

Ask HN: Feedback on Mixest, my HTML5 ironic indie Pandora - DTrejo
http://mixest.com

======
jackowayed
A few thoughts:

* Cool idea, I'll definitely use this if the quality of music is high.

* I agree with the comments that having my password show up in the clear is bad. It surprised me. And if I sign in, then hit "log out" before closing the tab, it makes the login form viewable _with my password still there_. Very bad. While you figure out another solution, can you at least add autocomplete="off" to the <input> tag so that my browser definitely won't remember it?

* This does not work on my HTC Droid Incredible. When it loads there's no song title or artist like there is when I load it on my computer. Then I can hit "Next" to make a song title appear, but it doesn't play.

* How do you get artists? I see the "upload", but how did you get the initial artists, and do you have any plans to incentivize artists to sign up? (You may not need it, a lot of indie bands just like sharing their music, especially if they're not well-known.)

~~~
DTrejo
Hi jackowayed, at the moment android has trouble with HTML5, so we are
building an android app. Our goal is to make it super easy to listen to music
on any device. We're also working on an iphone app.

The clearing of passwords after login must have slipped by our testing, thank
you for pointing that out. [update: autocomplete has just been turned off]

Our initial set of music was scraped from various indie blogs, but in the
future we hope to get most of our music from uploads.

We are thinking of some ways to help artists make money off their music. We
may offer high-quality downloads to listeners (and pay artists when the songs
are bought). This would be for artist uploads only.

~~~
jackowayed
> _Our initial set of music was scraped from various indie blogs_

Is that legal? Was it all licensed under Creative Commons (or similar)
licenses that allow commercial use?

~~~
DTrejo
We don't make any money at the moment. Only artist music uploaded directly to
mixest would be available for high quality* paid download. That's the idea
anyway.

Edit: *High Quality flac or 320kbps mp3. For the audiophiles our there!

~~~
jackowayed
Hm, I'm not sure about the terms of the CC non-commercial license, but as an
endeavor that hopes to make money, I think you may count as "commercial"
anyway.

But the music was all CC licensed at least (or similar)?

~~~
empire29
I was wondering this as well.

It appears I could upload some obscure music to the site via the Upload tab. I
assume that your team has to vet that the music I upload is 1) what i say it
is and 2) that covered by a CC license.

Can you play back non-CC music you 'own' because you're streaming it (ala a
radio station) rather than allowing user's download it?

I love the site, but it seems scary having something like this in today's
litigious world.

------
dangrossman
I cannot read anything on your site unless I tilt my screen back. Many laptop
screens do not handle contrast between light shades of gray well.

~~~
ericz
We are definitely going to improve on the text color contrast

EDIT: We've improved the text color contrast! Apologies to everyone who had to
tilt their monitors or squint. The page should be much clearer now.

~~~
vog
It's still too bright. The text became readable, but the tabs, progress bar
and the login fields are still hard to see.

 _Update:_ You might want to rethink your overall graphical design. A general
rule of thumb states that things should first look good in black & white (no
gray, no colors). You shouldn't rely on colors until you get it right without
them. If you then add colors, you are quite flexible, and can thus create
better looking results.

Also, you then won't require too many colors for your design to work, which is
especially important in your case where you rely on too many different gray
tones. That seems to be the deeper cause for your trouble. It's easy to pick
two good gray tones that have a good contrast to each other (i.e. black,
white, gray1, gray2). When you add a third gray tone it's quite hard to pick
good ones. Adding a fourth gray tone and you are lost! Well, at least that's
my experience, unless you have a very good monitor and are creating a print
design rather than a web design.

~~~
ericz
Interesting idea! I'll definitely keep that in mind for future designs.

For now I have reduced the text color scheme to use only two shades of gray. I
tried to pick two shades that have good contrast but with neither being
unreadable on white.

Let me know what you think

~~~
vog
_> I have reduced the text color scheme to use only two shades of gray_

Did you? I'm counting at least 4 gray colors, 3 of which are competing: The
background, the text, the login field's text and the login field's background.
Maybe there are even more different gray tones, I didn't check thoroughly.

~~~
ericz
>> I have reduced the text color scheme to use only two shades of gray

> Did you?

