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4 weeks in the zone = my latest app (just for fun).

18 points by agentbleu ↗ HN
I just finished working on a 4 week project that seems to have turned out pretty OK.

http://www.myplaylist.biz/lyrics/

Do let me know what you think...

43 comments

[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] thread
glhoffman
Pretty cool. Thanks, just bookmarked it.
tstegart
Are we supposed to comment on the coding or the business model? Not bad for four weeks coding. Might have a little trouble making money with the copyright issues involved.
agentbleu
feel free to give your thoughts regardless
tstegart
The work is good. The interface isn't very polished, but it sounds like you haven't really worked on it yet, so I assume you'll polish it up later.

On the copyright side, there have been issues in the past (http://news.cnet.com/Lyrics-site-negotiates-copyright-issues...). I'm not sure how they were worked out, or if a defense of "everyone else is doing it" justifies reliance. You should look into any updates in the area, and also be aware that one day someone might disagree with you on if its ok (and by disagree I mean sue).

agentbleu
yes that was like 10 years ago Published: February 8, 1999 11:25 AM PST

I think things have gotten out of hand since then.

jobeirne
Thanks, I've been holding out for a lyrics site that doesn't make me feel like my computer just contracted the clap.
agentbleu
yes spam sites seem to dominate this space. Thought it could do with some respectability. hehe
mannylee1
Awesome. A barebones site that does what it is supposed to do. Great job.
asnyder
Pretty sweet service. Where did you get a lyrics web service? I was looking for a lyrics web service some time ago for the following idea: certain times when listening to a song it would be useful/more entertaining if the lyrics would follow along with the song similar to karaoke, this could be done by running the song through some speech recognition software such as nuance to get the approximate words/time during the song. You would then tie that into the lyrics through the web service and would be able to display the lyrics along with the song for almost any song. This would be helpful to me anyway, and I think add an extra level of connection and understanding to your songs.
agentbleu
there are some lyrics sources about, one i found after was: http://lyricwiki.org/Main_Page

But mine come from other resources :)

Nice idea, yours, but too complicated me thinks for my style, I prefer elegance, as in not trying to do too much but do what you dodo well.

kleevr
Nice.

I vaguely remembered a song by Cake, knew it contained the phrase "prize fighter". Found the song "Shadow Stabbing" almost instantly.

Nifty.

dc2k08
yeah i liked this. searched for hooker in minneapolis, and not only did i get the correct lyrics but i also got sweet version by neko case to hear. i have been looking for it for ages..whata bonus. nice one. just to nit pick. i would out-source your logo. try 99designs for $150-$200.
agentbleu
Sorry m8, I know the logo might be a bit cheap (30 mins work) as I am, but I really could care less about the logo, I'm more fanatical about making it actually work well.
dc2k08
you have the ring tone but you could always link the sheet music for another source of revenue
shawndrost
Cool stuff! A few bugs: under the "recently viewed" header, the same song appears twice in a row. You're getting text encoding funkiness -- http://www.myplaylist.biz/Coldplay/Cemeteries-Of-London/2698...
agentbleu
'You're getting text encoding funkiness --??' please explain what you see, all looks good here?
ra
Same here - characters in the lyrics aren't displaying correctly - like the character encoding is incorrect. (Firefox on Windoze xp)

You need to sanitize the text you are storing to unicode. Here's a cut and paste:

Singing la lalalalala la lé… And the night over London lay…

agentbleu
hmm thanks looks like a db rash. I will have a look at that. cheers
deathbob
Found all three songs I looked for first try, but site is getting pretty slow. Might try whittling down the number of results returned. Also saw text encoding funkiness. Really nice tho, bookmarked. How are you getting the songs and pictures in the flash on the left?
agentbleu
hmm, site getting slow. I have to be careful about robots, they can kill it, as its all generated dynamically thus memory is an issue and I just downgraded memory as I like to run a tight ship.

The flash widget I built, its all custom, Images from Flickr and MP3s sourced through Seeqpod, both have shit hot APIs.

agentbleu
also just checked slow logs. seems was needed some more optimizing
deathbob
Well the flash thing is really cool, it's awesome to have the song to listen to and because the images are pulled from wherever sometimes they're hilarious :). Really nice piece of work!
forsaken
Yea, I've written some similar code to this for fetching the lyrics based on arbitrary parts of the song. It's a fun challenge, and getting the correct lyrics is also hard. Well done on that account.

I see that you are using a flash player to display Flickr photos, presumably appropriated tagged, while playing an mp3 of the song?

I like the site though, well done!

agentbleu
The flash player is custom built, I built it using the bones of the first app which is on myplaylist.biz (main).
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
timcederman
Some great data sourcing, which really makes it compelling. Do you mind if I asked where you got the db from? (just out of curiosity)
agentbleu
erm. Being a hacker... have a guess. (i.e would like not to say). Hope this does not sound rude.
dime
I would highly suggest you get a license to feature the lyrics on your site if you intend on going mainstream. Aside from legal troubles you could face, I think intellectual property should be respected. Using someone's copyrighted material without their consent is never ok.
anewaccountname
>Using someone's copyrighted material without their consent is never ok.

Sometimes it is fine.

agentbleu
It seems the norm in this sector is to be open about this data (lyrics), all of the main sites have same and none are in license agreements. Plus others are opening shop with APIs for access.
rms
It is almost definitely fine if you live outside of the USA.
nir
This is very cool :)

By default, if the search string consists of more than 1 word do you do an OR or AND search? It seems OR from the results I'm getting, but most people now are conditioned by Google to expect an AND search (which really makes more sense..)

Great work, either way.

agentbleu
It is boolean enabled, so you can add in operators such as + = and - = not "" to get actual etc.
bharris
Also interested in where you got the database, it seems to be missing a lot of my favorite artists. Bon Iver for example.
agentbleu
I have about 300K currently, I will add in more soon.
Raphael
I'd like the volume control bigger.
agentbleu
in full screen mode controls are more visible, its really best in that mode. So I encourage that rather than bigger more invasive controls
pistoriusp
http://www.myplaylist.biz/Coldplay/Lost/269837

this was displayed on the page above:

array(1) { [0]=> array(2) { [0]=> string(8) "coldplay" [1]=> int(0) } } here1 coldplayhere2 coldplay

And if I take the lyrics from this page, "Just because I'm loosing" or Just because I'm loosing, it doesn't find Coldplay. Am I incorrect in assuming it should find this?

I think it's pretty cool, but I would give the user the option of "playing" the song rather than doing it automatically. In my experience most people are already listening to the songs which they are trying to find the lyrics for.

This page also produces an error, I don't think Sting did a Wu tan song, but I could be wrong on that as well:

http://www.myplaylist.biz/Sting/Wu-Tang-Cream-Team-Line-Up/1...

agentbleu
u just caught me checking something hence the array. looking into the search problem now. thanks
agentbleu
Turns out in FullText search In boolean mode, there are many stop words, "it's" "I'M" are just 2 of them. Seems I have hit a limitation there on the tech. It will have to be as good as it gets I'm afraid. Short of putting in a custom search engine, that's as fas as the tech allows for them moment, unless I build in a workaround to change all single quotes something else then change back. I will sleep on that...