Show HN: Tubalr.com, taking advantage of all the great music content on YouTube.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3146182

by cjstewart88 • 15 years ago

98 79 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

www.tubalr.com - any feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

code: https://github.com/cjstewart88/Tubalr

Gertig• 15 years ago

Very cool, good job. Clickable http://www.tubalr.com

pxtreme75• 15 years ago

Very nice indeed. Simple, clean and enjoyable :)

alexholehouse2• 15 years ago

This is really cool - do you think it would be possible (I'm not necessarily suggesting you implement it) to do some basic NLP to get artist/title from YouTube video names, meaning you could search for an artist and see what's available?

Clearly it wouldn't be perfect, but a reasonably consistent format seems to be <title - band>. It might be possible to use a combination of "links to" and video viewcounts to acts as indicators of authenticity? I mean, I've hardly done much research into this, but I know when I look for music on youtube I almost always use those metrics to determine which videos I'm going to listen to, as it were.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

I might could throw in suggestions as your typing your search, so if you started typing "Band of Horses" it would hit last.fm and pull back a handful of their song titles and allow you to quickly choose from those if you wish. Let me know if this is kind of what your talking about or if im way off. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

alexholehouse2• 15 years ago

That would be awesome, and perhaps easier to implement?

bokonon• 15 years ago

Since you're already using the last.fm api, might I suggest you add a simple scrobbling feature. If I were to use Tubalr often I would really want to be able to scrobble all the songs I've listened to through it.

ramanujam• 15 years ago

Nice! Mapping the right and left arrow keys to prev/next would be a small but very useful addition.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Another task on my todo list! Currently the only keyboard control is 'space' to pause :)

edkennedy• 15 years ago

Chrome 14, 10.7 OS X. Was only able to get the first video to play when I went to ONLY. I watched a video in entirety. Clicking a video title or next would not switch videos.

johnnyjustice• 15 years ago

Can you make it so that I can send my friends a URL of the Artist i have chosen on Tubalr

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thats on my list of things to do; however, for now you can do this:

http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes

Also, a simple API I threw together: http://www.tubalr.com/just/Band+of+Horses.json http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Fleet+Foxes.json

Thanks for the feedback!

captn3m0• 15 years ago

also, get a favicon. Nice work

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

I add a little link icon you can mouse over to reveal a textbox with a sharable url. Let me know what you think if your still watching this post!

city412• 15 years ago

AOL Radio used to offer single artist radio stations. Now that AOL Radio is powered by Slacker, they dropped this feature. As far as I know no other internet radio service offers this. Now your tubalr does (at least, in a sense). Which makes it stand out, at least to me. Thanks for the nice site!

EDIT: I see if you reload the site and pick the same artist again, the same videos come up in the same order. Some randomization would go a long ways.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Hmm, randomizing the videos every search would add a little freshness. Thanks for the idea, and I'm glad your digging my app!

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Just pushed this to prod about an hour ago, thanks for the suggestion!

city412• 15 years ago

Awesome! Looks like I've got a new radio station :)

jianshen• 15 years ago

I love how mature these api mashups are becoming. Formal deployment process and maintainable code. Well done!

zalew• 15 years ago

I did something similar, but, well, different ;) congrats on shipping, mine got stuck in the 'almost finished' stage.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks man, I find that to be one of the most difficult things when playing with a new idea, actually sticking with it until its "finished".

kittxkat• 15 years ago

Pretty cool and simple. How do you get the "similiar Artist" feature?

