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Show HN: Review my startup: AtticTV, MusicTV (MTV) for the Youtube Generation

34 points by spicyxtreme ↗ HN
Link to website: http://www.attictv.com

AtticTV is a music video site that focuses on providing a super "kick back and relax" experience while watching music videos. We think it would be an excellent companion while you code :)

Many people currently use Youtube as their primary source of watching music videos. But, it's hard for them to discover as they would need to know the name of the song + artist name. And it's a rather irritating experience to create a playlist and manage different types of playlist content

Our big idea is to try to be the default way that people enjoy music and watch music videos while they work or are doing something else and want to have some music in the background, plus the ability to entertain themselves with a music video whenever they want to. The feeling you get when you leave MTV playing on a TV in the background while you're at the gym or getting some work done.

The experience is very simple and straight forward where you load up the site, pick a genre you like, and enjoy the best music videos (we're still working very hard on this part to improve it) from all over the web for that particular genre.

If you hear a song you like, you can always add it to your personal playlist for easy access. (you have to log in with Facebook to create your own playlist).

We're still in beta and are making a lot of changes and have a lot of work to do but wanted to get some feedback.

29 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] thread
spicyxtreme
oh.. and one more thing.. the videos are synced all across the world.. so you guys and me in Malaysia are watching the same video!
k33n
Very cool concept. I think you'll probably even get some good traction with it. Love the "sync" aspect of it that means everyone in a channel is hearing the same thing.

By the way, the fact that you're giving tools to people who listen to a lot of music on YouTube (most people in younger generations do) is solving a major problem. These people currently have few ways of creating playlists in ways that are intuitive to them and geared for music.

spicyxtreme
thanks so much k33n. extremely encouraging stuff!

was there anything you didn't like about it? or you think could be improved upon?

k33n
If I can offer any constructive criticism it would be to get rid of the Facebook login stuff and just roll your own. Make it easy to connect with Facebook/Twitter/whatever, just don't limit yourself to Facebook users who are willing to connect with you. I made that mistake in a user-generated content product I launched last year and it limited my reach.
spicyxtreme
hrm. interesting advice. will definitely keep that in mind. added it into the our tracker icebox. will definitely talk about it with the team soon.
revorad
Can I please skip a song?

Bug: When I hit a song that was "not available in my country", it asked me to skip the channel. It should just skip the song.

spicyxtreme
hey revorad, thanks for the feedback. we have been getting a lot of requests for that.. we definitely will figure out how to do it.. currently, the videos are synced across the world, so we need to figure out how to do it without ruining the user experience.
revorad
if you sync, how do you deal with buffering?

edit: if it's a sit back experience, why does it need to sync? it's either interactive or sit back, can't be both right? skipping a song is the only interaction i want :-P

spicyxtreme
we view the sync experience as a collective experience where you can feel like you're watching/listening along with the rest of the world. and i feel that, that feeling of togetherness is a unique emotion that could be a huge differentiator. p.s. we may be wrong on this.

and yes. i think i have an idea of how to skip and sync at the same time :) will definitely try to implement it.

revorad
Listening to Coldplay with the rest of the world doesn't make it any good. </joke>
Kiro
Nice idea and nice execution!

I would however work on your pitch since it was never clear from your description that it's actually synchronized with everyone else visiting the site.

I think you should market it more as a radio station for music videos with social features.

Good luck!

slig
Got the "This video is not available in your country". I guess there's no way to solve this since everyone is sync'd.
spicyxtreme
yes there will be. :) we're figuring out a way to solve it as we speak.
eminkel
Did you send a kitty to jail like I did?
conancat
copyright laws sent another kitty to jail. :(
hypnotist
I see you've built it with backbone.js + jQuery.

Can you share your experience with this JS stack ?

conancat
Hi, I'm the frontend developer for the site. As the site is very heavy with interactions, we decided to use Backbone.js to keep things organized and jQuery for updating states, ajax calls, keeping the DOM updated throughout etc. We use Socket.IO as the data transport between server and client.

For animations, we use CSS3 animations as much as possible for the non-essential elements to make use of hardware accelerated animations. However the video fade-in and fade-out effect is done using jQuery though... I haven't figure out an easy way to do that with CSS3 yet and keep it consistant across browsers, it's tough to keep the timing right, lol.

Personally I think Backbone.JS and jQuery are a match made in heaven. In fact Backbone.js is built with jQuery or Sizzle in mind. The latest Backbone.js supports caching of view elements as well (with the "this.$el") and event delegation with $.fn.on and $.fn.off, keeping the frontend fast and efficient. :)

Comments are always welcome! :D

hypnotist
Thanks for the swift reply.

Good to hear that you like BB.js

I'm just starting to learn, so it is always good to hear about nice experiences.

P.S. Your site really looks smooth. Good job.

conancat
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad that you liked the site! :D

I am still learning about Backbone.js as well, there are so many things that you can do with it that I haven't really utilize all the features yet. If you need any help with it, feel free to buzz me!

kleetus
Please don't use Go Daddy! I see the site is registered through and the certificate is signed by Go Daddy. The CEO is an elephant killer and they support(ed) SOPA/PIPA. Also send all resources through SSL, so you don't get a red slash through "https" in chrome. I understand the decision not to encrypt all resources on the page, but everyday users might get the wrong idea about what is being offered.

I have been looking for this sort of service for a while now. Great job! I did not see a way to log in using anything but Facebook. I would appreciate the ability to use Google OAuth as well.

One more criticism in this bad, good, bad sandwich. For christ's sake can we all just stop using Flash!!! This is the worst part of the service. Again, I understand the temptation to use Flash, but it is not very forward thinking of your team. To be brutally honest.

conancat
Hey there Kleetus!

So far, the only thing that we use Flash for is for Websockets transport (if your browser doesn't support Websockets, it falls back to use Flashsockets... Socket.IO FTW), and the Youtube videos embedding.

The Youtube Javascript API for embedding videos automatically chooses the best method of embedding videos in your browser based on your system and machine. If you have opted-in to use the HTML5 version of Youtube embeds, you should get HTML5 of Youtube embeds on every site you go. :) To do that, you have to go here: http://www.youtube.com/html5

Everything else is done with HTML, CSS and Javascript though. I hope you're good with HTML5 and CSS3! We are strong supporters of HTML5, so we try not to use flash whenever we can. :D

We'll be adding more OAuth methods in the future, such as Twitter and Google. Thanks for the suggestion!

nik_0_0
Very cool site, I really like the idea of the 'channel' and therefore syncing around the world, its neat! I agree with some of the comments, the option to skip and 'unsync' would be quite cool.

Is there a way to hide video? I understand its a music video site, but the way it solves the 'irritating experience' of playlists on youtube (which I fully agree with), it great even to use it just for audio.

spicyxtreme
yeah! the "unsync" part is supposed to come from your personal playlist.. if you don't like the current song, u can switch to your playlist.. but probably, it's not evident/intuitive enough?
spicyxtreme
there's no way to currently hide the video. as it is Youtube videos after all. we will definitely explore integration with other services like Soundcloud for a sound only version ;)

thanks for the support and compliments!