Yes I did. The "4 gray colors" you mention are not part of the text color
scheme.

I'm sorry that you despise the design so much. I've tried to remedy the
stylesheet in response to your suggestions, but if you're going to suggest I
lied, then I don't know what else to do.

~~~
vog
_> The "4 gray colors" you mention are not part of the text color scheme._

Sorry, I overlooked the "text" part. That's why I was wondering.

I didn't expect that you would just fix a part of the design and ask for
further advice, because, well, the further advice is obvious: Fix the rest of
the color scheme, too. :-)

The text part was definitely improved, by the way. But in order to see whether
the colors are good, we need to have a look at the fixed overall design.
Judging such things from only a part is something that only very good artists
are capable of, maybe not even those.

------
DTrejo
Hi HN, my friends and I have been working on this app for the last few weeks.
The audio is handled by jplayer, and we've really enjoyed working with it.

We'd really appreciate any feedback you have for us!

Edit: I almost forgot - the app should work on the ipad and iphone browsers -
let us know if it is horribly broken!

~~~
paul9290
Nice job!

So Jplayer works in IE7/8, as well as firefox,chrome, safari and opera? The
browsers that do not support <audio> tag it falls back to flash?

~~~
DTrejo
exactly :)

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shortformblog
This is a great idea. The use of AJAX to keep everything on one page is kinda
like how MSNBC has made its article pages require as little clicking as
possible. Except less maximalist. For what it's worth, I put it on my blog and
referred to it as "A pretty badass HTML5 take on the Pandora model."

I'm going to try this on the iphone. I like how the design is clearly made
with that in mind, while still being perfectly usable on the desktop.

~~~
malbiniak
i'm curious -- what part of this is a great idea? for example, is it the html5
execution (and flash rollback), or the music library, etc.?

~~~
shortformblog
The dead simplicity and versatility. Pandora is nowhere near this lightweight.
Most music services are way more complex than this. The way it uses HTML5 is
pretty sweet and well-thought-out.

------
sherb113
I like it. It's very simple and if I enjoy the music, I can see myself coming
here when I want something fresh to listen to.

That being said, the text and icons are really hard to see. They blend into
the white background too much.

*edit: The password is showing clear text. Why?

~~~
DTrejo
We ask for very little information from users, and asking for an email to
reset the pass felt like too much.* Thanks for bringing this up as we are
probably going to change this and make it more secure.

*when you can see your pass it's harder to forget

~~~
blasdel
Please stop paying attention to Jakob Nielsen.

Password masking, along with asking for a password confirmation, is what
_everyone_ expects. Any affected attempt at 'simplifying' that UI without a
total transformation (like no accounts at all, not shit like openid) leads
directly to anger and disillusionment when their plaintext password is staring
them in the face.

Use <input type=password>. Use two of them when registering, and one when
logging in. It's a basic affordance, don't fuck with it.

~~~
DTrejo
How would you feel if we obliterated accounts completely?

~~~
blasdel
Well, are they doing anything now?

I've been favoriting tracks but it's not clear that it has any effect on what
gets played. You're saving the tracks I fave, but then I can't do anything
with them except delete them — which should _absolutely not_ use the same
heart icon you use for creation. I clicked it thinking it would play that
track again, and _POOF_.

------
carbon8

        -          <input id="password" autocomplete="off" tabindex="2" type="text"> 
        +          <input tabindex="2" type="password">
    

I'm looking forward to trying it out next time I'm working. Resist the
temptation to add too much stuff; you're on the right track so far.

~~~
zackola
The other issue with not using a type="password" is that my phone puts caps
lock on for filling out that field.

Also, on my iPhone the <3 for favoriting a song does not show up, however it
is great that the music keeps playing in the background.

------
phil
Turns out <audio> elements work on the iPad: the music keeps playing when
you've switched to other tabs (though the javascript to set up the next song
doesn't fire until you switch back).

