4 ms·
Ask YC: feedback on my music recommendation app (round 2)
http://theperceptron.com/
So, I submitted this about six weeks ago and it got a well-deserved trashing (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=293699).
I've spent a bunch of time on the site's algorithm, plus there is a load of new stuff: playlists, automatic recommendations, links to get more information about artists.
I'd love to get some more feedback from the HN community.
- pedalpete 18y agowell, as somebody who has been in this space before and left it to pursue other music opportunities, I think you're off to a great start mary. I wasn't able to get music to play on quite a few tracks (the majority actually), but without any sort of progress bar on the download, it wouldn't be apparent to most people what is happening, so I think that would be one of the first things to do. I didn't go through your code, but have you hidden the flash player somewhere? or are you using a javascript player? Whatever, I think showing a player inline (kinda like you are now, but with more controls) would benefit you. At the least, you need a 'progress bar', and the 'hear' should be linked to start the track too, as that is what I tried clicking on, not the play button. I'll be keeping an eye on your progress mary. Best of luck to you.
- maryrosecook 18y agoYes, I agree with you. The player does need a loading progress indicator. I also need to be more aggressive about culling tracks that are hosted on slow servers, or have been removed. I use JavaScript to control a little offscreen flash player. Thanks so much for your feedback.
- Dilpil 18y agoWhat it really needs is more data, anything obscure and you get no recommendations.
- maryrosecook 18y agoNiche music is one of my main focuses. For obvious reasons, the site is is good for the sections of music I like. Could you tell me what genres/niches/bands you were trying? I'd love to expand the index to include them if I can. Thanks very much for the feedback.
- STHayden 18y agoI couldn't get results for Mike Viola, Candy Butchers, Fountains of Wayne, Julia Nunes, Ghosts & Liars and The Salteens cheers!
- maryrosecook 18y agoI'll look into these guys. Thanks!
- Dilpil 18y agoDance music
- rockstar9 18y agoI like your site. It has potential. How bout include some album art next to the artist descriptions? I think you can also UI redesign. Starting having some buttons and graphics. good luck!
- maryrosecook 18y agoYep, album art is a real nice idea. The UI is something I am thinking really hard about. My skills are in coding, not UI/design, so I'm learning as I go. Thanks for the feedback.
- yesimahuman 18y agoIt's really cool. I don't love the colors though, I'm not a big red fan (while I wear a Man U jersey...oh well:))
- mstefff 18y agogot 2 (way off) recommendations for my favorite band. my opinion is that this space is wayyyy too crowded (huge players involved) and to take any market share seems impossible.
- maryrosecook 18y agoWhich band was that?
- mstefff 18y agodream theater
- mstefff 18y agoit's a rare genre but i've used several music sites and recommendation engines that had spot-on choices. (last.fm, itunes, pandora, amazon, and that spiderweb-like thing i can never remember the name of, etc)
- maryrosecook 18y agoYep, only two recommendations for a quite famous band is not great. I'll put cock/prog-rock on the list of missing under-represented genres. Thanks.
- tptacek 18y agoThe Postal Service: Amazon: Death Cab, The Shins iTunes: Imogen Heap, Feist, M.I.A. Perceptron: The Knife, Dntel, Bright Eyes Eric B and Rakim: Amazon: EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy iTunes: EPMD, Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One Perceptron: No recommendations Fleetwood Mac: Amazon: Journey, Bob Seger, Steve Miller iTunes: Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, The Doobie Brothers Perceptron: Vetiver, The Beach Boys, The Everly Brothers Sepultura: Amazon: Pantera, Slayer, Metallica iTunes: Soulfly, Machine Head, Fear Factory Perceptron: Moonspell, Soulfly (x3), Fear Factory In none of these head-to-heads does Perceptron do the best job (the Dntel pick ties it with Amazon's Death Cab pick). I can intuitively guess that iTunes will do a better job of recommending for me than your website, because millions of people's buying habits make iTunes smarter every day. It's not just that this space is crowded; it's that it structurally resists your entrance. You need features, lots of them, compelling features, or this isn't going anywhere. Also, you're trivially XSS-able: http://theperceptron.com/recommendation/artist/h%3Cscript%3Ealert http://theperceptron.com/recommendation/artist/h%3Cscript%3E...('hi');%3C%2fscript%3E?h=true Finally: "astute music recommendations" is a terrible tagline. It doesn't convey value. It tells me why you like your code, but not why your code matters to me.
- maryrosecook 18y agoI see what you mean about the tagline. Thanks very much for doing those side-by-side comparisons. I am not a fan of any of the bands you entered, but, to my ill-informed eye, the recommendations don't seem too bad. Which ones were off the mark? And thanks for the heads-up on the XSS exploit. Will need to sanitise my URLs more thoroughly. Thanks very much for your feedback.
- tptacek 18y agoPostal Service: Indie pop; you did fine, but not better than the majors. Eric B and Rakim: seminal NYC hip hop; guessing classic hip hop is a blind spot in your data set. Fleetwood Mac: mainstream classic AOR; Vetiver? An indie folk band? The Beach Boys are similar only as contemporaries --- also, not a very useful recommendation, since there are 3 different Beach Boys your recommendation could be keying on, two of them execrable. Sepultura: insider-y mainstream metal; you did fine, I guess, but not better than the majors. In two cases your recommendations are bad, and in two cases they're just not excellent. But if any online music retailer will do this for me, why would I use your service? To listen to some of the music online? You should consider: * Allowing people to upload their entire iTunes library files so you can analyze them and make targeted recommendations to stuff they already own. * Allowing people to vote on the recommendations, or doing something "social" (gag) to let people adopt recommendations or biases from tastemakers who care about this stuff. * Link to or repurpose content from Wikipedia to give more background for the artists you're displaying. It still seems like this app is really just 10% of what Last.fm or Pandora already does.
- rksprst 18y agoI don't like the simple, all text interface. I think an app like this needs a clean but graphical interface. Take a look at this screenshot: http://skitch.com/rksprst/3t9q/the-perceptron-astute-music-recommendations http://skitch.com/rksprst/3t9q/the-perceptron-astute-music-r... Am I supposed to understand any of the text there? It looks like a bunch of random works thrown together. No human will ever read that. No offense but this display reminds me of those "crack/serial" search engines that just list a bunch of random programs in alphabetical order just for seo. I think you have a neat idea. But please get a designer.
- maryrosecook 18y agoYep, I do need a designer. The band descriptions are taken from Wikipedia. My parsing code needs work. Thanks very much for the feedback.
- rsheridan6 18y agoThere ought to be a way to just upload a list of the music on your computer.
- maryrosecook 18y agoYep, I have investigated this. It's lower on the list of priorities because my focus is to make the site work when it knows nothing about the user.