Also, that is a pretty great font for your logo. For anyone else interested he uses "Pacifico": http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/pacifico

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks, glad ya like it. As far as how the similar search works, heres how I do it. First I hit last.fm and grab the top 20 similar artist, then I simply hit YouTube's API and grab the top video for each artist and throw all the videos into one playlist.

joshmlewis2• 15 years ago

It's clean and simple and maybe useful but the only problem I see is it replaying the same popular songs over and over. I put in Mumford and Sons and Little Lion Man was in the playlist several times over just because it's one of their most popular songs and there are variations and what not. If you could put in some kind of function that doesn't show videos more than once or twice that'd be handy.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

I agree this can be a bit annoying, some artists/bands have better results than others. I'll look into sorting out videos that appear as duplicates and replacing them with more videos. Thanks for the feedback.

joshmlewis2• 15 years ago

No problem. Do you have any way to weed out covers and other possibilities? I haven't seen any come up but just curious how you implemented it or if it is even a problem at all.

kvnn2• 15 years ago

This is absolutely perfect for me. Thanks!

citricsquid• 15 years ago

Needs something that signals it's processing when I enter a value, I figured it was broken as it takes ~5 seconds to respond.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Another on the todo this, should be an easy one. Thanks for the feedback.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Just finished this about an hour ago and pushed it to prod, thanks again for the suggestion.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

Wow, this is wonderful. I have always been shocked at how commonly people Youtube for music and how much better that system could be. You've chosen a great problem to solve.

Feedback:

• I love the Similar button.

• Perhaps the links to the videos could be outline or something, right now it's hard to distinguish them from eachother because it's a mass of text. I mean of course the design of this is very minimalistic and the main focus here is the function, but for now that would be my main design criticism.

• You should filter for the word "with" preceding an artist's name in the video title. Also perhaps "and", or any sort of list of names after an occurrence of "with," because I got one video for the query "Avi Buffalo" that was "Look Out for My Love Jeff Tweedy with Avi Buffalo, Solid sound August 15 2010," which is of course not Avi Buffalo at all.

EDIT: Also, the ability to search while still keeping the current song playing at the top would be nice.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

I agree with the playlist being a litte hard to read, I'll do some research and figure out if theres a better way to show the playlist.

As far as filtering out videos with the keywords "with" and "and", I'll have to do some testing with this and see if the results are better. My concern is what happens when a user searches for something like "Coheed and Cambria", tons of the videos would be filtered out. I guess I could only filter out "with" and "and" if its not in the original search.

Can you elaborate on how you think searching while listening should work?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give me some feedback.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

Sorry, I just saw this. Searching while listening would basically work how you have now but if there's already a video playing the system wouldn't stop it and change it to the first result for the new search, until the user clicks on a link in the results.

kvnn2• 15 years ago

Where are the javascript and css files in the repo? I can make a good and quick pull request for you if they get included / I find them.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

public/javascripts and public/stylesheets :)

robinwarren• 15 years ago

Very nice, a good idea cleanly implemented. One suggestion would be to query amazon recommendations for similar artists to help work out what to play. This is only because then you could also possibly allow people to buy or add things to their wish list from your site. If you were thinking about revenue that is.

Good work.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Good idea, I'll look into that, I've been thinking about putting a link to either Amazon or iTunes for those interested in purchasing music. Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad ya like it!

kurt_• 15 years ago

I like it, maybe show the thumbnails for the next videos !

tangentcity2• 15 years ago

Cool. My first impression is that this is also a good tool to get news on artists - because the first band I looked up was the Stone Roses; and I was gobsmacked (as the English say) that the first hit was of their press conference announcing their reunion. Big news to me, and way more important than rewatching an old video!

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thats pretty sweet, for the hell of it I've searched stupid shit such as "people falling" or "lol". Glad ya like it!

helen842000• 15 years ago

Love it! The simplicity is the winning factor. I can see that I'll be using it a lot!

tbdr• 15 years ago

another similar site is http://fermademuzica.ro/ (.ro only) that has playlist, thumbnails, similar artists, top songs

subb• 15 years ago

Great! Pandora(-ish) for the rest of us.

Something you might want to address : I've searched for The Prodigy, and I got "Amanda Bynes' 2010 Maxim Cover Shoot". I'm not sure where that came from!

