5 ms·

Show HN: My first iOS app - Soundtribe - 45 second sound clips with filters

33 points by drum 13y ago

zombio 13y ago
A social network for sound? Interesting to say the least. Why do you think people would want to join? You should fix your scroll bar. I can scroll through the sound clips with my mouse wheel, but not by physically dragging the scroll bar. I'm not sure if this is what happens, but I wouldn't want an audio clip I upload put on your homepage. (That's what I assume happens from looking at your website). PS congrats on your first iOS app.
- drum 13y ago
  When we first built the app we figured that sometimes people want to express a message without a visual. i.e. tell a joke, play a song on the guitar - all without having to worry about what you look like or how somethings being filmed. The other issue we were trying to solve with other audio related networks were the lack of time constraints. A 3-5 minute clip is a long time for a 'synchronous' activity like listening to audio. I can't just browse the clip like I can a Tweet. So we figured by limiting the sounds to 45 seconds or less, listeners would be risking less of their time and creators would be more concise. Today, people use Soundtribe mainly for singing. It's been really fun to watch it evolve over time. I'd say 90% of the clips are teenage girls singing with the 'Chipmunk' filter. What this tells me is there are a ton of self conscious vocalists out there that are unsure about their natural voice. The filters help ease people into sharing their voice while being less self conscious. The service is built like Twitter where your clips are meant to be a one-to-many broadcast. It seems like most people using the service want to build an audience, so we post certain clips on the homepage. If your account is private, your posts will not appear there. Good call on the scroll bar. That was one of those small features that I spent WAY too much time implementing- and its turned out to actually be impractical.
- bx_ 13y ago
  We see a lot of this in China, with apps like Papa (like Instagram adding an accompanying audio clip). Most people are tired of reading here and would prefer sound or, now, video (we just got a Vine clone). With that said, my thought is: why not be able to just press play and stream the experience, allowing me to listen to everything with my friends that day (like a personal podcast)? I haven't installed this app, but the screenshots look like I have to press play on every single one. Vine autoplays, which adds some feeling of this to their service. Edit: also, congrats on your app!
  - drum 13y ago
    Streaming sounds like a good idea. It's definitely on the to do list. Thanks for the international feedback! Cool to hear what's going on with the app market in China.
infogaufire 13y ago
Something similar to http://croak.it http://croak.it. Anyways congrats on your first iOS app. How long did it take you to build this?
- drum 13y ago
  Thanks! First version took around 4 months... But that was after spending WWAYY too much time trying to build it in PhoneGap.
  - samweinberg 13y ago
    After PhoneGap, which approach did you end up taking? Congrats on the app, by the way!
    - drum 13y ago
      Started with Stanford classes - did the first/ second lecture probably 10 times. Then went to the Big Nerd Ranch iOS programming book. Built a few throwaway apps based off code from both. The pinnacle was building an app far betond my skill level with a senior programmer. If you can find a mentor who's willing to code with you, ask them to build something. You'll learn much faster.
      - infogaufire 13y ago
        Awesome. Just to make this more useful for me & other readers who have been doing web developing with php/python/ruby etc, what will be your advice regarding how to get started with iOS development to build our first working app?
        drum 13y ago
        Big Nerd Ranch Guide: iOS Programming -- This book was well worth the investment. Go through the chapters and do the exercises. After you start to feel somewhat comfortable, try testing your creativity by taking some of the code you've written and making something unique. Example: The book teaches you how to make a quiz app where you store questions and answers in two arrays and use two buttons to display each. My variation on this was an app that helped me measure how much water I was drinking each day. I had an increment and a decrement button. The goal was to get to 8 glasses. Each time I got closer to the goal a motivational message popped up. This enabled me to use some of the code I was familiar with, but also change it slightly enough to where I could venture into new territory. -- To me this is the best way to get your first apps going.
BasilAwad 13y ago
45 seconds is too long for me. I only listend to 6ish seconds. Vine is 6 seconds and that's also visual. Tweets are read in 10 seconds.
- drum 13y ago
