Show HN: Blynde – A new way to listen music on Youtube (user:demo, pwd:123456)

http://blynde.com

by jeremylevy • 13 years ago

118 92 13 years ago

blynde.com

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Demo account - Nickname: demo - Password: 123456

squidi2• 13 years ago

Overall it's really good. I'm going to have this running in a tab for a while :)

Some thoughts: - A couple of times the audio dropped. Each time I noticed the mute button was engaged and even unmuting the audio did not come back. Not sure what happened. - The progress bar caused a usability issue for me. It's so instinctual to hover at the bottom of the video and I didn't realise why nothing was responding. - Is it possible to have thumbnails for the videos in the playlist? - How do I scroll in the playlist? I could not figure that out.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks, for this ! Can you tell me your OS / Browser version ? You think video thumbnails should replace album covers ? You don't see the black scrollbar next to playlist ?

squidi2• 13 years ago

Windows 7 with Chrome (Version 28.0.1500.52 m - latest version). I cannot see the scroll bar: http://imgur.com/bkHWj9d

Maybe album covers are better in general. It's just that on the OK Computer playlist most of the videos were imitations and it would have been easier to see if I could preview them (http://en-us.blynde.com/#!ok-computer)

Good luck with it!

jpadilla_• 13 years ago

CSS and Javascript don't seem to load, getting a 404 on those.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Fixed. Thanks ! :)

dombili• 13 years ago

Same thing happened to me on Chrome. Works fine on Nightly.

teddyknox• 13 years ago

I love the app. I dislike its current name. Remembering that/typing it correctly will be hard.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! I expect other opinions to change the name.

phy6• 13 years ago

Just a black screen with a black cloud for me.. Am I supposed to click something?

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Sorry ! :( You are not supposed to click something. Can you tell me your OS / Browser version ?

fragmede2• 13 years ago

Same here.

I've got 'click-to-play' enabled - flash doesn't start running until I click on the flash object - and it looks like you've cleverly hidden it so there's no object for me to click on to enable it.

If I disable that the app loads fine.

lowboy2• 13 years ago

Same here, and like fragmede I've got click-to-play enabled as well. I'm on Chrome stable, Win 7x64

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks for the report. I will inspect this.

sdcooke• 13 years ago

Possibly like me you have plugins disabled - it looks like it doesn't start until you enable Flash.

JoshTriplett• 13 years ago

Same problem here. When I read in the comments that it used YouTube, I expected it to support YouTube's HTML5 player.

dubcanada2• 13 years ago

I think you should get a new logo, the "cloud" logo is already used by tons of companies, and this doesn't really have anything to do with clouds or cloud storage. Regardless of that though it seems very well done. I'm a little confused with the top thing. It's on US I click it and it goes to UK. Though it looks like a select menu.

When you click HD, what happens? It would be cool if you could select the levels like you can on youtube (240 to what ever)

dubcanada2• 13 years ago

Also, when you right click on a video it pauses it. I was trying to find a way to get the youtube URL.

citricsquid• 13 years ago

click on the Youtube logo, bottom right of the player, goes for all embedded Youtube videos.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback ! When you click HD, I order the player to load all the videos in the best quality available.

_mhr_• 13 years ago

jeremylevy, I had a similar idea (a music service based on YouTube), but you executed it far better than I could have. Bravo!

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Hey, thanks you ! :)

shrig94• 13 years ago

This is absolutely awesome. Well done.

MostAwesomeDude2• 13 years ago

Sadly, I seem to be unable to convince it to load entire albums, just individual songs. However, it does load unofficial videos, which is quite cool. I'm guessing that it runs a search without being logged in, and takes the first result which is shorter than 30min or so?

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback ! Yes, you are right. I build blynde to specifically load track not full album. If I allow load entire albums, "artist panel", "your top" and so on became without interest, no ?

bbq• 13 years ago

This was a nice touch. Caught me off guard at first but I understood immediately. Good work.

MostAwesomeDude2• 13 years ago

I honestly normally load up a bunch of full albums of progressive rock from the days of yesteryear and listen to two or three throughout the workday. It doesn't make sense to listen to just one song on those albums, and so I normally don't. I acknowledge that my music consumption habits are not normal, though. :3

nudetayne• 13 years ago

I made the mistake of not opening a new tab and was unable to navigate away from your site using the back button. :(

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Yes, currently I use hashbang instead of html5 history api. I will change this in future update. Thanks.

itan1um• 13 years ago

Really great interface, nice one.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! Proud you liked it.

bwangtx• 13 years ago

Fantastic! A couple of thoughts: one is whether the lyrics can be shown and synchronized along with singing and with on/off feature, and the other is whether the video can be turned off for office users.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! Good idea for the lyrics :) ! If I want to comply with the YouTube's API terms of use I can't turn off video. Sorry :(

Amarandei• 13 years ago

Really nice work. I love that the HD button stays active and loads all videos in HD. I also like the arrows shortcuts for next and previous video. Makes it much easier to skip tracks.