But, I'm finding starting a song buggy: I have to tap pause, then tap play for
it to start playing.

~~~
ericz
Hi,

I'm David's friend and a dev for Mixest.

iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch's mobile Safari does not allow auto playing of music
unless it's triggered from a user event (like clicking the Play button).
That's why you have to click play you first load the page and when it loads
the next song.

"But, I'm finding starting a song buggy: I have to tap pause, then tap play
for it to start playing."

This was fixed for iPhone and iPod Touch. I forgot to include iPad into the
mix!! Thanks for the bug find

------
todayiamme
Do you intend to analyze the users taste/preferences?

This is just a suggestion and in all probability you guys must have thought
about this. So I'm sorry if I am wasting your time.

Why don't you make a desktop application like last.fm that _analyzes_ the
music lying on a user's hard-drive using local resources and then uploads the
info to you? I think that it may be possible for you to take a speech
recognition API and modify it to recognize patterns in songs instead.
Something like Pandora's music genome but automated, and then as User data
builds up you can use it to predict what the user would like on your end.

Thus, this way you save server load by using the user's PC for some of that
heavy lifting (i.e. analyzing their library) and analyzing the music on your
server using your scheme would be a one off effort. You could make something
like custom info files denoting details about a song that can be picked up
when you run the app. It would be so cool to have a service like this.

P.S. - Thanks to you guys I am now in love with Yael Naim.

~~~
SkyMarshal
If you do that, make it optional. I kind of like just 'Nexting' through a
random list, since I feel like it is exposing me to music and genre's it
wouldn't had it known my current playlists.

Also, a search feature for me to find Yael Naim on mixest would be nice too
:).

Otherwise, so far so good. Like the simplicity. Question: Is the only thing
that 'More Obscure' does is to suppress songs you've heard before or don't
want to hear again? The words imply a little more.

Only complaint is the registration password field needs to be obscured,
instead of plaintext. Always disconcerting to type my password and actually
see it, even in the privacy of my home PC.

~~~
ericz
More Obscure does more!

The algorithm is not plainly random. It factors in how many times people have
clicked more obscure for a particular artist!

tldr; When you click More Obscure, the song won't play again for you. The
entire artist will play less for everyone.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Ah, so it sounds like 'More Obscure' means 'Make this artist more obscure in
the playlist'? I interpreted it as 'drill down into even more obscure, less
known, less listened-to artists'.

~~~
balac
me too, the term is a bit ambiguous

------
pstinnett
Looks good although I would increase the contrast a bit (hard to read on my
laptop - others have already said this though).

I'd be careful where you're pulling the music from. Maybe look into other
sources for getting tracks. I made an application
(<http://www.pitchforked.com>) that scraped Pitchfork for best new music
albums/artists and then grabbed tracks from 8tracks.com. They have a (fairly)
easy to use api that you could take a look at.

~~~
DTrejo
hey pstinnet, I really like it - I have no trouble seeing anything on your
app. We're definitely going to take inspiration and thanks for the tip about
8tracks!

------
bjoernw
Great, I too can see myself coming back looking for new music. One thing: I
had to think about 5 seconds to figure the "More Obscure" part out. Maybe I'm
just slow but the word choice didn't make it obvious to me right away.

Design-wise I would just like to see the box with the controls and I'm ready
to look further below for the "about" and "team" things. The bottom part seems
a little crowded right now.

~~~
fname
_One thing: I had to think about 5 seconds to figure the "More Obscure" part
out. Maybe I'm just slow but the word choice didn't make it obvious to me
right away_

In FF3, at least, there's a tooltip that explains what it means.

------
robgough
Nice. Would like to reiterate Last.FM scrobbling requests.

Also, could you log my last 20 played tracks, or tracks listened to in the
past 24-48 hours, so that if I leave the site and come back later I don't keep
hearing the same track. Listened to 3-4 songs, accidentally left the page --
returned, and then got a repeat straight away.

Would also be nice to see a history of tracks, but Last.FM integration would
solve that neatly.

edit: and a back button please, tracks can be slowed to load (pre-load the
next track?) and sometimes I click next as I think it's stalled, but with
hindsight it hasn't and misses the track.

------
imagii
-there isn't enough contrast between #ddd and #fff

-Disable keyboard navigation while registering/logging in (I'm in Opera, so it could just be that)

Otherwise this is really great! I like the minimalism.

