

Please review the iSound.com beta - (Pandora for new music) - bandhunt
http://beta.isound.com

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malbiniak
Tried "the wombats." Artist not found. "Clutch" found results, but the first
three songs were pretty painful. "Mos Def" and I'm happy.

What's behind the recommendations? Is it manual (like Pandora)?

How are you approving music? There's a reason some new music never gets heard.
I'd be really interested in hearing how you solved the quality control
challenge.

At some point, an artist is going to stop being "up & coming."

Why not use Open Graph and Connect for likes and logins?

I think I've been listening for about 25 minutes. I like listening to it, but
visual seems pretty disconnected. I really like the way rdio is doing their
playlist and controls.

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bandhunt
"visual seems pretty disconnected" can you give me some more specifics. That'd
be really helpful!

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malbiniak
this could be tough to translate in written form. the visual design of the
playback screen (<http://beta.isound.com/#/artists?search=outkast>) is
confusing and unbalanced.

maybe it's the repetitive use of the play button (search, similar songs).
maybe it's each song being in its own container. maybe it's the lack of visual
emphasis on any one area (the shared white between the header, player, and
playlist).

ultimately, i like this (<http://grab.by/5f07>) over this
(<http://grab.by/5f04>). sorry i can't be more specific.

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wheels
It's a nice idea, but there seems to be a fatal flaw:

The first three entries that I tried all came back with terrible tracks.

In comparison, The Sixty One seems to have found a nice approach in limiting
the tracks that you first encounter so that you're likely to have a good first
impression and explore further. The stuff on their front-page tends to be
really good stuff even if it often misses my genre sweet-spot.

You might consider something along those lines with curated tracks being the
first encounter to make sure you get things off on the right foot.

~~~
wwortiz
I used to go to thesixtyone and found a ton of great music that way, but when
they changed their site I couldn't navigate it at all it was/is completely
unintuitive and annoying compared to the old interface. I can't find any of
the artists I haven't heard of easily unless they are top scorers and it is
maddening that such a good site was destroyed for design.

Edit: whoever downvoted me please show me the error in my ways I really would
like to use the site again but just can't because it seems like only those
artists who everyone thinks is wonderful are easily found while the true gems
that you looked for on the site are now impossible to find.

~~~
gisenberg
<http://old.thesixtyone.com/>

~~~
wwortiz
Thank you

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jcruz
I think attacking your competition reflects poorly on you. I'd recommend
coming up with something better on your About page than "Myspace sucks; it
really sucks."

~~~
bandhunt
I was trying to incite some passion. Following what Jeff Atwood says about
"picking an enemy" (eg stackoverflow's enemy is experts-exchange). Maybe it's
in bad taste to list that in the about though.

~~~
guywithabike
I've found that often the best advice is to take whatever Jeff Atwood says and
do the complete opposite.

~~~
bandhunt
hahaha. I tend to enjoy his stuff. but noted

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SkyMarshal
Dig it. I put in Muse, got back a few Muse songs and some decent
recommendations with similar sound. Clear simple UI, very fast on Chromium 6
on linux. Looks great so far.

However, I created an account and got the following email confirmation:

 _Hi listener [my plaintext password] body ...._

I assume that's an artifact of pre-beta testing, but time to fix that asap.
Nobody likes their password getting emailed in plaintext.

~~~
bandhunt
Thanks!! Yes, that will go away and they definitely aren't being stored in
plain text.

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schindyguy
I like that it works natively in safari on my iPhone. That's a plus. One
suggestion for content, as far as the rap scene goes, I would have thought to
see mixtapes released by the rapper when I type something like lil Wayne.
Instead I get other remixes from other artists sampling lil waynes beats...

~~~
krisneuharth
Another HNer was working on something like this for rap:
<http://www.hiphopgoblin.com/>

It is apparently not being worked on anymore but was focusing on mixtapes and
such.

Edit: Found the project open-sourced on GitHub:
<http://github.com/zackster/hip-hop-goblin>

~~~
DTrejo
A couple of my friends are working on a new and much improved version of it -
there should be an ask HN thread about it in the next month.

I'm excited for them to release it :)

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vosper
Hi, signed up just to let you know that the track progress meter has some
issues:

1) Because the total length of the song increases as it is streamed the
proportion of it that has been played can go down as it is played, causing the
progress bar to go backwards, or jitter backwards and forwards. You must know
the length of the song before streaming it, so this should be easy to fix. I
hope the explanation made sense.

2) Sometimes clicks on the progress bar are missed. Maybe less than half the
time it would skip ahead in the song, other times it just did nothing. EDIT:
Also when it does jump it's often not to where I've clicked.

This is in Fiefox 3.6.6, Flash Player version returns WIN 10,1,53,64

HTH

~~~
bandhunt
Thank you!! These are on the list of fixes.