  It's a tough balance between making the clips long enough for the creators to sing their song / tell their joke but short enough to where it's not annoying for listeners. I don't quite know the equilibrium yet. The looping nature of Vine videos for me typically makes the videos longer ( or at least the amount of time I spend watching them ). Maybe if we looped the sound clips we could get away with shorter? Thanks for the feedback
hydralist 13y ago
make it 9 seconds, that digit appeals to me
- wingerlang 13y ago
  25-30 would be it for me.
xpose2000 13y ago
So the "in" thing now is to shorten everything into treat size snacks and wrap that idea around a social platform? Just because Twitter took off on this premise does not make it a good idea to apply to everything else. As for the app itself....Great job for a first timer. You've got a lot of talent even if this idea doesn't take off.
- BasilAwad 13y ago
  Not being "in" or simply suggesting to follow twitter. It's just that when it comes to social mediums I blaze through things as fast as possible to get gists. And the vibe I got from the front site is that this is about gists (45 seconds or less). If this was presented more as a curation of best audio submissions, probably with nice subheadings and short descriptions, then I'd probably spend 1-3 minutes enjoying each piece like how I do when I'm reading curated articles.
- drum 13y ago
  Hey thanks!! That last sentence just made my week! As for the time constraint, it may seem a little gimicky but I do believe there's value in keeping the audio clips short. Only time will tell
tbolt 13y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8SZYXRufg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8SZYXRufg
jathu 13y ago
Shorten the audio clips down. No one wants to sit around and listen to 45 seconds of anything. Even with tweets, no one bothers to take 10 seconds to read ALL the tweets. Shorten the audio down to around 5-10 seconds. Also, make it visual somehow. Regarding design, change the color scheme... too "viney". I would go with some sort of red... maybe a red-pink as red is already take by YouTube. Get a good UI/icon design, please! The recording menu is too "complicated". Forget all the stop, pause and all the other crap. Just one big record button. Make the "filters" a bit more aesthetically pleasing, maybe an icon of what you're trying to represent (A chipmunk for chipmunk.. duh?).
MaxGabriel 13y ago
Scrolling performance is a bit low on the main page. I profiled your app using the Open GL device driver in Instruments and your device utilization was capped at 70%, so it isn't a GPU issue (I see you also don't have many blended layers, so that makes sense). When I profiled with Time Profiler, I notice that 51% of CPU time was spent in backboardd, the UIView/CoreAnimation render server. The only way I know to reduce this is to cut down on number of views, which is typically pretty hard :( Soundtribe itself was at 38.4%, maybe there's some optimizations to make there? I'm still on an iPhone 4 so you may be able to ignore this.
- drum 13y ago
  Sweet, thanks for downloading and taking the time to do the profiling! I've stil yet to use the Instruments tool. When you say "soundtribe itself was at 38.4%" , what does that mean?
  - MaxGabriel 13y ago
    The Soundtribe process specifically was using 38.4% of CPU time on the app. I'm still not very good at improving performance, but if you do any work on it I would highly recommend WWDC 2012 session 238. It's the only WWDC talk that's high level enough to point you in the right direction -- most talks (and alot of blogposts) are focused on specific areas to improve performance that may not apply to you.
kennywinker 13y ago
This is awesome. I'd been toying with an idea somewhat like this for a while now. It was too far outside my wheelhouse to go ahead with, but I really think something like this will blow up and become a big part of the future of podcasting. One difference between this and my idea was that instead of filters I was thinking the app would have "recipies"... The app could break up your recording into sections with prompts. I.e. if you want to tell a story you start by recording an introduction, then the body of the story, and then a conclusion. The app could then interleave music or other ambient audio into the recording to create a richer audio experience. Fundamentally Instagram was successful because it made it easy to take good photos. Or easy to make bad photos better. I think when someone figures out how to make bad audio good, they'll crack this field wide open. Of course I wish you all the best of luck, but I am a bit skeptical that audio filters are the right formula for this.
- kennywinker 13y ago
  Another quick note. In the app, I can get as far as submitting a recording without signing up... but then I am forced to go back and sign up, which causes my recording to be deleted. You should either make a way for me to sign up via the sound-sharing screen, or prevent me from getting that far without signing up.
danielrakh 13y ago
Great job. What are you using for the backend?
- drum 13y ago
  Thanks! Backend is Ruby on Rails

