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Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

mugasha.com

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Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#41

Post by jawngee »

lyime wrote: post #17
alex_c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgraded to WIN 10,0,12,36 - works now. Edit: about 15 minutes into a set, it stopped playing with no explanation, although the time elapsed changed to NaN:NaN:NaN. Changing tracks or fiddling with the controls couldn't get it going again, but reloading the page did. Love the concept, and I'm going to keep using it, but it seems to need a bit more QA :p

our streaming server went down an hour ago. We definitely need to test more.

Why are you using a streaming server? Stream over http, save on a little infrastructure since the files are generally going to be easily consumable by most broadband connections due to their small sizes.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#43

Post by bprater »

lyime wrote: post #34
ggruschow wrote: post #29

This is sad. I actually love electronic dance music. But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.

That is pretty lazy IMHO. Its a beta site, read the comments above on why there is a login.

I did the same thing. So either there is some merit or we are two dingbats.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#44

Post by bprater »

trapper wrote: post #26

I don't get what it does after reading your front page and about page. Why should I sign up?

Same deal with me.

We go through this on nearly every review. I think that instead of a day of coding, the team should sit around the table and bang out a list of reasons why people should sign up to their service right now.

This is critical: if you are launching a site, spend hours and hours and hours thinking about this. You know why you started the site, you know why you've been working on it so hard, but we are all busy playing minesweeper.

Tell us why we should spend 15 seconds checking it out.

Its the difference between gaining some traction from a YC! "review" and getting zero traction and having no clue why.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#45

Post by tlrobinson »

I love it! I like listening to live sets, but I'm always annoyed when I want to know what a certain track in the middle of a set is. If you're lucky you can find a breakdown of the set list, but this is way better than even that.

[me goes to unsubscribe from electronic music podcasts in iTunes]

Now, just make it so you can continue browsing the site without interrupting the currently playing track/set. You could do that with frames, or by loading content using AJAX (that's what http://www.thesixtyone.com/ does)

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#46

Post by cmos »

I wish you the best of luck. My momentum ran out with the signup form. And I like electronic music.

But regardless, congratulations! You got something up and running, and the custom link greeting page was a very nice touch. Please give us updates + progress reports.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#47

Post by swombat »

lyime wrote: post #36
chriskelley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If I'm listening to a good set I'm much more likely to "buy set" than I am to take the time to buy them one at a time. "Buy set" option highly suggested.

You can't really buy sets. Sets are basically podcasts that are mixed by DJs weekly for promotional purpose. Unless we collaborate with sites like Beatport or Juno to make this happen.

I understand that, but as it happens, sets (and mix CDs which are basically less often released, higher quality sets) are the only thing I listen to as far as electronic music is concerned.

I do not listen to progressive house in single tracks. That doesn't even begin to make sense - progressive house is all about the progression across a set.

The input of a DJ in selecting, arranging, mixing the tracks into a set is what makes electronic music great to me. I would not buy single electronic music tracks, but I might consider paying for a subscription that would give me access to vast amounts of sets by the likes of John Digweed, Anthony Pappa, Sasha, Dave Seaman, Mirel Jarca, Nick Warren, Danny Howells, etc...

Also, worth noting, if I can't download them to my computer in a DRM-free format, those sets are absolutely worthless to me. However, I'd be very willing to pay a subscription fee (even with a - reasonably generous - limit on the number of sets that I can download. In fact, I used to subscribe (for money) to freshlymixed.com, and all they did was record and republish Digweed's kiss100 mixes and the Essential Mixes from BBC 1.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#48

Post by ggruschow »

lyime wrote: post #34
ggruschow wrote: post #29

This is sad. I actually love electronic dance music. But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.

That is pretty lazy IMHO. Its a beta site, read the comments above on why there is a login.

Now that I came back to HN for my morning fix and made it through the form:

1. Seems to only have trance-y stuff, not the general electronic dance music (e.g. search for popular non-trance artists: Pendulum, Prodigy, or Aphex Twin). The only problem with that is the expectation from the description.

2. On my browsers (Safari, FF3), the sets search edit box isn't clickable / won't take focus. I can only search tracks and artists.

3. How does this help me? Is it just a nicer interface than Amazon's? I frequent sites like http://dnb-sets.de to listen to music. I suppose this is a compelling argument for pandora to take mixed sets into their playlist?

Now, I've closed it because I don't see a reason to use it. This is a major problem because I figure I'm probably the best consumer you can imagine for this. I love this music. I listen to it online for literally hours nearly every day. I'm very hungry to find new stuff to listen to, have it available to listen to again (I had physical media storage problems back when raves were big), and I'm happy to pay ridiculous sums for the service (e.g. i'd pay $10 just to know the name of the D&B song from 1-2 years ago with certain fight club samples#, and if I couldn't quickly find a mix with it online, maybe $25 for an mp3 of it).

If the site had a much broader range of music, and at least 100x more of it, I might use it. Even then, you'd need a compelling reason for me to stick around on your site (e.g. making it easy for me to find tracks I don't know what they are and buy them... or sucking in zillions of mixes and indexing them continuously in a way more convenient than others do).

___

# example sample, Tyler Durden: "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you." This isn't the more common tune you'll find in your quick search. Like I said, I'm serious, I want this tune.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#49

Post by Harkins »

lyime wrote: post #18
technosmurf wrote: post #16

I wish you could browse the available sets and DJs without signing up for an account. To force me to do that is a bit of a pain. I'd rather go back to doing some "real work" than to go through the trouble of signing up so I can explore your new site quickly.

That is the idea. I dont't like signing up for accounts either. The only reason we have account signup right now is for the beta period. Essentially to understand how people are using the site and to make fixes accordingly. When we launch we want it to work perfectly, right now its far from that.

Now you understand how people will use the site: they will look at it, not instantly understand why it's worth giving personal information to, leave, and tell their friends it's not worthwhile.

If you want to track interaction, just give everyone a cookie (or Flash cookie, nearly nobody clears those) and watch behavior by that.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music

#50

Post by lyime »

ggruschow wrote: post #48
lyime wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty lazy IMHO. Its a beta site, read the comments above on why there is a login.

Now that I came back to HN for my morning fix and made it through the form: 1. Seems to only have trance-y stuff, not the general electronic dance music (e.g. search for popular non-trance artists: Pendulum, Prodigy, or Aphex Twin). The only problem with that is the expectation from the description. 2. On my browsers (Safari, FF3), the sets search edit box isn't clickable / won't take focus. I can only search tracks…

I really appreciate your feedback. All your points are valid. The search box is disabled on the set page to keep the UI consistent but that functionality is not built yet. You again make a valid point that there isnt much content on the site. Relatively. Yes, Electronica is huge, there are literally dozens of genre. We really wanted to launch the service at a certain level before investing the time in covering different genres. It will come, eventually and hopefully you will return to the site.

Once again, this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted and expected from the HN community. Cheers.

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