------
byw
Looks/works great, though more info or a link to the artist's website would be
nice.

edit: oh, and when I bookmark it, I have to manually delete the song name from
the title.

~~~
DTrejo
Hmm, the bookmark issue is one we need to work on.

For artist uploads we plan to have links to their personal sites (artist
upload not yet implemented). Glad you like it :)

------
zackola
I like it a lot. \- Where's the music coming from? \- I would like a dislike
song button though. If I never hear runawaydroid again, I'll have lived a full
and happy life.

~~~
zackola
Also, where are the affiliate links? I want to buy some of the songs I've
heard! :)

~~~
DTrejo
We have not added that yet, though we will figure out a way! Some of the
problems we've encountered so far: indie artists don't upload to mainstream
sites with complicated sign-ups.

This means it will be tough for us to use amazon affiliate links for example.
We are determined! We may even revenue share with artists, who knows.

------
messel
What's the advantage of this over a site like Pandora or Last.fm where I can
easily program music I prefer?

 __ _I read some more_ __The algorithm is social crowd filtered as opposed to
individually tuned. That's pretty interesting.

I can enjoy the simplicity of the design and interface, but at this level why
not go all app since there's no network effects to leverage with a web
interface?

------
teye
Will you have to adhere to the same kind of restrictions Pandora does (limited
# of skips/hr, etc.)?

If you're going to have a heart icon, you might as well make pause and next
icons too. Or use a word instead of the heart.

Too many different font sizes. The signup form needs a little love. Maybe a
little space between the fields?

Good-looking, overall, and works very well in Chrome.

~~~
DTrejo
I'm going to say no when it comes to limited skips. We don't want to force you
to listen to bad music. As for the signup form, our css needs a bit of love.
We appreciate the feedback!

------
sjm
The player is fantastic – excellent job there. I think there's still some
issues with the colours/contrast though; the white on very light blue is a bit
distracting. I would probably also try some different fonts, but that's just
me.

Apart from that, I really like it. I love the minimalism, and again, seriously
impressed with the player.

------
mtodd
* if I have music playing in the background, the music should automatically start instead of requiring me to switch back to the screen and manually restart it * make the password field a password type input element * optionally allow anybody to switch password to a regular text input field

~~~
DTrejo
We've had reports of safari needing focus in order to continue playing. We're
looking into a fix - this is safari correct?

~~~
mtodd
Correct! The most recent version.

------
aw3c2
I am with Opera 10.60 on Linux. HTML Audio is well supported. Yet your site
does not play anything, does not display an error. It also prompts me to
install Flash at the top of the screen which I find weird on a "We are HTML5!"
page. Contrast is very low. No sane no-javascript fallback.

~~~
ericz
Sorry about that. The problem with Opera 10 is that it doesn't support the MP3
codec for HTML5. Right now our solution to the two major browsers (FF, Opera)
that don't support HTML5 and MP3 together is to use a Flash fallback, hence
you see the Flash message. We've found that this solution works for a majority
of listeners. Unfortunately certain setups will escape support.

Hopefully we can find a better solution in the future.

~~~
aw3c2
I thought Opera on Linux used gstreamer and all its available plugins. Might
be wrong though. Anyways apparently your customer support is nice and great.
;-)

------
phreanix
Great site. I hope you are able to address the privacy issues brought up by
the others here but otherwise I'm totally enjoying it. You might want to put
in a couple of buttons to quickly share the site and/or a particular song on
facebook/twitter as well.

------
_exec
Love it!

Are you planning on releasing a desktop application?

Also:

1\. Username / password fields are a bit confusing 2\. Do let the users know
that registering won't pause / stop the music 3\. Icons Icons Icons!

Otherwise, nice job :)

~~~
DTrejo
At the moment there are no plans for a desktop app - though we are going to
make it super easy to run on iPhone and Android (and iPad).

------
maw
It doesn't work if flash is blocked (Chromium 6.0.451.0 (51013), FlashBlock -
Version: 0.9.30). I think because there's not enough room for the override
button to show.

Nice music so far, though. And I like the minimalist interface too.

------
jambo
I'm really enjoying it so far. One improvement you could make would be to make
hearts stateful for 'just listened' songs. It took me clicking over to the
favorites tab to realize it had saved the first time.

