15 ms·
Serendipity – When 2 people listen to the same song at the same time
- taeric 12y agoNeat and all.... but with the beauty of "radio" one could basically light up a crapton of folks in any given area all listening to the same song. I remember back when I delivered pizzas, it was not uncommon for most of us drivers to all be humming the same song as we are getting stuff inside, since we all listened to the same stations. If it was a really good song ending as I got back to the store, it was not uncommon to find that I waited it out in the parking lot along with at least two other drivers. :)
- joshvm 12y agoRadio isn't selective though, you don't make the decision what to play. It's more like the coincidence that you hit play on the same song exactly as the radio DJ does.
- iLoch 12y agoI'm finding the pause button doesn't react in time for me to catch the song most of the time. By the time I realize I like what I'm hearing it's already too late to pause it. An adjustment for time per song would be great.
- barsonme 12y agoYou can click anywhere on the screen and it'll open a new tab with the song.
- jawr 12y agoIf you switch tabs it also plays the current tracker for longer. Not sure if this is a feature or not, haven't delved in to it.
- barsonme 12y agoI noticed that as well... I think it is. Although, I just tried it again and isn't working. Go figure. And I can't find anything in https://www.spotify.com/us/arts/serendipity/scripts/serendipity.js https://www.spotify.com/us/arts/serendipity/scripts/serendip... that would change when you switch tabs.
- CamperBob2 12y agoYeah, the dwell time is ridiculously short. A way to slow it down would make all the difference in the world.
- kcimc 12y agousability isn't my strength, so this is all very helpful feedback. thanks!
- aparadja 12y agoBased on a few minutes of observation, Ed Sheeran is the most popular artist in the world. Is there any sophistication behind the sound clip selection? Just a certain static point in each song, or some kind of algorithm to get to a recognisable part?
- iLoch 12y agoIt's using Spotify's preview of the song, so either an algorithm or manual selection I'd wager.
- kcimc 12y agothe clips are spotify's preview mp3s, which are selected at random from the song. i know at least one very clever person at spotify who is trying to extract the 'hook' or 'recognisable part', and it worked really well last time i listened.
- PaulJulius 12y agoAs the music started to play I reached to pause the music I already had playing, but then I realized that it was paused automatically by Spotify. That's a pretty cool feature that they have - very well integrated.
- heydenberk 12y agoIt's DRM, actually. I agree it's a useful feature sometimes — until you want to leave music playing for your partner in your living room while you listen to music and cook dinner in the kitchen.
- freejack 12y agoWeird, my Spotify kept playing while the map was mapping... I had to manually hit pause in the Spotify client...
- moskie 12y agoWhile this data is interesting enough on its own, the map animations are even cooler. The transitions from one location pair to the next are mesmerizing, and can provide some really cool perspectives of the globe. Great execution on that.
- nrao123 12y agoBrilliant stuff! I wish there was a history of the pairs. I really liked some song snippets but before I could hit space to continue playing, it disappeared...
- kcimc 12y agothanks! all credit goes to the developers of d3.js though, i wouldn't have considered these projections if not for the example here http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3763057 http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3763057
- the_cat_kittles 12y agoi think all the stuff mike bostocks does is absolutely legendary- to the (probably few) people who haven't seen his website, check out http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/
- billmalarky 12y agoKyle McDonald has a lot of cool projects. Check out this one http://vimeo.com/29348533 http://vimeo.com/29348533 using the open source Facetracker library (built by Jason Saragih and maintained by Kyle). Pretty friendly guy, helped me out via email with some questions I had when I was playing around with facetracker.
- eatitraw 12y agoWarning: it starts playing music automatically. Be careful to adjust your volume so you don't bother anyone around you.
- yutah 12y agoor don't forget to raise your volume so that you don't miss anything
- parennoob 12y agoCannot upvote this enough. If the creator of this is listening, for Cthulhu's sake require some input from the user before blaring out sound at them. Was interested, but closed as soon as a tab started making loud noises without me asking it to.
- gherkin 12y agoIt's really not that bad. Click the "mute" icon in the top-left of the screen and go on with your life.
- lucaspiller 12y agoThis is actually a pet peeve on mine, I feel it's akin to people playing music loudly on their phones in public. I like people to respect my silence. I'd appreciate it if web sites asked me before blurting out music - it seems with HTML5 people have forgotten the annoyance of Flash banner ads.
- MattBearman 12y agoIt was bad for me as I was already listening to spotify, so the two songs mixed quite horrendously
- Avitas 12y agoEven though this thread is tangential to the OP, I second your sentiment and apologize for furthering the thread hijack. Obviously, I am of the opinion that automatic media playback is a "no no" and I personally dislike the practice. The use of automatic media playback is a red flag in my mind that tells me, "This website is not primarily user-preference driven and is likely something that is about to show me a marketing pitch. The owners of the website do not have a problem with surprising me and/or others nearby due to an oversight or marketing interests." This thread deserves to be at the top as a reminder to web services and design staff. I realize that decisions for auto-playback likely come from above. If I were in a position of subservience and the directive came from above, I would offer my advice that this behavior is pushy and may turn away users.