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks! Ya, sometimes unrelated videos will slip in, I'm always thinking of ways I can mitigate this. I'm sure you didnt mind the Cover Shoot video though ;)

Geee• 15 years ago

Thanks!! I have been waiting for this. There's lots of stuff on Youtube that isn't anywhere else. Suggestions: Let me search for Youtube playlists. Somehow, songs could be connected in a network of similar songs by mapping the playlists. Also, let me create link for the current playlist/song.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Hey Gee, I plan on adding an easy way to get the url of the current playlist so you can share with friends. The URL's currently exist, just no way to easily copy them for sharing.

Example URLS: http://www.tubalr.com/just/Muse OR http://www.tubalr.com/similar/Jack+Johnson

jaredsohn3• 15 years ago

Songza.fm allowed you to listen to music from YouTube in 2007, although lacked the Pandora-like features. In 2010, YouTube blocked their use of the API.

Interestingly, they pivoted into a 'better Pandora' where they license music, allow playing similar songs, but also let users hand-pick songs for playlists (that for licensing reasons can only be played by other people).

http://evolver.fm/2011/03/30/songza-attempts-to-reinvent-net...

wtildesley2• 15 years ago

Noticed the footer overlaps the playlist: http://i.imgur.com/xjUxo.png

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks for the tip, what resolution are you running?

wtildesley2• 15 years ago

1280 x 800

jtheory• 15 years ago

This is pretty cool! I use YouTube for music all the time -- I'm not quite sure. I keep finding music apps that aren't quite right, and don't have what I want to hear (or not set up how I want to use them), and I end up back at YouTube, which indeed sucks for this.

No useful advice at the moment, beyond a vague suggestion to revisit the domain name choice (if somehow you're not wedded to this one by now, and you see many other folks with reactions like mine). I'm still not quite sure of the intended reading, but first I saw a slightly jumbled "tubgirl"(!), then I saw "two-baller"; now I'm stuck with a reference to "tubal" (as in tubal ligation? ...) with a flickr-style ending. Maybe just put an "about" link somewhere that gives a hint?

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

I'm surprised your the first one to bring up the name, I've had friends question me about it... but no worries, I have a reasoning/meaning behind it.

I originally liked the word Tubular(used mostly in the 80's, or by people mocking the 80's to describe something 'awesome' or 'excellent' ie, good.); however, that domain was taken. Then I started thinking about variations of the word, and went with Tubalr. I went with this version of the word because it has the word Tuba(a musical instrument) in it and in my head sounded cool :P. So with that in mind, I thought it was cool to have a name that came from a word meaning "awesome", "excellent", or "good" AND have a musical instrument in the name.

Hope that clears up the name a tad bit. Oh, I pronounce the word something like: Tube-u-ler

tangentcity2• 15 years ago

"Tube" in French (from France) also means "a hit" on the radio, a top-40 song. Plus, Tubalr has great Michael Oldfield resonance (Tubular Bells was the first record I ever bought). Ace name.

jaypreneur2• 15 years ago

I personally read it as tubular. So no confusions for me, just to throw that out there. I like the name.

jaredsohn3• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, it may be against YouTube's Terms of Service since it strips the video from the content. http://evolver.fm/2011/03/25/how-youtube-radio-disappeared-f...

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

It appears that the app your talking about only played the audio from the video, stripping the actual video out and any ads that might have shown up. They also used YouTube in their name and where making money off the app. I'm not sure what Terms of Service I've violated, I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks for the heads up.

jaredsohn3• 15 years ago

I think you're okay; I posted that a little hastily since it was linked to from the songza article that I posted elsewhere, but as you noted, your app doesn't have those same problems.

The one thing that I am confused about is why the old songza disappeared. If the only problem was that they weren't showing videos, they easily could have started doing so, and I remember that at least for awhile they were doing that.