~~~
DTrejo
Yes, you have a good point. We are considering moving the two next to each
other so it is more intuitive. Thanks for pointing that out

------
ashoknayar225
Love it. The Username/Password fields need to be more identifiable though, it
wasn't that easy to recognize where the fields really are (with the "We're
New" thing looming).

How do you curate content?

------
stuaxo
Definitely submitting tunes to lastfm would make this for me.

------
ynd
Love it. One minor detail: on the ipad it doesn't automatically switch between
songs, you have to press play each time. I don't know if that can be fixed
though.

------
mcritz
The site works amazingly well!

The logotype is very tightly letterspaced. Some letters overlap. Maybe try a
different font face to try than Voluptua.

------
panic
This is really great; I'd love to see an iPhone app!

~~~
ericz
Thanks! We're working on one. For now though, the website works in mobile
Safari

------
shortformblog
Tip for you guys: You should link every artist to an Amazon (or eMusic) page
for the artist using a referral code. Instant revenue stream.

------
waterlesscloud
As much as I love the idea of a button labeled "More Obscure", and I do love
it, it doesn't really have the function that name implies.

~~~
ericz
I'm glad you like the button =P

there IS one thing it does which isn't advertised: we actually use the "More
Obscure" click data in our algorithm to select which song plays next. So by
clicking More Obscure you're helping us fine tune our library so that everyone
only hears more obscure music =]

We'll definitely improve on communicating that aspect of it.

~~~
empire29
I agree - there doesn't seem to be a correlation between obscurity and me
liking/not wanting to listen to something. There is plenty of extremely
obscure music that i do enjoy on a personal level.

I dont know how your algorithm works, but it doesnt seem like it would be
collecting accurate data if i click "more obscure" for music i just "dont
like" (this might be just be part of the cute irony of the site though) ..
anyhow - good idea and execution.

------
coryl
Those username/password forms were confusing

~~~
DTrejo
Could you explain a bit more? Our goal is for nothing to be confusing, so more
information would be super helpful

~~~
adbge
Speaking from my own experience, the form was a little disorienting because
the contrast on the grey/white was low enough that I didn't notice the text
right off. I'm just guessing that the parent experienced a similar moment of
confusion.

------
twidlit
VC guy: What problem are you trying to solve? Do you have traction? Whats your
business model? Do you have patents?

~~~
DTrejo
My answer: monetize monetize monetize. No really we are thinking of some
things, which I've alluded to in other comments.

------
TorKlingberg
You say HTML5, but the music doesn't play until I enable a Flash object in the
corner. Firefox 3.6.6.

~~~
ericz
Hi Tor,

One problem we encountered with development was Firefox's HTML5 <audio> not
supporting MP3, so we have to use a flash player as a fallback for FF.

Hopefully we'll have a better solution for this in the future :)

Edit: This page has more info about HTML5 <audio> support:
<http://html5doctor.com/native-audio-in-the-browser/>

~~~
doublec
If you plan to go commercial while using MP3, don't forget the licensing
requirements for streaming MP3 and encoding:

<http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/#4>

(not saying you need a license, just pointing out that you might need to
check)

------
Sephr
Mind making it save a cookie so I don't have to enter my password every single
time I go to mixest?

------
malbiniak
is this a personal project, or something you're hoping to get a revenue model
behind?

~~~
DTrejo
This is a personal project, but at some point it would be nice to add a
revenue model so we can help artists make money (and maybe a bit for ourselves
too :).

------
volare
I need a volume control (especially when using multiple applications with
audio).

------
thefool
Not logged in, when I mouse over the "like" button in ie8 it keeps flashing.

------
texasice
Nice site. Love that the proxy at my work doesnt block it.

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xpaulbettsx
The 2nd song you played was by Joanna Newsom. Sold.

------
petervandijck
Doesn't play anything for me?

~~~
jolan
Works fine in Chrome/Firefox/Safari for me. Maybe your browser doesn't support
HTML5 audio?

~~~
sjs
Not all the songs play for me in Safari 5 on OS X.

~~~
jolan
I think quicktime can't play VBR encoded mp3s over the web for some reason.

------
lugia
love it! elegant

------
autarch
You don't know what the word "ironic" means. That's my feedback.

Ironic does not mean sarcastic.

