

Ask YC: Feedback on my new startup, a music scrobbler/player - danhak
http://www.snuzu.com

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danhak
I'd really appreciate the HN community's thoughts on my new site, snuzu.com.
The second iteration has just been rolled out this morning.

It's a simple service that keeps track of everything you play in iTunes,
WinAmp or WMP. Then it creates a listening history page and provides full-
length playable tracks for a majority of songs.

For an example of what that looks like, you could check out my page:
snuzu.com/history.aspx?id=1

I realize it's not the most novel idea, but I'd like to try a cleaner approach
to this type of site and (hopefully) get enough users over time to develop
some more interesting/sophisticated statistical metrics about music listening
trends.

Anyway, enough rambling. All your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

~~~
j2d2
Do you have a way I could pull some of that data? I have an idea I'm looking
to build soon and this information would be invaluable. Would you mind
chatting more via email? jdennis at gmail.

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roberto
No Linux support, so I can' test it. Also, it doesn't seem to offer anything
that woudd make me change from last.fm.

~~~
xenoterracide
you should talk to the amarok people, the last.fm support should probably
become a scripted plugin anyways...

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shawndrost
Congrats on the work you've done, I like the design. A few notes...

-In the "recently played tracks" box, don't show tracks that can't be played full-length.

-Don't put the time it was played for now... I don't see any upside to counter the hit you'll take in perceived value from the half-hour gap between tracks being played.

-I don't really know what's going to happen when I click the "get started" link... how about some explanatory front-page text like "1. download snuzu 2. listen to music and snuzu shares it with your friends 3. snuzu tells you what your friends are listening to." That's rough, but the point is, I'm not going to install this unless I know what it is.

~~~
danhak
Thanks for the input. I've just implemented your first suggestion and will
work on the other two when I get a chance.

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lux
Money-wise, you could make some via an affiliate program for buying songs. I
like the idea of an FB app as well to link it in, people seem to dig those
although I don't install many myself. That helps as well since you don't have
your friend list on snuzu itself from the look of it.

Not sure it's something I'd use actively, but then again I'm also not much for
using stuff like Twitter either but apparently many people are...

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dazzawazza
How have you gathered the rights to the songs you play?

~~~
danhak
I'm using the SeeqPod API

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grag
It doesn't offer much over last.fm except that it finds full length songs. You
might be able to get some traction if you offered a widget people could place
on their blogs, myspace, facebook, etc.. What music search engine are you
using? Seepod?

~~~
danhak
There is, in fact, an embeddable HTML widget for blogs/websites as well as a
full-fledged Facebook application.

Yes song results are from Seeqpod.

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thomasswift
very nice. I know your using the JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER on the bottom there.

The only suggestion I have would be: when I click play within the list, switch
the play button to pause or stop icon. I don't know if you can send a stop
request to the player. Also, i do realize that if you play one song, then play
another it switches nicely.

Otherwise, very cool. good luck and be careful with the licensing.

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truebosko
My first layout impression: Don't like how the player is on the bottom almost
hidden away. Would be nice if it was more relevant in the design

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snewe
It is less cluttered than last.fm, but is that all it brings? I don't see the
value-add above the current options.

~~~
danhak
It's a fair point, and I really don't have much to say other than this: If and
when snuzu hits a critical mass of data influx, I have some statistical tricks
up my sleeve to go above and beyond what Last.FM, iLike or any other site
offers in the way of recommendations or charts.

Of course this is probably not reason enough for you to invest time and energy
into snuzu at this stage if you're already married to other music sites. But
given what I have to work with now (i.e. statistically insignificant amounts
of data) what features would make snuzu an attractive alternative to Last.FM
for you?

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dhuck
Why wait for the users to come to your site?

If you let me import my last.fm profile - and scrap all of my friend's
profiles (they're linked from my profile) - you should have all the data you
need to start recommending music or generating some interesting charts.

Overall, it's a great start. I think there's a lot of places you can go with
it - definitely places to improve upon Last.FM and such.

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okeumeni
Clean design, not sure if the idea is new but if not, there’s potential to
upgrade existing stuff.

Good job!

