It's pretty good - one of the better music index services I've used. Others here have commented on a few small issues but overall it seems well executed.

However, is this really a viable business? I assume you intend it to be, based upon your description of it being a startup, but please correct me if I'm mistaken. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'm going to have to piss on your parade a little bit.

I have considered developing something similar to this in the past, but I've always stopped myself - simply because if it becomes any sort of success and is seen to be either (i) taking in revenues or (ii) encouraging others to develop similar services then the RIAA will give the slightest of gestures.. a wince of the lip perhaps.. to direct a battalion of lawyers to march upon your place of business and annihilate it with a bombardment of 4,000lb bombs stuffed with subpoenas and the internal organs from children and puppies.

Although many (including myself) argue that what you're doing is probably legal, it is not really open and shut - the RIAA would argue that you're encouraging and cooperating in the acts of copyright infringement. It's going to cost you a fortune to defend yourself.. and even if you manage to generate enough revenue to successfully defend yourself once, they will keep coming after you time and time again, from many different angles.

If the CoS can sue the IRS into submitting to its demands for tax exemption then the RIAA can shut down your little operation. The law can be cruel if you can't afford it.

If anybody else (with legal training) can enlighten me then I'd love to have my doubts assuaged.

You could have made the same case to the founders of Youtube. If everyone listens to arguments like that, then the RIAA has already won.

Luckily for the founders of YouTube they were bought by Google. And given the current fight with Viacom I don't know if I would ever want to be in a similar situation.

I hear the example of youtube thrown out a lot, but I don't think it's a good comparison. YouTube had an incredibly useful function beyond sharing copyrighted material. It was also miles ahead of competing services (e.g. google video) in usability.

Hopefully these initiatives will be the 'death by a 1000 cuts' of the RIAA.

I think you're absolutely right, and eventually the RIAA will have to adapt to accommodate services like these. It's an inevitability.

I'd like to see a single global licensing body with a harmonised and simplified model covering every component; record labels, publishers, performers, writers, download rights, artwork, etc. There could be ways for them to support small broadcasters - by providing access to a large catalogue of digital music, waiving fees in exchange for delivering ads, etc. From this we'd see some really innovative services bubbling up to the top.

However, I still stand behind what I said - if you want to turn a service like mixturtle into a viable business then you have to play their game, which is very difficult. I know it makes me unpopular, but it's just a reality we have to live with (for now).

I had discussions with PPL and MCPS-PRS here in the UK a long time ago - their model is pretty complex - and if I wanted to have users in other countries then I'd need to get licensed with their representative bodies too. Not to mention the issue of download rights and artwork - all that has to be negotiated directly with the copyright holders. I'd wanted to build an ad-based model, but in the end I couldn't see any alternative to subscriptions, so I gave up - I couldn't afford the £10,000 advance fee.

While I like the sparse design (and badass logo), a huge problem is that I get to site and within the first ten seconds I don't know what it does (or even why I should care). I decide to figure out more by typing an artist and click 'music search' but now it's taking forever. If I was a random visitor, I'd be gone by now.

While I expect the load time after typing will be better as you work on scaling (and work out the bugs), I still think you'd be a lot better off with a little text explaining why I should even type something in and hit 'music search'. Will I get to play music? Will I get to download music? Will I find the cheapest prices for buying music? Who knows. Just my 2 cents.

Damn that turtle is bad ass.

Seriously. Tipsy might have to run and hide to get a redesign again. http://tipjoy.com/static/images/logo2.png

At least Tipsy seems trustworthy. I'd give him my money voluntarily; Angry Mohawk Turtle would take it from me at gunpoint, then kill me anyway.

I'm confused as to what I'm doing. I search for music, I add songs to my playlist, and then... what?

It plays music for me.

Oh, I see, I've got it to work now. I was just clicking "add to playlist" and nothing was happening, but if you click on the name of the song it starts playing.

In which case, very impressive. I'm particularly impressed that it even finds mashups, and the interface (apart from the difficulty I had with getting it to play) is very nice.

I hope you've thought through the legal issues. It could really use a FAQ with answers to questions like "So where the hell is all this music coming from?"

I missed this too - I think putting a little play arrow next to the "+" is in order.

Other than that, I love it.

Further comment (because I've continued to play with it, because I think it's awesome):

I've found a couple of tracks where the time (in green on the right as it plays) was given as "NaN:NaN". That's probably not a desired behaviour. (fwiw the track was "Thunderbirds Are Coming Out" by TISM)

I'm guessing you have javascript turned off? Otherwise the songs should just play instantly.

Why, oh why does such a site require Javascript?!

edit: I'm not against requiring Javascript for those parts of your website that absolutely, positively require it, but everything that can work without JS should gracefully degrade.

I didn't downmod, but I don't agree that everything that can work without JS should gracefully degrade. That seems like a lot of extra work to support a miniscule segment of fussy purists.

What am I not getting?

Well, JS is turing-complete and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you can do "anything", but it's a curse because unconstrained code is opaque. It's very hard to do stuff like extracting the semantics (what you meant to express when you wrote the code) out of JS and doing things like transformations without an unreasonable amount of work.