One minor recommendation: when the video is in full screen, the full screen arrows from the icon should be pointed inwards. Just being picky :)

Great Youtube implementation. Congrats.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! I keep your idea for the full screen icon. :)

einarlove• 13 years ago

Will you post this on your github profile soon? Would love to see how you approached this.

A suggestion is to be able to search for playlists to.

monkmartinez• 13 years ago

I don't say this lightly, but this is fucking awesome!!

Wondering how hard it would be to implement a function that would search for all the variations of a particular song. Lets say I want to see all the remix versions of Lykke Li - Little Bit, as an example...

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! How do you see this "remix function" ? Directly in the search bar ? In the playlist ?

stephengillie• 13 years ago

Cool service. I'll have to use this instead of Youtube's auto-generated playlists.

I'm not sure if it's a bug but...I was streaming a local radio station and searched for the artist I was listening to. Blynde search autosuggested the song to which I was already listening (it's a very popular song). In the playlist, this same song is showing up every 2-3 songs -- not even remixes of the same tune, but the same original mix of the song.

I'm on the 2nd time around of this song, and I'll hear it again in ~3 minutes, ~9 minutes, ~12 minutes, and ~18 minutes.

Edit: re-searching (searching again) seems to have cleared this up.

lquist• 13 years ago

This thread is a great counterexample to the argument that HN always disses Show HNs.

Constructive criticism: Overall, great work! A "new" way to listen to music on Youtube is not nearly descriptive enough. I don't want a new way to listen to music on Youtube, I want a better way. And much more importantly, how is it better? A landing page would do wonders for you. But again, awesome work!

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! You are right for the description. I will see for the landing page.

qqg33• 13 years ago

A "new" way may well be a "better" way, you're picking at straw fella. What do you think Apple said when they introduced the iPhone. "This is a new phone experience." Likewise, "This is a new YouTube experience".

fragmede2• 13 years ago

I looked into doing a similar project, but just FYI you might want to take a read through youtube's TOS: http://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

Particularly section 4, General Use of the Service—Permissions and Restrictions.

What you've got is way cool though.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks. I use the Youtube API. I read Youtube's TOS, YouTube API's TOS : https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms and Branding Guidelines https://developers.google.com/youtube/branding. Please, tell me if you think I didn't comply with any of this .

chacham15• 13 years ago

I think hes talking about 4D in his link. You appear to have no way to monetize such a thing due to that clause. Its really beautiful though, good job!

genofon2• 13 years ago

maybe he could sell it to websites that wants to show their youtube channel in a cool way, vevo has somehting similar www.vevo.com

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Yes, of course, but money was definitely not my goal when I built this. :)

mandeepj2• 13 years ago

Really great piece of work. UI is neatly polished.

Youtube's recommendation list sucks. They only auto-play your lists not their recommendation lists. That sucks even more.

It will be great if you can add channels like house music, electronic, trans etc then you can pose threat to Spotify :-)

I had same idea as your's but for android. My friends disagreed with me saying it won't work but I will still do it :-)

We can use youtube as a database to create great interfaces which suck less to listen to music in pain less ways.

Would you mind sharing your tech stack?

Again, great job. Execution done with brilliance

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! I will see for channel :). For, tech stack: DEBIAN, PHP, NGINX, MYSQL, REDIS, JQUERY, JQUERY-UI, BACKBONE.JS.

mandeepj2• 13 years ago

Thanks for sharing details. Did you use REDIS to store user playlists, search history and other user data?

cwp• 13 years ago

Nice work! The UI is simple and focussed on the music, feels fast and responsive.

One thing I can't easily tell, though, it why you built it. It was obviously a lot of effort; what feature was YouTube missing that made the effort worthwhile?

scrapcode2• 13 years ago

I really enjoy the creativity and the insight that goes behind applications such as this where you can't immediately tell "why?"- Might not sound like it makes any sense, but at first sight I really couldn't tell you "why" I have had this running in a tab since I saw this link.

