

Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music - lyime
http://mugasha.com/YC-Hackers

======
ggruschow
This is sad.

I actually love electronic dance music.

But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just
didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point
was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.

~~~
lyime
That is pretty lazy IMHO. Its a beta site, read the comments above on why
there is a login.

~~~
ggruschow
Now that I came back to HN for my morning fix and made it through the form:

1\. Seems to only have trance-y stuff, not the general electronic dance music
(e.g. search for popular non-trance artists: Pendulum, Prodigy, or Aphex
Twin). The only problem with that is the expectation from the description.

2\. On my browsers (Safari, FF3), the sets search edit box isn't clickable /
won't take focus. I can only search tracks and artists.

3\. How does this help me? Is it just a nicer interface than Amazon's? I
frequent sites like <http://dnb-sets.de> to listen to music. I suppose this is
a compelling argument for pandora to take mixed sets into their playlist?

Now, I've closed it because I don't see a reason to use it. This is a major
problem because I figure I'm probably the best consumer you can imagine for
this. I love this music. I listen to it online for literally hours nearly
every day. I'm very hungry to find new stuff to listen to, have it available
to listen to again (I had physical media storage problems back when raves were
big), and I'm happy to pay ridiculous sums for the service (e.g. i'd pay $10
just to know the name of the D&B song from 1-2 years ago with certain fight
club samples#, and if I couldn't quickly find a mix with it online, maybe $25
for an mp3 of it).

If the site had a much broader range of music, and at least 100x more of it, I
might use it. Even then, you'd need a compelling reason for me to stick around
on your site (e.g. making it easy for me to find tracks I don't know what they
are and buy them... or sucking in zillions of mixes and indexing them
continuously in a way more convenient than others do).

___

# example sample, Tyler Durden: "You have to consider the possibility that God
does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you."
This isn't the more common tune you'll find in your quick search. Like I said,
I'm serious, I want this tune.

~~~
lyime
I really appreciate your feedback. All your points are valid. The search box
is disabled on the set page to keep the UI consistent but that functionality
is not built yet. You again make a valid point that there isnt much content on
the site. Relatively. Yes, Electronica is huge, there are literally dozens of
genre. We really wanted to launch the service at a certain level before
investing the time in covering different genres. It will come, eventually and
hopefully you will return to the site.

Once again, this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted and expected from
the HN community. Cheers.

~~~
wheels
You might want to indicate at first that you're focusing on certain genres
(trance, it seems). The first several searches that I tried (for techno)
returned nothing. Managing expectations there seems like it could be
important.

------
jyu
Why do you slap me in the face with a full page sign up form, without giving
me any clear benefits to signing up?

~~~
charlesju
I think he isn't trying to court you guys as a consumer, but rather as fellow
hackers to test his beta site. You guys should cut him some slack — I always
thought YC was a positive environment, but all your comments are incredibly
unhelpful and just showcase your personal laziness.

BTW, this is site is FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!

It has a bunch of live DJ sets that you can listen to and even allows you to
jump between tracks. It's for people that enjoy trance music and are tired of
having to constantly find new sets.

Good job man, keep up the good work.

------
siong1987
I don't know whether this is a usability issue or not. But, I really don't
like the extra long input text area:

This issue is quite critical on acquiring new users. A good read on designing
sign up form.

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/04/web-form-
design-p...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/04/web-form-design-
patterns-sign-up-forms/)

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/08/web-form-
design-p...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/08/web-form-design-
patterns-sign-up-forms-part-2/)

~~~
ericwaller
Few more usability comments related to sign up:

"Login" should be "Username" (username is used on the login form)

"Name" should be "Full Name" or dropped altogether

Log me in when I register, there's no reason to have me retype my details

------
trapper
I don't get what it does after reading your front page and about page. Why
should I sign up?

~~~
wheels
It feel like this is another case of slogans gone wrong. "Music. Gather.
Share." Huh?

It seems like the message should be something like, "Listen to full DJ sets,
searchable by track."

~~~
trapper
Ahh that would be awesome. I have always wanted the ability to have a set
annotated, so that i can replay my favs and skip to certain sections easily -
is this what it does?

~~~
lyime
Yea pretty much.

------
technosmurf
I wish you could browse the available sets and DJs without signing up for an
account. To force me to do that is a bit of a pain. I'd rather go back to
doing some "real work" than to go through the trouble of signing up so I can
explore your new site quickly.

