Mixest was a project I built this summer because Pandora is too mainstream and Spotify isn't random enough. I wrote a scraper and crawler in node.js that constantly searches for new blogs and adds new music to the radio. Instead of an account system, I used HTML5 local storage to keep track of favorite songs and recently played songs.
You may have seen Mixest on HN 3 years ago, back when it was written in PHP. Its data was destroyed last year by a PHP virus, so I rebuilt it from scratch.
I've been using it as my hacking playlist, and I hope you guys will enjoy it too!
I am absolutely loving this. Any chance of more permanent accounts though? Local storage/cookies are something I go through quite often, plus I'd love to be able to go back to songs at a friend's house or party and play some of these.
I had emailed you previously when the first incarnation of the site died -- so glad it's making a comeback! (EDIT: Or maybe I had emailed the original authors? Not sure on the timeline I guess.)
Congrats on re-launching! Could you tell us a little about the tech? I think some folks would be interested in hearing about the node crawler and maybe a little about how it distinguishes indie music from the rest of the content out there.
I ran a vaguely similar music discovery service called Albumcorner earlier this year. I got in touch with the guy who did Mixest -- seemed like a really great guy. I got the impression that he wasn't going to relaunch after the attack on the server, though, so it's great to hear he passed the baton. And it looks better than ever, Michelle, nice work!
I'm loving every single song it's selecting for me. Is there a way I can login and save my loved songs (apart from scrobbling) ?
So I liked a song, then I clicked scrobble , it redirected to last.fm - fine, but when it returned to mixest, it started playing another song, and also lost all my previously loved songs :(
Ah, that's because www.mixest.com and mixest.com are technically different domains :(. I'll get that fixed up, but your loved songs should appear on one of the two domains.
A small bug : sometimes when I click Next, nothing happens, so I clicked Next many times. That ended up in the song history becoming like this : http://i.imgur.com/yUcj5.png
im going to catch shit for choosing www over no-www, but if you want to make it so everybody is funneled to ONE domain (ie. www.mixest.com) put this in your htaccess and your problem will be solved.
Very good execution and a good choice for the domain name. The design (green/white/red/hearts) reminds me of http://hypem.com/ - you should check it out if you haven't. It's got a similar theme (crawl indie blogs for music) and has a pretty big following.
HypeM.com actually has a fixed set of blogs that it gets music from. I mean, I guess you could say it crawls those posts on those blogs, but it just doesnt crawl 'the web' per say. From my knowledge, HypeM has a relationship with the blogs it takes music from, in order to keep it's quality up.
The big problem with hypem I've found is that the popular tracks is completely under crowd control and wheres I used to use the service to find music that aligned well with my tastes (I discovered Phoenix and some incredible dance remixes of music I love through the service for example), now that the site's got more popular the music has following the American trend of Skrillex like 'dubstep' that not even the 'no remixes' setting can remove for me.
I love it. I really wish there was a link to more information about the artist or at least to where the crawler found the audio. I'm sure the artists would appreciate it also. On that topic, how legal is this? Is all the music public domain?
Love this, already found a great new artist I love. Well done. Another vote for a little more info on where the track was found so information on the artist can be chased down.
+1 for this. More background info in general (site where you found it, artist(s), album(s) and song) would go a long way. Nice alternative to my hype machine addiction.
Great execution, no barrier to playing.
If I understand what you are doing correctly (scraping mp3 blogs), most of the music is provided to the blogs by artist (or PR) for purposes of promotion, so legally it's relatively solid.
I'm curious to know what blogs you are scraping, and how the crawler is moving on to new blogs? I chase a lot of music blogs and host one myself, and know how inconsistent they can be design and format-wise!
Also suggest linking to the original blog the song was found from, somewhat of a courtesy to the blogger, but even more as a means to find more information about the artist (without you having to input that data yourself)
Works on iphone (without autoplay of course). Oddly the skip and play icons are reversed, but the functionality is not? Almost made me give up thinking iOS might not be supported.
The site is incredible. I love the design and the extraordinary simplicity in functionality.
