youtube (240 to what ever)

~~~
dubcanada
Also, when you right click on a video it pauses it. I was trying to find a way
to get the youtube URL.

~~~
citricsquid
click on the Youtube logo, bottom right of the player, goes for all embedded
Youtube videos.

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hardwaresofton
Is awesome, as everyone has said.

It's like minimal groove shark... Just a few minutes ago I was thinking of
building something over groove shark to get a similar minimalistic interface,
but TOSes would probably prevent that.

Well done on this project again though, very nice

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! Proud you liked it :)

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stephengillie
Cool service. I'll have to use this instead of Youtube's auto-generated
playlists.

I'm not sure if it's a bug but...I was streaming a local radio station and
searched for the artist I was listening to. Blynde search autosuggested the
song to which I was already listening (it's a very popular song). In the
playlist, this same song is showing up every 2-3 songs -- not even remixes of
the same tune, but the same original mix of the song.

I'm on the 2nd time around of this song, and I'll hear it again in ~3 minutes,
~9 minutes, ~12 minutes, and ~18 minutes.

Edit: re-searching (searching again) seems to have cleared this up.

------
anigbrowl
Fantastic - I mainly use YouTube for music and this is way, way better than
the standard YT interface in almost every possible respect.

Cavils: I would like to sign in with my Google account (because it's important
for me to know that the NSA understands my taste in music), and I can't find a
way to search on the channels of YouTube users who have especially good music
collections - ie I search by a channel name I know and like, but get nothing
or the wrong stuff.

Edit: BTW, I'm also not sure about clicking in the video causing it to pause,
but I can see how some people would like that.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks :) ! If you search for a specific channel, you get nothing or wrong
stuff ? Hum... It seems that it's a bug. I will inspect this. Thanks for the
report.

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh, also you might want to cross-reference search results with Youtube. For
example, I like a technoa rtist called Orion, so I search for a favorite track
using 'orion cynabs'. But I also get a lot of results to do with Orion rockets
and some pop music kid who uses the same stage name. YouTube is better at
presenting recommendations from the same artist rather than just going by
name.

------
hemmer
Awesome, very nice interface! One thing I've been looking for for a while is
last.fm support (while watching youtube videos). Any chance that could be
possible?

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! I use last.fm for biography, and artist image. What features would
you like to see ?

~~~
hemmer
Really only to be able to scrobble the tracks you listen too. For example
other music services (Grooveshark / Hypem) let you connect your account and
keep track of everything you listen to.

~~~
lowboy
+1 for scrobbling.

[http://www.last.fm/api/scrobbling](http://www.last.fm/api/scrobbling)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastfm-
scrobbler/h...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastfm-
scrobbler/hhinaapppaileiechjoiifaancjggfjm?hl=en)

------
shitlord
This is the coolest thing I've seen on HN all month! Discovering stuff by
genre or even a suggestion feature would make this even better. Great work!

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! I will see for the "discover touch". :)

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lquist
This thread is a great counterexample to the argument that HN always disses
Show HNs.

Constructive criticism: Overall, great work! A "new" way to listen to music on
Youtube is not nearly descriptive enough. I don't want a new way to listen to
music on Youtube, I want a better way. And much more importantly, how is it
better? A landing page would do wonders for you. But again, awesome work!

~~~
qqg3
A "new" way may well be a "better" way, you're picking at straw fella. What do
you think Apple said when they introduced the iPhone. "This is a new phone
experience." Likewise, "This is a new YouTube experience".

------
qqg3
It says "Edit my profil" everywhere instead of "Edit my profile".

Really cool service though dude, I shall be using it if it stays live.

------
einarlove
Will you post this on your github profile soon? Would love to see how you
approached this.

A suggestion is to be able to search for playlists to.

------
Amarandei
Really nice work. I love that the HD button stays active and loads all videos
in HD. I also like the arrows shortcuts for next and previous video. Makes it
much easier to skip tracks.

One minor recommendation: when the video is in full screen, the full screen
arrows from the icon should be pointed inwards. Just being picky :)

Great Youtube implementation. Congrats.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! I keep your idea for the full screen icon. :)

------
dvt
Reminds me of [http://8tracks.com/](http://8tracks.com/) \-- you should
definitely add SoundCloud support. Also you should let people make their own
playlists/vote on playlists/etc.

Cool idea. I'm not sure how you could monetize it, though.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! For SoundCloud and playlist support, why not. Money was definitely
not my goal when I build this. I build this, firstly for me, because I love
listen songs on YouTube and I wanted to improve my experience. :)

------
monkmartinez
I don't say this lightly, but this is fucking awesome!!

Wondering how hard it would be to implement a function that would search for
all the variations of a particular song. Lets say I want to see all the remix
versions of Lykke Li - Little Bit, as an example...

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! How do you see this "remix function" ? Directly in the search bar ?
In the playlist ?

------
cwp
Nice work! The UI is simple and focussed on the music, feels fast and
responsive.

One thing I can't easily tell, though, it why you built it. It was obviously a
lot of effort; what feature was YouTube missing that made the effort
worthwhile?