~~~
lyime
That is the idea. I dont't like signing up for accounts either. The only
reason we have account signup right now is for the beta period. Essentially to
understand how people are using the site and to make fixes accordingly. When
we launch we want it to work perfectly, right now its far from that.

~~~
Harkins
Now you understand how people will use the site: they will look at it, not
instantly understand why it's worth giving personal information to, leave, and
tell their friends it's not worthwhile.

If you want to track interaction, just give everyone a cookie (or Flash
cookie, nearly nobody clears those) and watch behavior by that.

------
tlrobinson
I love it! I like listening to live sets, but I'm always annoyed when I want
to know what a certain track in the middle of a set is. If you're lucky you
can find a breakdown of the set list, but this is way better than even that.

 _[me goes to unsubscribe from electronic music podcasts in iTunes]_

Now, just make it so you can continue browsing the site without interrupting
the currently playing track/set. You could do that with frames, or by loading
content using AJAX (that's what <http://www.thesixtyone.com/> does)

------
apsurd
I've always wanted a GUIDE to good electronica, techno, dance etc because I
know I like it, I just don't know whats good... so it sounds like your site
may help me! Right now I'm listening to some random tracks I've found... so
far so good....

The UI is nice, one thing that would help, though I'm spoiled, is how on the
new playlist.com website you can browse music without interrupting your player
stream.

------
rjprins
The title of the 'forogt password' page is misspelled :)

I love this by the way. I always listen to long trance mixes while progging..

------
dzohrob
i tried signing up a few times but couldn't make it work. username too short,
then the invite code disappeared on the retry page. i tried going back to step
1 and it still wouldn't let me sign up.

~~~
arjunb
ditto.

~~~
lyime
Just increased the number of incites. "hackersftw" is the invite code

------
pgebhard
Does anyone else feel that the play/pause button is backwards? For me, the
button displays the "Play" arrow when the music is playing and it shows the
pause button when it is paused. I know that sounds like how it should be, but
I think that's the reverse of most other players that show the Play button
when music is not playing, and, after clicking, the music begins and the
button switches to give you the option to pause.

Also, I noticed that the album art was constantly flickering for me.

(I'm using FF 3.0.5 on OS X 10.5.6)

------
mattmcknight
I was only able to get two of the sets to play. Every other one sits at 0:00
with the play button clicked. Added it to my Flashblock whitelist, but the
flash bar was way below the player, which was weird. The player should be able
to pop out or iframe or something so that you can browse while listening. How
do I gather and share? You should pre-check the buy links so they could go to
Amazon, itunes, Juno, or wherever, based on who has it. Many tracks are hard
to find mixes.

~~~
lyime
could you post a screenshot of what you are seeing?

~~~
mattmcknight
Everything looked fine, but for the sound of silence. I hit play and it stayed
on 0:00.

------
alex_c
Looks great, but... I can't seem to get any sound out of it? I click the Play
button, and absolutely nothing happens.

It's disappointing, since I actually want to use it :p

Tried it in Chrome and Firefox 3 so far.

Small side note: log me in right after I register! Especially if you don't
require email confirmation. It's a minor one-time irritation, but any friction
you can remove, especially at the beginning of a user's experience, is worth
it.

~~~
lyime
What flash player do you have? You should have 9 or above

~~~
alex_c
WIN 9,0,115,0

according to
[http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn...](http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_15507)

~~~
lyime
hmm. could you try updating it with the latest one?

~~~
alex_c
Upgraded to WIN 10,0,12,36 - works now.

Edit: about 15 minutes into a set, it stopped playing with no explanation,
although the time elapsed changed to NaN:NaN:NaN. Changing tracks or fiddling
with the controls couldn't get it going again, but reloading the page did.

Love the concept, and I'm going to keep using it, but it seems to need a bit
more QA :p

~~~
lyime
our streaming server went down an hour ago. We definitely need to test more.

~~~
jawngee
Why are you using a streaming server? Stream over http, save on a little
infrastructure since the files are generally going to be easily consumable by
most broadband connections due to their small sizes.

------
omarish
I love this.

A couple of things.

1.1 The invite a friend form is broken. 1.2 Could I invite multiple friends
using the same form?

2.1 Why are you searching for music like this at Amazon.com? I think you would
have much better luck using beatport.com.

I just started using this right now; I'll keep you posted when I have more
comments.

Thanks for creating this.