To make a side comment, this seems like an ideal MVP. It gets all the core functionality well-implemented, with enough polish to make it captivating.
Some users mentioned that user accounts, despite the use of HTML5 to store user-specific info, is something that would still be useful. I agree, and it makes it an ideal part of your next revision.
Keep up the good work! This is definitely bookmarked.
Awesome site. Im curious as to how you defined your heuristics? Finding good obscure music seems like a hard thing to do programmatically.
It seems like you would want to find "good" music (which maybe could be determined by how many unique references link it) but thats the opposite of obscurity.. So how did you determine the quality of the "obscure" music you crawled? By hand?
i'm curious, how are you seeding your crawler and determining attributes for the next song recommendation? from my understanding, pandora has a team of musical experts and it takes them 30 minutes to gather data for each song (attributes/input to their recommendation algorithm).
i'm building http://cloudplay.fm a multi-source music player, and would love to have an API to Mixest. the world does need more niche'd Pandoras :)
I definitely prefer it to Grooveshark radio. Nice and simple. The interface is a bit confusing, I pressed the music button thinking it was broken. Maybe add tooltips? Also, using the URL for playing certain songs is interesting. If a user bookmarks the page though, doesn't that mean they'll get the same song every time?
It's a play button, and when you press it it actually just starts playing cool music? I didn't know that sort of straightforwardness and intuitiveness was even possible. Why can't the whole Internet be like this?
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[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadYou may have seen Mixest on HN 3 years ago, back when it was written in PHP. Its data was destroyed last year by a PHP virus, so I rebuilt it from scratch.
I've been using it as my hacking playlist, and I hope you guys will enjoy it too!
PS - your design work looks great (on both versions of mixest as well as your portfolio)
So I liked a song, then I clicked scrobble , it redirected to last.fm - fine, but when it returned to mixest, it started playing another song, and also lost all my previously loved songs :(
A small bug : sometimes when I click Next, nothing happens, so I clicked Next many times. That ended up in the song history becoming like this : http://i.imgur.com/yUcj5.png
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mixest.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mixest.com/$1 [R=301,L]
... just without the double spacing. HN was turning it into one line if I didn't double space.
The big problem with hypem I've found is that the popular tracks is completely under crowd control and wheres I used to use the service to find music that aligned well with my tastes (I discovered Phoenix and some incredible dance remixes of music I love through the service for example), now that the site's got more popular the music has following the American trend of Skrillex like 'dubstep' that not even the 'no remixes' setting can remove for me.
Awesomeness past that. Simple. Quick. No bullshit. I usually don't use services like this but I find myself still listening.
You should offer a link to where you got the track, the artist title and song name are great starts.
I'm curious to know what blogs you are scraping, and how the crawler is moving on to new blogs? I chase a lot of music blogs and host one myself, and know how inconsistent they can be design and format-wise!
Also suggest linking to the original blog the song was found from, somewhat of a courtesy to the blogger, but even more as a means to find more information about the artist (without you having to input that data yourself)
To make a side comment, this seems like an ideal MVP. It gets all the core functionality well-implemented, with enough polish to make it captivating.
Some users mentioned that user accounts, despite the use of HTML5 to store user-specific info, is something that would still be useful. I agree, and it makes it an ideal part of your next revision.
Keep up the good work! This is definitely bookmarked.
Simple to use.
Good stuff man
It seems like you would want to find "good" music (which maybe could be determined by how many unique references link it) but thats the opposite of obscurity.. So how did you determine the quality of the "obscure" music you crawled? By hand?
Easier said then done, I know. But this is really outstanding execution of a light app for music lovers. Great work.
Simple, effective design too.. Love it.
i'm curious, how are you seeding your crawler and determining attributes for the next song recommendation? from my understanding, pandora has a team of musical experts and it takes them 30 minutes to gather data for each song (attributes/input to their recommendation algorithm).
i'm building http://cloudplay.fm a multi-source music player, and would love to have an API to Mixest. the world does need more niche'd Pandoras :)