4 ms·

Show HN: Plug, the best way to discover new music on Mac

8 points by alex_marchant 13y ago

alex_marchant 13y ago
A year ago I approached a designer on Dribbble about using his design (http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac-App?list=users http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac-App?list=u...) to learn Objective-C and maybe create a cool way to use the Hype Machine on OSX. We've come a long way since then. Glenn (@glennui) has done some incredible work on the design (check out the iterative improvements: https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/progress.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/...) and we think it's one of the best ways to find new music out there. If you're not familiar with the Hype Machine, here is a quick summary of what's going on http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing-plug-a-great-way-to-listen-to-the-hype http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing-plug.... We just released a public beta. It's free during the beta, so check it out and let us know what you think.
- xcubic 13y ago
  This is the first app you made to learn obj-c? Not bad! Congrats.
jamesk14022 13y ago
I just started using this, I have never used the hype machine before. The app interface is beautiful and intuitive. This is awesome and I love it.
sarreph 13y ago
This is awesome — I, like another commenter, too had not used the Hype Machine before. Plug is a beautiful way to explore music. I'm an iOS developer, and notice that they have an official iOS app; do they have a public API? If not, what did you use to get the music data?
- alex_marchant 13y ago
  They do have a public API http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js. Though if you want access to the mp3 url's you need an API key. We've worked closely with them to make this happen.
bwilliams 13y ago
First time using Hype but that UI is awesome. Really makes me want to pick up Cocoa again.
buzzkillr2 13y ago
FWIW hypem does not support SSL so you must turn off your https everywhere or make an exception in order to sign up for an account.
johnw 13y ago
This is amazing. The UI is absolutely gorgeous. A few minor things I noticed: -Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9. -When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although they did after relaunching the app. -It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't see the full name. -The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where the controller starts. -I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of System Preferences.
- alex_marchant 13y ago
  > Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9. OK, we'll check it out. > When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although they did after relaunching the app. The app doesn't auto-update favorites yet. For now you can manually update via pull-to-refresh. > It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't see the full name. Agreed, we're working on this one. > The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where the controller starts. Good point, i'll have to look into that. > I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of System Preferences. If the app is out of focus you should get a notification popup. We don't store notifications in notification center though, since it doesn't seem useful to keep a history. Thanks for the feedback. Hit us up @plugformac if you want to get in contact with us in the future.
  - racbart 13y ago

8 points by alex_marchant 13y ago

A year ago I approached a designer on Dribbble about using his design (http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac-App?list=users http://dribbble.com/shots/595176-Hype-Machine-Mac-App?list=u...) to learn Objective-C and maybe create a cool way to use the Hype Machine on OSX. We've come a long way since then. Glenn (@glennui) has done some incredible work on the design (check out the iterative improvements: https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/progress.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/1O1Z193I0i0J1y0R2a3X/...) and we think it's one of the best ways to find new music out there. If you're not familiar with the Hype Machine, here is a quick summary of what's going on http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing-plug-a-great-way-to-listen-to-the-hype http://blog.plugformac.com/post/63340578035/introducing-plug.... We just released a public beta. It's free during the beta, so check it out and let us know what you think.

xcubic 13y ago
This is the first app you made to learn obj-c? Not bad! Congrats.

jamesk14022 13y ago

I just started using this, I have never used the hype machine before. The app interface is beautiful and intuitive. This is awesome and I love it.

sarreph 13y ago

This is awesome — I, like another commenter, too had not used the Hype Machine before. Plug is a beautiful way to explore music. I'm an iOS developer, and notice that they have an official iOS app; do they have a public API? If not, what did you use to get the music data?

alex_marchant 13y ago
They do have a public API http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js http://hypem.com/playlist/popular/3day/json/1/data.js. Though if you want access to the mp3 url's you need an API key. We've worked closely with them to make this happen.

bwilliams 13y ago

First time using Hype but that UI is awesome. Really makes me want to pick up Cocoa again.

buzzkillr2 13y ago

FWIW hypem does not support SSL so you must turn off your https everywhere or make an exception in order to sign up for an account.

johnw 13y ago

This is amazing. The UI is absolutely gorgeous. A few minor things I noticed: -Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9. -When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although they did after relaunching the app. -It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't see the full name. -The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where the controller starts. -I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of System Preferences.

alex_marchant 13y ago
> Scrolling seems very laggy when scrolling with the mouse wheel, although dragging with the scrollbar seems fine. This only seems to be happening in the Popular (Now), view. This is under 10.9. OK, we'll check it out. > When I favorite songs, they don't show up in the favorite section although they did after relaunching the app. The app doesn't auto-update favorites yet. For now you can manually update via pull-to-refresh. > It would be nice if when you moused over a song in the list if it scrolled the full song name into view - at the moment they get cut off and you can't see the full name. Agreed, we're working on this one. > The song list scrollbar on the right is obscured by the controller at the bottom. I like what you've done with having the songs scroll underneath the slightly transparent controller but the scrollbar should really end where the controller starts. Good point, i'll have to look into that. > I don't seem to be getting notifications from the app even though it's listed in the Notifications app list under the Notifications section of System Preferences. If the app is out of focus you should get a notification popup. We don't store notifications in notification center though, since it doesn't seem useful to keep a history. Thanks for the feedback. Hit us up @plugformac if you want to get in contact with us in the future.
- racbart 13y ago