Wikipedia says "However, in late January 2010 Songza had to put their music streaming service on hold due to problems with YouTube's API (which is what the site uses to play back songs), YouTube blocking the site from using its API, presumably because YouTube could be sued for supporting a free music service without adverts[citation needed]." It looks like Songza had ads, so maybe that was the issue. Regardless, you may find reading up about Songza interesting; TechCrunch reports they were acquired for high six figures to low seven figures.

canadiancreed• 15 years ago

Loving the similiar feature. Already found three bands that I had never heard of before that have tunes that are right up my alley. Very nice work.

One thing and I dont' know if it's possible, but is there a way to have it where if the video is flagged as no longer there, it's not returned in the results? I get about a 25% to 50% rate where the video is listed, but doesn't play.

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Awesome, glad you're enjoying it! As far as filtering out the videos that dont allow embedment, I should really look into that and eliminate those out of the playlist. Thanks!

foxhop• 15 years ago

Nice work, I dig it

rshm• 15 years ago

Nice and clutter free.

bkyan3• 15 years ago

This is awesome! I am trying to embed tubalr within a browser-based desktop environment and have a pair of (hopefully) quick requests:

1. I'd like to be able to pass in something via the URL that allows me to set the wmode of the video to be opaque or transparent. This is to prevent z-index conflicts when I have two separate tubalr iframes that overlap each other when I drag those iframes around.

2. For the initial video that tubalr loads, I'd like to be able to pass in something via the URL that controls whether the first video autoplays or not. This is to prevent multiple videos from playing at the same time when I have multiple tubalr iframes on a page.

Example Interface: http://beta.mindcast.com/ui/4kug9iozh54y

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback and interest! The YouTube player is pretty finicky with z-indexing, so I'll need to play around with what your wanting and see how I could pull it off. As far as setting an option for auto play, that should be fairly easy to throw in. If you'd like to talk more about some features your interested in seeing feel free to contact me via cjstewart AT gmail DOT com

bkyan3• 15 years ago

Oh, the z-indexing worked for me with the following update to the parameters of your swfobject:

var params = { allowScriptAccess: "always", bgcolor: "#cccccc", allowFullScreen: true, wmode: "opaque" };

mariust• 15 years ago

this rocks, I wanted to make something like this in the past but the idea died I hope you get a lot of users. What I would do is add an auto complete like the one on youtube.com just to make things a lot simpler Good luck

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks man. I'm definitely wanting to add some type of suggestions as you type or auto-completing.

_ud4a2• 15 years ago

very nice, simple and sleek design. I really like it.

the only downside i see which i noticed other people mentioning as well is when i search for let's say "Coldplay" the first 2-3 songs are the same which would require me to play next. it's a lot simpler than the Youtube playlist so once you add the playlist functionality and some algorithm to get rid of duplicates it'll be a very useful service.

How are you planning to monetize this? or are you doing this just as a hobby?

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Glad you like it. After having duplicates brought up several times over the weekend I think I'm going to make that my next task to tackle.

As far as monetizing, well... I have no clue. I started this app for practice and so I'd have something to show when I went for my first job interview, having just graduated. I messed around with adding a "Buy This Song" link that would send you to the Amazon MP3; however, I removed it because it was just more clutter I wasn't interested in, specially seeing it wasnt getting used as I thought it would. I'm open for any suggestions if ya have any :)

_ud4a2• 15 years ago

for starters i would keep it ad free. but once it picks up momentum and you are getting a lot of visitors, i would maybe incorporate a video advertisement in between songs. so maybe after 5 songs it would display a video/audio advertisement of some sort etc.

kikaider05• 15 years ago

I love using this when I'm at work and have told many co-workers about it

cjstewart8831• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot man!

fezzl• 15 years ago

Really neat! Can you add a "next" button though?

jaypreneur2• 15 years ago

Freaking awesome.

Show HN: Tubalr.com, taking advantage of all the great music content on YouTube.

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