After this sad announcement, I've revisited Earbits. I love the listening experience as I did before.
Sure some technical details where a show stopper for me, i.e. no email account, gamification/social currency had no effect on me and the lack of a proper mobile app.
But I overcame those obstacles: I’ve created a Facebook account for Earbits and I was automatically recording the playlists during the day so I could listen to them during my commute.
I think that the loneliness was far more important.
I never met or connected with other users that were listening Earbits too (I’m in London, UK).
Maybe the traditional listening radio experience was missing; with a DJ, a voice, a brand (Earbits) we can stick on.
It’s one thing asking people to connect with an artist, but clearly it’s another to create an Earbits community.
That said I’ve discovered :
- extraordinary artists
It’s one thing to help listeners to discover new artists, it’s another to help them to discover good new artists! To me that’s the curation miracle :-)
- extraordinary founders
I’ve been inspired by your journey like no other. I really wish you the best for the aftermath of 16 June. :-)
What a thoughtful comment, poub. Indeed, we wanted to get to having user profiles, playlists and other ways to interact with the community. That was the problem. We knew what we needed to build for our experience to be more sticky, we just didn't have the resources to do enough of it fast enough. The good news is, whatever we decide to do next can only be about 10x easier than what we just attempted. ;)
Actually teaching people the meaning of URL never been a big issue to me : they’ve always been able to understand easily by analogy with their home address that a page needs to live at a precise location.
In fact even the naming of a file and the folder structure never been an issue to teach.
Hidding an address does look like spam, not honest, cheating by design because the user doesn't know where s/he is without digging (clicking/taping once or more).
As this information was there effortless, if it become an effort to find out, then people are not going to do it.
One may think that information was therefore not needed on the first place.
One may think twice and say : an information visible effortless might be needed because of its effortless nature. It’s there and part of the context we use things.
By example it’s needed to reassure the usage of something.
Why not starting to hide signs on the roads then. After all driverless cars don’t really need them and for everybody they distract the attention of the drivers.
I can't wait for the WWDC where Apple will allow all developers to submit their app following of course meaningful guidelines that fit a car user interface.
Then Apple can act as a gateway and the automakers cannot put a veto on which app goes to the car dashboard or not.
I think we can learn from the fiasco of Renault trying to create a plateform with their R-link system. In this case the car manufacturer does the filtering of the apps but the rewards are low for the developers :
- antique system : android already 3-4 years old!
- no access to the car data : it's like making a smartphone app without being able to use the camera in your app. So as the user experience designer you're loosing very important data about the context of the user.
- low number of users : not many cars are sold with this system.
(Carplay do not have many users yet but has much more potential of growth than R-link).
I think it’s a great opportunity. Shoutcast has a greater installed base than Icecast. But more importantly a really passionate user base.
However there is broken feature by design on ALL those streaming services: they stop for whatever reason.
As a listener it’s a terrible experience. It’s alaways when you start listening something you really like that it stops.
And you could think it stops because I try to listen on the mobile, so that’s normal. NO it stops even at home on your desktop. When you start listening a stream, you’re 100% of one thing : it will stop but NOT when you decide to stop it.
But it wouldn’t be that hard to build a system that actually use a better caching system and pretend to be live instead of trying to stream a live content.
Listeners already grasped the idea of listening events which are not “live” thanks to podcasts.
In fact what is streamed nowadays is mainly pre-recorded songs/stories. So the notion of “live” is absolutely not necessary unless you’re broadcasting sports or once-in-a-lifetime events.
And then TV / FM does a much better job.
That said, Shoutcast services are mainly non-live type of streams anyways.
So there is a great opportunity to buy the installed base of Shoutcast creators and listeners and Winamp userbase (pro-anti itunes).
The main idea is you change the sofwtare to make it work even when there is no internet connection.
A better caching system needs to be made on the device itself and on the server side.
In terms of monetization, it’s easy: audio adverts have already proved financial success.
It does work only because of their repetition AND their relation with the audience.
The best example of audio adverts are the songs with high rotation counts: they are the adverts of the big labels.
Here you got a system of dedicated listeners that you can target repetitively, endlessly, fairly (you don’t have to stream blocks of minutes of adverts)
Audio ads on webcast radio start to catch up with Radionomy systems by example.
AOL proved they couldn’t leverage that community. I don’t think Microsoft will do any better job as their main focus will be “integrate”.
A strategy that rarely works.
Of course “a non-stop stream even without internet connection“ can happen without buying Shoutcast & Winamp, but what a fantastic opportunity and shortcut for those who can.
Oh man, Shoutcast brings me fond memories. There used to be some very good (albeit illegal) show providers like EveryShowSucks (ESS). The nice thing about the shoutcast model, is that you could just tune into a channel and consume whatever was available (knowing it was going to be good).
It is something that is not available in the Netflix-es, and Hulus of the world (and something that Cable still has).
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For those in the same boat: the BBC article talks of a design where maglev trains, starting in city centers, accelerate to a few hundreds km/h and then get picked up by a huge flying wing that swoops on it like a bird of prey. Later, much farther away, that flying wing will put the trains back on a maglev track, without ever landing.
That truly is a toy for boys (as in "looks cool and dangerous") unlike the Hyperloop ("it may or may not be dangerous, but you can't see that, so who cares?")
This is an interesting point of view and that it’s not the first time I’ve heard it (especially from indian students who were wondering if they’ve made the good choice coming in the UK instead of France).
However the only trouble on those stories is they were describing France a bit too much like California.
That said many foreigners usually do see opportunities when locals are just blind.
So if there is any attractiveness to France seen by Indian people who believe they can leverage those opportunities, this should be welcomed and probably rewarded too.
Yes, its not a walk in the park. If you seek opportunity, even in desert, you would find riches. Its not a hunch, I have carefully compared, what I want, and what I would be getting there, at a particular university.
Yep. To me those kind of techniques are a warning bell telling me : this website is not worth visiting. I left immediately. If it's such a great essay, it will be repeated somehow, so I will not miss it. At the minima the comments here are usually enough if not more interesting.
I used to hate IAP, especially after my nephew spent hundreds of real money into golds dragons or whatever.
However I changed my point of view as fremium+IAP does solve the problem of being able to try the real app.
From a developer point of view it's only one app to maintain. If further features are added, you have to pay to unlock them.
Also developing a new version of an app always been a headache for a developer : without IAP, the only way is to create a new bundle so you're back to square one when you have to maintain several versions of the same app (which Apple forbid anyways in their TOS).
On any case we never really owned any software anyway. E.g. our copy of Microsoft Office always been a licence from Microsoft allowing us to use their software.
So "App as a service" doesn't seems a bad model and in-app-purchase fit that model nicely.
Now the real problem is the security and as my iPad is used by the whole family, I deactivate the IAP on the settings and only reactivate when I need it.
If somebody want a purchase, s/he need to ask me first. It's not ideal but does one thing I love : it kills the "instant gratification" process. And that only save a lot of money to the whole family!
