I just had a terrible experience - I typed in "Foo Fighters" hit play - and the first song I hear is a terrible wannabe cover - surely for a band like Foo Fighters this service can match against a myriad of sources to find the song being played by the actual band (screenshot of random dude playing foo fighters song in upper left http://cl.ly/image/3s022P2C3n3d) - I mean gosh, if you're going for user generated covers at least serve up this epic foo fighters cover with over 26 million views - - I know the product isnt "100% perfect" - but I was so bummed to just such a bad match to a very popular and well known band with a HUGE footprint online. Good luck - as of right now, no idea why I would switch to this from Spotify.
Hi @hemeon, we are sorry for that. As you know this a Beta and you may still find things that don´t work properly. We are indexing and cataloguing all the music available in internet (not just asking APIs) and is an ongoing and complex process. We got more than 40 millions tracks at the moment and we run continuos cleaning processes to avoid things like the one that happened to you. In any case thanks for your input, it´s good to know that this should be a top priority for us as the last thing we want is users as disappointed as you´re.
@hemeon You´re totally right about Foo Fighter. You´ve a good number of albums in there but the popular songs are wrong. We´ve included the option to report "wrong content" so we can fix errors and keep improving the catalogue. We like to think in Humm as a tool for the people and we´d like to have the people helping us to make it better. With a bit of time and use the content will be much more accurate.
As you probably know The Beatles are really tricky as most of their catalogue is not available in any streaming service. Happy that you found Radiohead. In any case, here´s my compromise to fix the Foo Fighter content asap and go back to you with just quality content. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.
@andressandaza@hemeon but why as a user do I want to waste my time cataloging and improving your data when I can just get the right stuff on itunes, spotify or even pandora - who has time to do this kind of crowdsourced work - also what on earth do I get out of cleaning your data?
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Awesome UI. Website looks good and features (although not new) are packaged well.
I noticed you're using YouTube's API and may potentially add other music services' APIs. How do you intend to scale Humm on APIs that have limitations on use when using competitor's APIs (specifically, Spotify and SoundCloud)? Also, I'll assume that you don't have any licenses. What is your commitment to rights holders? Free is never really free. Lastly, how does Humm intend to monetize?
Hello @daeboganmusic. Thanks for your comments and really insightful questions. We are using third party APIs but we are building our own database with track information about artists and so on. As you said we´d be adding content from other services. Whenever someone plays a song sourced from Spotify, for example, the artist still get their cut. We are not going to cross any red line, we are 100% legal and view ourselves as a gateway to premium music streaming services. We want to work with those services and provide them with the biggest potential amount of premium users. We are not going to monetise through content, we are thinking more in Big Data and through the use of our own scalable API for third party developers. Hope this clear things up. Cheers, A
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@andressandaza Ok, so the goal is to monetize through an API service to third-party developers (similar to OneMusicAPI, Metable, Medianet, 7Digital, Omnifone, Consolidated Independent, AudioSalad, etc.). Therefore, the burden of licensing will be on the developer for his/her new product. Gotcha. The fact remains, however, that Humm will need to be properly licensed the moment you add an API other than YouTube. YouTube is the only service with a "through to audience" stipulation in its performance license in the US. Spotify, and the others, do not offer this...a challenge that many of my music startup clients have faced once they've earned enough traction for rights holders to knock on their door. I guess these questions are more of a "heads up" for you. (Shameless self-promotion www.daeboganmusic.com)
Hi @daeboganmusic, good points. Trying to answer your statement: There´s no burden of licensing for developers using Youtube, as following their API specifications it isn´t required. Developers will get the burden of how to monetise the services, apps or solutions they create. Regarding other APIs, there are a few cases, like Bop.fm, where they reached agreements with music streaming platforms like Spotify to use their API with no limits cause they brought new users to those platforms. We see ourselves in a similar way. We want to turn casual listeners (using our platform) in premium users of services like Apple Music, Deezer or Spotify. Take into account that today there´s only 1% of the global population that pay premium. We want to be a pathway to premium.
Great stuff Andres - the UI is lovely, much better than the Spotify web player. Are you using Soundcloud as your music source? And, if so, do you foresee a potential problem being that users won't be able to find the biggest tracks, which often aren't on Soundcloud?
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- What's the point of offering me Facebook connect if you're going to ask for my email and have me create a username/password?
- Why are there so many names? You have myhumm.com, livingindietv.com (I thought was Living Die TV) and Facebook connect through "Living Indie"
- Why would I use this instead of Google Play, Spotify, Rdio, etc.
Hi @livejamie, good questions.
- Regarding the first one, it´s a decision from our CTO, in Twitter we do it to obtain the email in Facebook he thinks is good backup just in case the user drop out Facebook or that they decide to change the EULA.
- The different names are due to our previous startup, Living Indie. We´ve been using the same IT infrastructure. This is something we´ll change shortly to make it more consistent.
- The main differentiator with all other services is that we are free, don´t have ads and are really easy to use.
Anyway we believe that the biggest chunk of our potential users are more in Youtube (where the music experience is quite fuzzy) than in Spotify. We see ourselves as the door of entrance to premium. Just 1% of the global population is paying premium in music. There´s a huge gap there and we want to become the portal of reference for the people who´s not ready or up to pay yet.
Hey @ramonsastron! That´s a good question. An artist or anybody could request any music that we miss at the site and we would look for it, add it and notify it to the person/artists. But I should highlight that we don´t host any content so the music has to already be on another source such as Youtube. Cheers, A
Thanks @edrex_. At the moment we are sourcing all the content from Youtube though we want to add other sources too so that you find any track you like. If a track it´s not in Youtube we could source it from Spotify or any other legal sources.
@andressandaza Ah - got it. So can I find, for instance, Uptown Funk (or insert another chart-topper here) on Humm? And, if so, how are you getting around licensing issues?
@edrex_ Re - searching for tracks, sure you can! In the search just hit Show All and it'll come up: http://alpha.myhumm.com/showall/.... The result you're looking for might be on the 2nd or 3rd page of the songs results.. Still needs to be optimised but we've got you covered ;)
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