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d0m
It's pretty clean and easy to find new artists. I like that. However, I didn't
really like the "Enter a favorite artist to hear up & coming music like them".
Maybe it's because I am not native english speaker but I wasn't sure what it
meant. So, I was kind of surprised to click on the artist I wanted but to hear
a song from a different artist. Now, I know it looks kind of stupid because
that's what the site is supposed to do.. but maybe you could make that
sentence a little bit clearer. "Enter an artist you like, and we'll show you
other artists you'll like." or something like that. (That's my 2 cents, good
job)

~~~
bandhunt
Thanks! Yeah, I think the wording is a little clumsy (even for native
speakers). Haven't nailed down those details yet.

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mikecane
I have to use Firefox 2.x due to a weak PC. I was impressed that the site came
up fast and worked without any bugs. The only fix it needs under 2.x is the
Next button is obscured by something in the bottom right corner. I tried
difficult matches: ABBA, Enya, Morrissey, the Cranberries. I didn't like any
of the matches. I'm not really the target audience for this site, though. I
don't play music while working. Otherwise, I liked the look of it. Good luck.

~~~
bandhunt
Thanks! We'll check that out in FF 2

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guywithabike
I get the following errors in Safari 5 when it tries to go to the next track:

    
    
        TypeError: Result of expression '(d||f||i.body)' [null] is not an object.
    
        560/javascripts/jplayer.js?1277763781:398INDEX_SIZE_ERR: DOM Exception 1: Index or size was negative, or greater than the allowed value.
    

That 560 is the error count for that second error at the time I copied the
text. It was increasing quite rapidly.

~~~
bandhunt
I'll look into this. thanks!

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snsr
Sound quality is great, found some interesting music. Recommendations are a
bit of a crapshoot, but I don't necessarily mind that.

Why no thumbs down option? Might also be cool to see popular tracks or
searches.

edit - An indication of how many tracks are in your playlist in the top nav
would be nice, and would also let people know that clicking "Like" adds a song
to the playlist. Multiple playlists would also be useful.

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trafficlight
I'm uploading a few tracks right now as Able Danger.

Do you have a filesize limit? I tried to upload a track that was a little over
10 MB, and it just disappeared. EDIT: I saw that you have to pay for that...

Also, you need to add categories for Nerdcore, Chiptune, IDM, Glitch and maybe
a generic Electronica. Techno and Trance don't really cover that.

~~~
bandhunt
Yeah, we need to error out the file size better. Also, we'll be adding genre
tagging in the future as it's almost impossible to keep up with every genre
;). Thanks!

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yesimahuman
<http://beta.isound.com/#/artists?search=Passion+Pit>

This search comes up with confusing results (what are the words with
underscores for?) and clicking a link results in a "not found" error.

~~~
bandhunt
Sadly we don't have Passion Pit in the index yet :(. I know, very bad of us.
They and most every other band will be imported soon.

~~~
yesimahuman
Thanks, I was just confused by the results, since I didn't know exactly what I
was looking at.

~~~
bandhunt
Yeah, the search result layout kind of sucks right now...

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EvanK
Tried Silversun Pickups and just get directed back to the initial search page.
No error messages, no "artist not found", just the front page.

Really should have some kind of "artist not found" message, that's just
confusing UI

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j2d2
Aren't you going to be sued, like everyone else that has tried this?

~~~
bandhunt
We have agreements with the artists and labels.

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gunmetal
Artist upload process broken on Google Chrome.

:edit i guess sometimes it's hard to navigate in the open dialog.

Working great, added my band Awesome Party. Nice player.

~~~
bandhunt
Thanks!! "hard to navigate in the open dialog" can you give me some more
specifics? You can email me if you'd like: dj < a t > isound.com

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gunmetal
sometimes the open dialog would not respond to keyboard tabs/input or mouse
clicks. i'm on mac osx using google chrome.

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gisenberg
The first artist I tried (Ronald Jenkees) came back with no recommendations.

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markchristian
Pretty slick, and a great idea. +1.

~~~
bandhunt
thank you!

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imagii
Have you tested in Opera?

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bandhunt
Actually no. Most everything else. You having a lot of trouble in opera?

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rwebb
looks solid!