- paul9290 12y agoCool, how about 2 or more people listening to the same audio in sync on their different Internet devices, Spotify? Together creating a stereo system with friends & or those in the crowd around them. Anyone else interested in such a feature?
- chaser7016 12y agoSpotify doesn't offer this? I thought they did? If not +1.
- zyxley 12y agoSpotify offers shared playlists, but not synced playback.
- rpsfan 12y agoThere are apps that do this such as Samsung's Group Play, Chorus for Android (http://goo.gl/ZQH3HX http://goo.gl/ZQH3HX) and the web app, http://SpeakerBlast.com http://SpeakerBlast.com I think Spotify getting this feature working wouldn't be trivial as syncing audio perfectly across different Internet devices (labtop, PC, tablet, phone, etc) doesn't seem doable. Also, music licensing issues would probably be an issue too.
- tormeh 12y agoWell, everyone with a Spotify licence already has the a licence to play songs on Spotify. Don't get what the problem is. Syncing could probably be done via microphone. One device starts and then the other devices catch on in turn. The syncing would hardly be noticeable at the beginning of the song.
- jerf 12y agoAh, I smell the sort of thing where the only answer you'll accept, and the only answer I can give is, "Go ahead and try it." You'll find out why it's hard in a way that no amount of explaining will do, and you'll find reality less amenable to argumentation than comment boxes. (If you do try it, make sure you've got two different devices, ideally two different types, and be sure to be streaming from somewhere at least 50ms away on the network, ideally with at least a few ms in variance between requests. Though odds are pretty good that even trying to stream the same song to two identical devices over a local Wifi network would only work most of the time, you'd find...)
- ahnberg 12y agoPro-tip: press space whenever you hear something you like and the song will continue playing, and you have a good chance to catch it. Also, clicking anywhere on the screen (while paused or not) takes you to the active song in Spotify.
- pimlottc 12y agoThe song also keeps playing when the tab is in the background.
- johnchristopher 12y agoIt stops playing after ~20 secondes for me. Then a ~5 seconds silence gap and then it picks up something new. When I select the active tab it cycles through locations every ~3-5 secondes.
- Trufa 12y agoA missing feature would be to be able to see a list of the songs that were played, I missed a couple of songs I'd want to listen a little bit more.
- theworst 12y agoI've always thought this would be cool for e.g. a cross-country team, or friends running together, to have. Imagine incorporating a PA system so a coach could talk to and track his athletes on all their training runs...
- shalmanese 12y agoEvery song selected was in English. I'm not sure if this is because it's built so only English songs show up or because English has become the defacto global language for music.
- GeneralMayhem 12y agoKeep watching. I got a bunch of songs in Spanish being played by people in Latin America, and a couple in Swedish. EDIT: That said, there's something magical about knowing that people in Majorca and San Pedro de Alcantrata were listening to Boston "together."
- simias 12y agoThere's probably a selection bias because spotify is not equally popular everywhere around the world. The majority of the matches seem to fall in the USA and other english speaking countries as far as I can see. But even beyond that, American are so good at exporting their cultural products I'm pretty certain that american music is the most popular international music. I mean, even in non-english speaking countries many (most?) new bands sing in english to try and emulate them.
- netvarun 12y agoOff-topic: Could the admins change the link to point to the final, redirected url - https://www.spotify.com/us/arts/serendipity/ https://www.spotify.com/us/arts/serendipity/ ? Anyways, fantastic execution! Great visualization. My only super-minor complaint is the fade in/fade out could be a little less abrupt when the songs change :)
- barbs 12y agoI'm in Australia, and the link took me to https://www.spotify.com/au/arts/serendipity/ https://www.spotify.com/au/arts/serendipity/. Not sure what difference it makes, but if it's redirecting based on region, it might be best to leave it as is.
- cmstoken 12y agoWow, what an awesome project. Would be cool to read how it was made.
- kcimc 12y agoit was built with storm for processing all the listening data in realtime, node.js for relaying udp messages from storm to websockets, and d3.js for rendering the map along with the spotify web api for grabbing all the artist data, cover images, song previews.
- shangbang 12y agoAny chance Spotify will provide a realtime API for tracks you have listened to?
- Grue3 12y agoThat's nothing, last.fm would show who is listening to the same song you are listening to right now.
- ZeroGravitas 12y agoIsn't this synchronicity, rather than serendipity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity
- owenversteeg 12y agoI wonder what you call it when two people listen to Synchronicity (by the Police) at the same time :)
- bch 12y agoIt might be ironic, but not Ironic.
- andyjohnson0 12y agoAccording to the wiki pages you cite, serendipity is a "fortunate happenstance" or "pleasant surprise" and synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related . So I'd say that neither apply here. In my opinion the appropriate word is "coincidence".
- owenversteeg 12y agoIf you want to keep a track playing, just hit ctrl-page up to switch to another tab. It'll play for the track's full 30 seconds. Or you can click the background to listen to it on play.spotify.com.
- huuu 12y agoWhile listening to this it made me realize how much music is compressed nowadays. I think this is a bad trend.
- ris 12y agoJesus, people have an awful taste in music.
- cheshire137 12y agoVery annoying that it started playing music by itself.
- madaxe_again 12y agoI call this phenomenon "radio".