33 points by drum 13y ago

A social network for sound? Interesting to say the least. Why do you think people would want to join? You should fix your scroll bar. I can scroll through the sound clips with my mouse wheel, but not by physically dragging the scroll bar. I'm not sure if this is what happens, but I wouldn't want an audio clip I upload put on your homepage. (That's what I assume happens from looking at your website). PS congrats on your first iOS app.

drum 13y ago
When we first built the app we figured that sometimes people want to express a message without a visual. i.e. tell a joke, play a song on the guitar - all without having to worry about what you look like or how somethings being filmed. The other issue we were trying to solve with other audio related networks were the lack of time constraints. A 3-5 minute clip is a long time for a 'synchronous' activity like listening to audio. I can't just browse the clip like I can a Tweet. So we figured by limiting the sounds to 45 seconds or less, listeners would be risking less of their time and creators would be more concise. Today, people use Soundtribe mainly for singing. It's been really fun to watch it evolve over time. I'd say 90% of the clips are teenage girls singing with the 'Chipmunk' filter. What this tells me is there are a ton of self conscious vocalists out there that are unsure about their natural voice. The filters help ease people into sharing their voice while being less self conscious. The service is built like Twitter where your clips are meant to be a one-to-many broadcast. It seems like most people using the service want to build an audience, so we post certain clips on the homepage. If your account is private, your posts will not appear there. Good call on the scroll bar. That was one of those small features that I spent WAY too much time implementing- and its turned out to actually be impractical.
bx_ 13y ago
We see a lot of this in China, with apps like Papa (like Instagram adding an accompanying audio clip). Most people are tired of reading here and would prefer sound or, now, video (we just got a Vine clone). With that said, my thought is: why not be able to just press play and stream the experience, allowing me to listen to everything with my friends that day (like a personal podcast)? I haven't installed this app, but the screenshots look like I have to press play on every single one. Vine autoplays, which adds some feeling of this to their service. Edit: also, congrats on your app!
- drum 13y ago
  Streaming sounds like a good idea. It's definitely on the to do list. Thanks for the international feedback! Cool to hear what's going on with the app market in China.

infogaufire 13y ago

Something similar to http://croak.it http://croak.it. Anyways congrats on your first iOS app. How long did it take you to build this?

drum 13y ago
Thanks! First version took around 4 months... But that was after spending WWAYY too much time trying to build it in PhoneGap.
- samweinberg 13y ago
  After PhoneGap, which approach did you end up taking? Congrats on the app, by the way!
  - drum 13y ago
    Started with Stanford classes - did the first/ second lecture probably 10 times. Then went to the Big Nerd Ranch iOS programming book. Built a few throwaway apps based off code from both. The pinnacle was building an app far betond my skill level with a senior programmer. If you can find a mentor who's willing to code with you, ask them to build something. You'll learn much faster.
    - infogaufire 13y ago
      Awesome. Just to make this more useful for me & other readers who have been doing web developing with php/python/ruby etc, what will be your advice regarding how to get started with iOS development to build our first working app?
      - drum 13y ago
        Big Nerd Ranch Guide: iOS Programming -- This book was well worth the investment. Go through the chapters and do the exercises. After you start to feel somewhat comfortable, try testing your creativity by taking some of the code you've written and making something unique. Example: The book teaches you how to make a quiz app where you store questions and answers in two arrays and use two buttons to display each. My variation on this was an app that helped me measure how much water I was drinking each day. I had an increment and a decrement button. The goal was to get to 8 glasses. Each time I got closer to the goal a motivational message popped up. This enabled me to use some of the code I was familiar with, but also change it slightly enough to where I could venture into new territory. -- To me this is the best way to get your first apps going.

