HN Explorer

Bandsintown at it again (blog.bandsintown.com)

7 points by knewjax ↗ HN
Today Bandsintown launches the first major update to the site since our launch in june. This major update officially launches Bandsintown as a "Social Network" The updates include the ability to add friends, message, and comment. All users now have profile pages, and an upcoming show widget to be used anywhere they like. We also added a page called Fansintown which displays live music fans in your area. We are still in development and will continually be updating and realeasing new version of the site until the beta version is complete. We are listingin to all our users comments and feedback to help guide our development so please let us know what you think and what you want in a live music community website! thanks again for all the Ycombinator help!

Check it out at Bandsintown.com

17 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 40.3 ms ] thread
knewjax
Today Bandsintown launches the first major update to the site since our launch in june. This major update officially launches Bandsintown as a "Social Network" The updates include the ability to add friends, message, and comment. All users now have profile pages, and an upcoming show widget to be used anywhere they like. We also added a page called Fansintown which displays live music fans in your area. We are still in development and will continually be updating and realeasing new version of the site until the beta version is complete. We are listening to all our users comments and feedback to help guide our development so please let us know what you think and what you want in a live music community website! thanks again for all the Ycombinator help! check out Bandsintown.com
knewjax
This post was originally titled "rejected YC company Bandsintown at it again" are there rules here forbidding us from saying that? The title was edited a few minutes after i posted it. I know i have an interest in all the companies that are both YC funded as well as ones who were not. And i know i have read posts from others curious about rejected YC companies and how they were doing now. I think I saw one as early as last week.
jsjenkins168
That is a very lame way to label yourself though. Rejected by YC, rejected by VCs, rejected by your peers, whatever. ALL startups experience some sort of failure one time or another. Its getting back up when you get knocked down (EVERY time) that leads to success.

Bandsintown is an excellent web application and in my opinion the founders should be looking forward rather than dwelling on a past YC rejection.

knewjax
I am one of the founders. I do not consider it dwelling on the fact that we were rejected. It doesnt actually bother me at all as you can see from most of my previous posts I have been labeling ourselves that way to help motivate others to keep pushing forward. The second reason i label it this way is because i think on HackerNews people are naturally curious about all the Ycombinator applicants a little bit more than just any startup. I may be wrong though but this is my reasoning for highlighting the fact that we were indeed rejected but continue to move forward.
trekker7
Oh man, you know that moderation is going a bit too far when something like this happens...
knewjax
Do the HackerNews Readers have any constructive critism for us? anything is good. We still have a long ways to go but the more input we have the better. Thanks for the help in advance.
trekker7
You've got a really slick implementation... the site works great.

I think one thing worth looking into is how often people go to music shows; these can be somewhat expensive right? If the average show-goer only goes once a month, traffic may not be high enough to sustain the site. But I don't know; there could be enough people in the niche of repeat show-goers to meet your traffic needs.

As for the social networking features, you might also want to find out how many music fans are "hardcore" enough to want to talk about music on forums, in addition to just listening to MP3s.

You're on the right track, and just need to figure out what the killer application is for improving the music listening experience, on top of merely listening to songs. Try coming up with dozens of other concepts besides easy access to upcoming shows and profiles, etc... maybe the right answer is radically different from what's out there already.

knewjax
Yes i agree, there nothing better than a Eureka moment, when all of a sudden you see clearly and the solution just seems to show itself to you.
portLAN
> Do the HackerNews Readers have any constructive critism for us? anything is good.

I do. Don't put all the "The" bands under "T".

knewjax
Ya Def. We are working to change that for sure.
Alex3917
I uploaded about ten shows in Ithaca, NY figuring it would help you guys out. I'm a little disappointed though that I can't actually see any of the shows I added. Is there some sort of approval process before they get added to the site, or did all of my entries just disappear?
knewjax
What shows did you add? there is no approval process. When you add them they should just appear on the according artist or venue pages.

One problem I had before, was i added shows for january and feb of next year but i accidently had the year set for 2007 so they did not show up.

Alex3917
OK, the data is sort of there but it doesn't show up in the tag cloud.

edit: Apparently you need to check the "unsigned artists" box. My bad.

knewjax
Cant blame the user though. We may need to clarify this somehow.
neuro
pg,

  This type of moderation is a fracture to people's perception of y-combinator, fix it before it breaks. It's not in the spirit of your essays.
p.s. I like the dash, hopefully you won't moderate that too.

blored
I like your app knewjax. Do you have a non-technical co-founder? If not, I suggest finding one, especially one deeply mired in underground rock culture at least a superficial knowledge of Web 2 dot oh.

1) You're advertising on YC news, hit up MySpace and even Anywhere.FM - people that are into music. They're gonna be your butter.

2) Don't spam, but WRITE WRITE WRITE. If you submit interesting content to people's blogs, they WILL check out your site. You could just be one blog post away from getting traction.

edit: about 10% of blogger accounts have a post dealing with people's favorite music. Google's blog search would really help you in your promotion.

knewjax
This is really good advice, that is the real target market and those are the users who would eventually become our community.