~~~
scrapcode
I really enjoy the creativity and the insight that goes behind applications
such as this where you can't immediately tell "why?"\- Might not sound like it
makes any sense, but at first sight I really couldn't tell you "why" I have
had this running in a tab since I saw this link.

It's beautiful. It grabs exactly what I want. It works, and it works quickly,
with minimal effort. I wouldn't say that it fixes any one problem that I have
had, rather it makes one of my life's conveniences a little better. That is
cool, and I think this industry could make large impacts thinking the same
way.

------
phy6
Just a black screen with a black cloud for me.. Am I supposed to click
something?

~~~
jeremylevy
Sorry ! :( You are not supposed to click something. Can you tell me your OS /
Browser version ?

~~~
fragmede
Same here.

I've got 'click-to-play' enabled - flash doesn't start running until I click
on the flash object - and it looks like you've cleverly hidden it so there's
no object for me to click on to enable it.

If I disable that the app loads fine.

------
bwangtx
Fantastic! A couple of thoughts: one is whether the lyrics can be shown and
synchronized along with singing and with on/off feature, and the other is
whether the video can be turned off for office users.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! Good idea for the lyrics :) ! If I want to comply with the YouTube's
API terms of use I can't turn off video. Sorry :(

------
tixzdk
Great job! Seen tons of similar services, but this is really polished. I
already signed up, but was looking for a way to create my own playlists. I'd
use this all the time if it had custom playlists

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! Many people ask me to add playlist support, so I will try to add it
in a future update. :)

------
tunnuz
This is something similar to another project called SounDojo
([http://soundojo.com/webapp/](http://soundojo.com/webapp/))

------
reledi
It's not working for me - I'm just getting a dark background with a cloud logo
in the centre. Running Chrome v28 on Ubuntu.

------
glitch273
Someone showed a similar service a few months back: youfm.org But great job on
the front end development. The UI is slick.

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Mithaldu
A big issue for me: There is no obvious way to get the link for the youtube
video that's currently playing.

~~~
jeremylevy
You can click on the Youtube logo, bottom right of the player, goes for all
embedded Youtube videos. :)

~~~
Mithaldu
Not very helpful, as that stops the video playing and necessitates me fiddling
around to copy the url of the new tab and close it and restart the video.

Just make the title of the video a link to the youtube page.

------
shrig94
This is absolutely awesome. Well done.

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quackerhacker
Great Stack!

Your UI is nice, clean, and awesome! I like your account sign up pop up and
proposed keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! Glad you like it. :)

------
teddyknox
I love the app. I dislike its current name. Remembering that/typing it
correctly will be hard.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! I expect other opinions to change the name.

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ing33k
Pretty cool . looks like iTunes link is not being updated when I change songs.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks. I will inspect for this !

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jpadilla_
CSS and Javascript don't seem to load, getting a 404 on those.

~~~
dombili
Same thing happened to me on Chrome. Works fine on Nightly.

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FreshCode
Great! Please don't stop playing when I search for something.

------
grizzy
As others have said it's a nice interface. Good job!

------
gnus
Curious. How long did it take you to build this?

~~~
jeremylevy
Several weeks for the first version
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543955)).
Another month for the current release. :)

------
jeremylevy
Demo account - Nickname: demo - Password: 123456

------
_mhr_
jeremylevy, I had a similar idea (a music service based on YouTube), but you
executed it far better than I could have. Bravo!

~~~
jeremylevy
Hey, thanks you ! :)

------
MayankJ
nice work! do you plan to add support for liking/disliking a song or adding it
to a playlists? That would be helpful.

------
Oculus
Really cool interface, awesome job.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! :)

------
itan1um
Really great interface, nice one.

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks ! Proud you liked it.

------
kartikrustagi
Loved it

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MostAwesomeDude
Sadly, I seem to be unable to convince it to load entire albums, just
individual songs. However, it _does_ load unofficial videos, which is quite
cool. I'm guessing that it runs a search without being logged in, and takes
the first result which is shorter than 30min or so?

~~~
jeremylevy
Thanks for the feedback ! Yes, you are right. I build blynde to specifically
load track not full album. If I allow load entire albums, "artist panel",
"your top" and so on became without interest, no ?

~~~
MostAwesomeDude
I honestly normally load up a bunch of full albums of progressive rock from
the days of yesteryear and listen to two or three throughout the workday. It
doesn't make sense to listen to just one song on those albums, and so I
normally don't. I acknowledge that my music consumption habits are not normal,
though. :3

~~~
jeremylevy
I don't see what you mean... If you search for an album, album tracks was
loaded in playlist and displayed in artist panel, no ?

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nudetayne
I made the mistake of not opening a new tab and was unable to navigate away
from your site using the back button. :(

~~~
jeremylevy
Yes, currently I use hashbang instead of html5 history api. I will change this
in future update. Thanks.