BasilAwad 13y ago

45 seconds is too long for me. I only listend to 6ish seconds. Vine is 6 seconds and that's also visual. Tweets are read in 10 seconds.

drum 13y ago
It's a tough balance between making the clips long enough for the creators to sing their song / tell their joke but short enough to where it's not annoying for listeners. I don't quite know the equilibrium yet. The looping nature of Vine videos for me typically makes the videos longer ( or at least the amount of time I spend watching them ). Maybe if we looped the sound clips we could get away with shorter? Thanks for the feedback

hydralist 13y ago

make it 9 seconds, that digit appeals to me

wingerlang 13y ago
25-30 would be it for me.

xpose2000 13y ago

So the "in" thing now is to shorten everything into treat size snacks and wrap that idea around a social platform? Just because Twitter took off on this premise does not make it a good idea to apply to everything else. As for the app itself....Great job for a first timer. You've got a lot of talent even if this idea doesn't take off.

BasilAwad 13y ago
Not being "in" or simply suggesting to follow twitter. It's just that when it comes to social mediums I blaze through things as fast as possible to get gists. And the vibe I got from the front site is that this is about gists (45 seconds or less). If this was presented more as a curation of best audio submissions, probably with nice subheadings and short descriptions, then I'd probably spend 1-3 minutes enjoying each piece like how I do when I'm reading curated articles.
drum 13y ago
Hey thanks!! That last sentence just made my week! As for the time constraint, it may seem a little gimicky but I do believe there's value in keeping the audio clips short. Only time will tell

tbolt 13y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8SZYXRufg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8SZYXRufg

jathu 13y ago

Shorten the audio clips down. No one wants to sit around and listen to 45 seconds of anything. Even with tweets, no one bothers to take 10 seconds to read ALL the tweets. Shorten the audio down to around 5-10 seconds. Also, make it visual somehow. Regarding design, change the color scheme... too "viney". I would go with some sort of red... maybe a red-pink as red is already take by YouTube. Get a good UI/icon design, please! The recording menu is too "complicated". Forget all the stop, pause and all the other crap. Just one big record button. Make the "filters" a bit more aesthetically pleasing, maybe an icon of what you're trying to represent (A chipmunk for chipmunk.. duh?).

MaxGabriel 13y ago

Scrolling performance is a bit low on the main page. I profiled your app using the Open GL device driver in Instruments and your device utilization was capped at 70%, so it isn't a GPU issue (I see you also don't have many blended layers, so that makes sense). When I profiled with Time Profiler, I notice that 51% of CPU time was spent in backboardd, the UIView/CoreAnimation render server. The only way I know to reduce this is to cut down on number of views, which is typically pretty hard :( Soundtribe itself was at 38.4%, maybe there's some optimizations to make there? I'm still on an iPhone 4 so you may be able to ignore this.

drum 13y ago
Sweet, thanks for downloading and taking the time to do the profiling! I've stil yet to use the Instruments tool. When you say "soundtribe itself was at 38.4%" , what does that mean?
- MaxGabriel 13y ago
  The Soundtribe process specifically was using 38.4% of CPU time on the app. I'm still not very good at improving performance, but if you do any work on it I would highly recommend WWDC 2012 session 238. It's the only WWDC talk that's high level enough to point you in the right direction -- most talks (and alot of blogposts) are focused on specific areas to improve performance that may not apply to you.

kennywinker 13y ago

This is awesome. I'd been toying with an idea somewhat like this for a while now. It was too far outside my wheelhouse to go ahead with, but I really think something like this will blow up and become a big part of the future of podcasting. One difference between this and my idea was that instead of filters I was thinking the app would have "recipies"... The app could break up your recording into sections with prompts. I.e. if you want to tell a story you start by recording an introduction, then the body of the story, and then a conclusion. The app could then interleave music or other ambient audio into the recording to create a richer audio experience. Fundamentally Instagram was successful because it made it easy to take good photos. Or easy to make bad photos better. I think when someone figures out how to make bad audio good, they'll crack this field wide open. Of course I wish you all the best of luck, but I am a bit skeptical that audio filters are the right formula for this.

kennywinker 13y ago
Another quick note. In the app, I can get as far as submitting a recording without signing up... but then I am forced to go back and sign up, which causes my recording to be deleted. You should either make a way for me to sign up via the sound-sharing screen, or prevent me from getting that far without signing up.

danielrakh 13y ago

Great job. What are you using for the backend?

drum 13y ago
Thanks! Backend is Ruby on Rails