Ask HN: Lyrics website startup?
Naturally, being in this community for so long I see something like this as an opportunity. I started a thread over asking what people would like to see in a new Lyrics site (on reddit). That received minimal attention but I got a bit of feedback:
-No annoying adds (playing sound, irrelevant, covering the text)
-Easy searching that works
-Simple design
-Categorization
-Stop messing with my browser behaviour (selecting, right-clicks)
Now, I have some half-way decent ideas about how to set up the thing, such as letting it be a community run site similar to how sites such as stack-overflow are moderated. I also have some long-goals, such as attempting to get lyrics data direct from labels and link directly to their preferred supplier for that music (however, I don't think this is revolutionary).
The biggest thing in my mind would be a lyrics site that doesn't take hours to load, get out the bloat of junk, and let it be a community run thing with tagging and moderation.
I'm the sort of person who thinks things too far into the future and too broadly on the horizon, so my main concern with this is that I've made my target so large I don't have a project that I can complete in short order with minimal complications.
My key theory is that people will use my site because it will be an open community, and not bloated with junk. I'm planning on something like google ads onto the page as the primary form of monetization.
Have I gone too far, or missed something critical that I should stop and look at, or should I put fist to the keyboard and bang this thing out over the next few weekends?
12 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 24.5 ms ] threadWhat do you think of trying to create micro-communities? I'm concerned doing something like that may end up making the website too large to deal with.
What are you goals for the project anyway? Is it to learn, make money, find a wife?
The money would be nice, but my goals for that are secondary.
I would be surprised if you make much money off of it.
pg warns against the music business, and I think he's right on a lot of things. But I think you should throw it out there and see if you get any traction.
Honestly, I have my doubts of this being a real pain point. It's like, wouldn't it be awesome if lyrics sites were better, but I'm going to go to the one that has 100% of the songs I search for.
Most people I know, myself included, use music players that can query various lyrics sites and display the text within the player itself.
I'd ignore any new lyrics website if I couldn't make it work with my music player of choice. The easier it is, the better.
Note: my music player of choice lately is soundcloud.com and youtube videos.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1760835
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761437
if you don't make enough $ on ads, you won't be able to afford the licenses. people aren't going to pay for a lyrics service.
http://www.mredkj.com/other/lyrics-interview.html
It seems if I'm to make any website for this, I will need to do a lot of negotiation with licences, or use things that are out-of-copyright.