~~~
lyime
What's broken about the invite form? Could you take a screenshot. I have
noticed sometimes if you load the page and click on invite friends too soon it
takes you to a white page with a blank form. This is because the JS hasn't
finished loading. I'll have a fix for that soon.

~~~
omarish
Yeah, that's exactly what was happening. It's working now.

------
mixmax
Looks nice. I'm into this sort of music, so I'll use it for a few days and
tell you if I have any problems/changes/ideas

:-)

------
cmos
I wish you the best of luck. My momentum ran out with the signup form. And I
like electronic music.

But regardless, congratulations! You got something up and running, and the
custom link greeting page was a very nice touch. Please give us updates +
progress reports.

------
jawngee
\- Let me queue up dj sets. \- Give me a desktop player so I can listen
without keeping firefox open. \- Not clear why I have to create an account
since I can't do anything with it other than leave comments

Have you checked out soundcloud?

------
truebosko
I can't seem to type anything on this page: <http://mugasha.com/browse/sets>

The input box has a highlight but when I click on it, I can't type anything at
all.

------
Dilpil
Every single set listed is eurotrance. Many even play the same tracks.
Furthermore, they are all from established DJs. When does the 'upload set'
feature make it in, and truly democratize techno music?

------
fizx
I want a play button on the home page. Doesn't really matter what, but I want
to get something happening without figuring out navigation.

------
daveambrose
Looks like great progress since TC50 Akshay! Going to take the app for a spin
in more detail tomorrow. I'll send feedback.

~~~
daveambrose
Here you go:

1\. Flow of the signup form. I think this was mentioned before, but the
"login" field should be titled "username" since you have it on the login field
to the right.

2\. Can you add a lighter color to the footer? I think it may look better with
three variants of the black on the page.

3\. Can you direct me to a tour of what Mugasha does, rather then pointing me
to text with a "Find out more" pointing me to an "About" page with copy? Give
me a guided tour, show me what it is and why it's useful!

------
swombat
Buy track by track?? Why?

I listen to whole sets, not single tracks... why have a per-track buy button?

~~~
chriskelley
I agree. If I'm listening to a good set I'm much more likely to "buy set" than
I am to take the time to buy them one at a time. "Buy set" option highly
suggested.

~~~
lyime
You can't really buy sets. Sets are basically podcasts that are mixed by DJs
weekly for promotional purpose. Unless we collaborate with sites like Beatport
or Juno to make this happen.

~~~
swombat
I understand that, but as it happens, sets (and mix CDs which are basically
less often released, higher quality sets) are the only thing I listen to as
far as electronic music is concerned.

I do not listen to progressive house in single tracks. That doesn't even begin
to make sense - progressive house is all about the progression across a set.

The input of a DJ in selecting, arranging, mixing the tracks into a set is
what makes electronic music great to me. I would not buy single electronic
music tracks, but I might consider paying for a subscription that would give
me access to vast amounts of sets by the likes of John Digweed, Anthony Pappa,
Sasha, Dave Seaman, Mirel Jarca, Nick Warren, Danny Howells, etc...

Also, worth noting, if I can't download them to my computer in a DRM-free
format, those sets are absolutely worthless to me. However, I'd be very
willing to pay a subscription fee (even with a - reasonably generous - limit
on the number of sets that I can download. In fact, I used to subscribe (for
money) to freshlymixed.com, and all they did was record and republish
Digweed's kiss100 mixes and the Essential Mixes from BBC 1.

~~~
lyime
Thanks for the feedback. I am really happy to hear that you are interested in
those features. A lot of the things you mentioned are planned and will
eventually come into play. We are young right now, but we are definitely here
to grow. Cheers.

------
Tangurena
The blog page gave me a 406 error in internet explorer (ver number
7.0.6001.1800. vista).

~~~
Tangurena
Using XP at home, I can't register, it gives multiple errors, and using the
password recovery page, it gives the following error: _A password reset link
was not sent, you may have enetered an invalid email address._ (typo on
original page).

~~~
Tangurena
Errors when trying to register:

 _Invitation is required_

 _Invitation has already been taken_

I used the link in the original post. If you want to send me an invite, use my
nick/handle at yahoo dot com. I'd also use the same nick/handle as the login
name as I post here with.

------
slig
Somehow, after I click to listen a track, it breaks the "back button". ff3.05
osx

~~~
lyime
Yea, that is a problem. Silly SWFAddress... Its on the list ;)

