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Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

bandmatch.app

71–80 of 240 posts

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#71
post #50
post #41

Unless there are somehow millions of musicians looking to get matched in a single city, the "swipe" UI is pointless and will just make the whole thing unusable. The search + filter pattern for online datasets was perfected many decades ago. Use it.

wait, why isn't there a dating app that has this?

Because they all used to be that (see old OkCupid, match.com, Plenty of Fish, etc), but swiping apps stole the majority of their user base when they came around and every app had to become another swiping app to attract users. 9 times out of 10, the person being approached is gonna look at the approaching person's pictures and "basic stats" (age, height, kids, religion, job, education, pets, smoking) and decide yes/no. So what's the point of all the other stuff?

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#72
post #33
post #11

Drummers are probably going to be the "attractive person" equivalent on this app lol

What does a drummer use for birth control? Their personality. (Agree with sibling posts, getting a great drummer is hard and amazing.)

Do you know what they call people who hang around with musicians?

Drummers.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#74
post #41

Unless there are somehow millions of musicians looking to get matched in a single city, the "swipe" UI is pointless and will just make the whole thing unusable. The search + filter pattern for online datasets was perfected many decades ago. Use it.

Furthermore, this photo-forward interface design pattern presents candidates' physical attractiveness as the most salient feature. While this is desirable in a dating app, this is probably not very relevant for assessing people for their potential as musical collaborators.

From the top of my head, I'm going to guess people want (1) personable and agreeable bandmates with (2) compatible music styles, (3) musical talent and skill, and (4) can play instruments or roles that a band is missing.

So the interface should support users in presenting and finding these traits. If I were to design it, I'd have:

- Auto-playing music sample gallery. This is the most important thing to present. The current design asks the user to dig into Youtube and Soundcloud links — which is very high-friction and would have the user jumping between this app and other apps every few seconds.

- One-minute self-introduction video. This helps the user grok the general 'vibe' of someone.

- Allow users to connect their Spotify or other music accounts. Then show users their shared music interests. This can provide another clue about having compatible musical personalities.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described a web app. Go forth and sin no more

People don't like web apps and don't know how to install PWA's (by design of the OS manufacturers that make money from developers needing to pay to be on their hosted platforms). Like it or not, if you tell someone you have a product to use on their phone, they're going to want it to be in the App Store.

Web apps should be able to be listed in the app stores. I understand why people want to find things in the store. Younger generations don't really use the internet the way us old farts did. Discovery is no longer something that SEO and ad driven search makes organic any more, so discovery is nearly impossible. Instead of Yahoo style search of webpages, we have the curated search of apps via stores. Not that the app search is amazing, but it's still a smaller subsection than all of the internet which makes it easier.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#76
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then people would drill down and either find their perfect partner quickly, or figure out there's nobody compatible with them on the app quickly; and either way, delete the app. Dating app monetization creates a principal-agent problem: both subscriptions (for paid apps) and advertising/data-brokering (for free apps) are revenue streams that depend on people engaging with the app as much as possible — which p…

We need an open dating platform. "OpenHinge"?

Sounds like Alovoa: https://alovoa.com/ / https://github.com/Alovoa/Alovoa/

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need an open dating platform. "OpenHinge"?

When it first started, OKCupid was about the perfect dating platform until Match.com bought it and totally killed the functionality with monetisation.

I don't know if the timeline of events supports that entirely. Match.com bought OkCupid in 2011. OkCupid didn't start becoming Tinder-like until Match merged with Tinder in 2017.

There was also very little changes made to OkCupid core functionality between 2011 and 2016. Most monetized features predated the match.com acquisition, though I think the price increased at some point.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#78

Does the app feature music by musicians? As a musician that's what I'd expect to see myself, because seeing a bunch of people only talking about what they do is useless in terms of conveying style and skill. It also enables scammers and fraud if people aren't required to at least upload a video of themselves in action. Back in the old days, we had a local paper that allowed musicians to connect from a classified sect…

There's a simple website for where I live (Berlin) which is basically musical want ads. Biggest problem is that while it allows it, most musicians don't include an audio clip. People self-describing their musical ability is almost entirely useless.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#79

Does the app feature music by musicians? As a musician that's what I'd expect to see myself, because seeing a bunch of people only talking about what they do is useless in terms of conveying style and skill. It also enables scammers and fraud if people aren't required to at least upload a video of themselves in action. Back in the old days, we had a local paper that allowed musicians to connect from a classified sect…

Since this is the first iteration, I went the easiest route where people link their SoundCloud/Spotify/or Youtube channel.

I considered having MP3 uploads or even video uploads, but didn't seem worth it building a transcoding/streaming system, when someone could still upload things that is not them playing.

Another idea is to "verify" linked Spotify accounts by having the artist place a short random code in their Spotify bio, to prove they are actually the artist.

Re: Show HN: BandMatch – “Tinder” but for finding musicians to create bands/collab

#80
post #50
post #41

Unless there are somehow millions of musicians looking to get matched in a single city, the "swipe" UI is pointless and will just make the whole thing unusable. The search + filter pattern for online datasets was perfected many decades ago. Use it.

wait, why isn't there a dating app that has this?

LokiList.com[0] is a free, anonymous online personals site intended as a replacement for Craigslist's Casual Encounters. It also allows searching by A/S/L[1].

[0] https://www.lokilist.com/about.php

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age/sex/location

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