It's beautiful. It grabs exactly what I want. It works, and it works quickly, with minimal effort. I wouldn't say that it fixes any one problem that I have had, rather it makes one of my life's conveniences a little better. That is cool, and I think this industry could make large impacts thinking the same way.

dvt• 13 years ago

Reminds me of http://8tracks.com/ -- you should definitely add SoundCloud support. Also you should let people make their own playlists/vote on playlists/etc.

Cool idea. I'm not sure how you could monetize it, though.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! For SoundCloud and playlist support, why not. Money was definitely not my goal when I build this. I build this, firstly for me, because I love listen songs on YouTube and I wanted to improve my experience. :)

hemmer2• 13 years ago

Awesome, very nice interface! One thing I've been looking for for a while is last.fm support (while watching youtube videos). Any chance that could be possible?

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! I use last.fm for biography, and artist image. What features would you like to see ?

hemmer2• 13 years ago

Really only to be able to scrobble the tracks you listen too. For example other music services (Grooveshark / Hypem) let you connect your account and keep track of everything you listen to.

kartikrustagi• 13 years ago

Loved it

ing33k• 13 years ago

Pretty cool . looks like iTunes link is not being updated when I change songs.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks. I will inspect for this !

quackerhacker• 13 years ago

Great Stack!

Your UI is nice, clean, and awesome! I like your account sign up pop up and proposed keyboard shortcuts.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! Glad you like it. :)

tixzdk• 13 years ago

Great job! Seen tons of similar services, but this is really polished. I already signed up, but was looking for a way to create my own playlists. I'd use this all the time if it had custom playlists

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! Many people ask me to add playlist support, so I will try to add it in a future update. :)

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Fantastic - I mainly use YouTube for music and this is way, way better than the standard YT interface in almost every possible respect.

Cavils: I would like to sign in with my Google account (because it's important for me to know that the NSA understands my taste in music), and I can't find a way to search on the channels of YouTube users who have especially good music collections - ie I search by a channel name I know and like, but get nothing or the wrong stuff.

Edit: BTW, I'm also not sure about clicking in the video causing it to pause, but I can see how some people would like that.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks :) ! If you search for a specific channel, you get nothing or wrong stuff ? Hum... It seems that it's a bug. I will inspect this. Thanks for the report.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Oh, also you might want to cross-reference search results with Youtube. For example, I like a technoa rtist called Orion, so I search for a favorite track using 'orion cynabs'. But I also get a lot of results to do with Orion rockets and some pop music kid who uses the same stage name. YouTube is better at presenting recommendations from the same artist rather than just going by name.

glitch273• 13 years ago

Someone showed a similar service a few months back: youfm.org But great job on the front end development. The UI is slick.

Mithaldu2• 13 years ago

A big issue for me: There is no obvious way to get the link for the youtube video that's currently playing.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

You can click on the Youtube logo, bottom right of the player, goes for all embedded Youtube videos. :)

Mithaldu2• 13 years ago

Not very helpful, as that stops the video playing and necessitates me fiddling around to copy the url of the new tab and close it and restart the video.

Just make the title of the video a link to the youtube page.

qqg33• 13 years ago

Any embedded video ever for Youtube, click that little logo in the corner.

Oculus• 13 years ago

Really cool interface, awesome job.

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! :)

FreshCode• 13 years ago

Great! Please don't stop playing when I search for something.

qqg33• 13 years ago

It says "Edit my profil" everywhere instead of "Edit my profile".

Really cool service though dude, I shall be using it if it stays live.

shitlord• 13 years ago

This is the coolest thing I've seen on HN all month! Discovering stuff by genre or even a suggestion feature would make this even better. Great work!

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! I will see for the "discover touch". :)

hardwaresofton• 13 years ago

Is awesome, as everyone has said.

It's like minimal groove shark... Just a few minutes ago I was thinking of building something over groove shark to get a similar minimalistic interface, but TOSes would probably prevent that.

Well done on this project again though, very nice

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Thanks ! Proud you liked it :)

grizzy• 13 years ago

As others have said it's a nice interface. Good job!

gnus• 13 years ago

Curious. How long did it take you to build this?

jeremylevy32• 13 years ago

Several weeks for the first version (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543955). Another month for the current release. :)

MayankJ• 13 years ago

nice work! do you plan to add support for liking/disliking a song or adding it to a playlists? That would be helpful.

tunnuz• 13 years ago

This is something similar to another project called SounDojo (http://soundojo.com/webapp/)

reledi• 13 years ago

It's not working for me - I'm just getting a dark background with a cloud logo in the centre. Running Chrome v28 on Ubuntu.

Show HN: Blynde – A new way to listen music on Youtube (user:demo, pwd:123456)

Related Stories