I think it's better to express as much as you can in a more "constrained" language like HTML or CSS because it's more like data than code, so it offers less opportunities to make a big mess of spaghetti code and having obscure interactions in the code. It's easier to reason about. HTML and CSS, being declarative, are much easier and cleaner to deal with than JS (it's more WYSIWYG).

So I guess what I'm saying is, coding in a style that avoids JS as much as possible is beneficial, and that style facilitates graceful degradation. Conversely, keeping an eye on graceful degradation will facilitate a better style.

Thanks for explaining. Now I'm sure I disagree. :)

I'm partly kidding. I might use that design style under some circumstances. I disagree that it's the right way to do things. There are many ways to do things. I think people want a "right" way because they want to feel like they've got stuff figured out. (This is especially common in our world because software is complex and there's a lot of uncertainty around how to do it well.)

As it happens, the app I'm currently working on is as far away from this design style as you can get. We do almost everything in JS, even things that could easily be done in HTML and CSS. Our way of carving things up relies heavily on expressing everything in a single language, and the Turing-completeness of said language is an advantage not a disadvantage. It's a solution I'm fond of because it neatly combines high-level abstraction at the source level with some stringent performance requirements in the browser. It will also be fun to watch the purists turn green when they see it.

Edit: we do almost everything in generated JS. Might be relevant.

I tried it without JS for seo reasons but the background flash player just wouldn't work. I had no other option. Plus jQuery is just too awesome not to use ;) I love it.

Isn't jQuery advocating and encouraging "non-intrusive" Javascript and graceful degradation?

JS support is required for the flash auto-play on IE due to some rediculous patent dispute.

Didn't automatically play for me-- I was able to add songs, but had to right click to show my playlist and left click to get started. FF3/Win.

are you using the songza api? i tried a few searches, and its clear, while your search is good, theirs is much better.

great execution, but where's the differentiation with Songza, Seeqpod, Streamzy, et. al?

And don't forget this app: http://listen.grooveshark.com/ It was posted here by someone (author I guess) and I ended up using it for some time because it has playlists. I now check it when I'm looking for something specific. But most of the time, I just use last.fm or Pandora.

Most of these apps just do a search on Youtube and play the audio portion of videos. Only prob is that audio quality is not so great but on my laptop speakers I can't even tell the difference so all is good.

I like MixTurtle. It's a nice app! Good job louislouis! Add a queue/playlist and I'll use it as a default music search app.

The differentiation from songza is in the brand - which, in a market like music, may in fact matter a good deal.

(also the differentiation is that songza's more usable. but yeah.)

The suggestions that pop up when you're typing in a name is very helpful. That's one they differentiate. It isn't Flash-based either?

Why hide the search request with Javascript? Since the URL is always http://mixturtle.com/, I can't easily send a link to a search to a friend.

It's great instant gratification to play songs on the search results page, but I can't then access the source. You don't give anything back to the music sources, so if you they find about you (like when you get big), they'll fight you.

Is this legal? Great application, but I can't help but feel that the RIAA will crush you if they find you.

Looks good. I'm confused about how playlists work though - I can add songs to it, but how do I play it or view it? A killer feature that songza is missing is the ability to create and share a playlist without logging in.

edit: Another problem: since you are getting the music from remote sources, they can stick in HTTP authentication headers. I got hit with a few of those. Not sure if there is a practical technical solution to this though.

The auto source-finding works way better than songza's trial-and-error approach.

The playlist can be viewed with right-click mouse button. Just added that to the site text :)

Even if you read about and then discover this feature, its still pretty inconvenient. I'd suggest making the playlist always visible somewhere on the site, and if you want you could add a hotkey to jump to it.

control click will act as right click

Great design and UI. The logo is awesome. The auto complete works very well(except just for artists, eh, not for song titles?).

It's a lot like Songza, except I like yours better. The white background is much superior to red, also your fonts are easier to read.

It also works very fast and have had good luck with finding good songs.

I like the ability to create playlists.

Occasionally the search would slow down on me.

Great job.

EDIT: Oh wow, just figured out you can save playlists. Very cool.

Suggestion: Create a favicon.ico

You should autofocus your search bar onload.

I like it-- just a few more bugs to work out. I did a search (for my wife) of "Tori Amos honey" and it took a solid minute to return anything.

Created an account and the playlist I saved there. Cool stuff.

Heh, nice touch with it saying "Welcome" in the search box when I login.

I would be a bit sad using your site a lot because I use right-click frequently to go back/open-in-new-tab, etc. But your service is cool enough that I'd live with it, surely.

Be careful with the music industry-- you may want to make it clearer where the source is coming from somehow so you don't land yourself in hot water.

The few songs I tried don't work on the iPhone, but I wouldn't have expected them to. If you made an iPhone app like this, I'd definitely buy it, but I imagine a lot are youtube/flash/etc.

Search is a bit slow ATM, but selection seems good already. I didn't think I had to click 'Save Playlist' after clicking the pluses, maybe it would be better to auto-save the first one or create a default 'Untitled' and ask you to name it.

That was also totally not self-explanatory to a non-registered user, but it did keep the playlist selection after signing up which is good.

For the results, it would be cool to see the album and year, or if it's live a 'Live @ Foo Stadium' in the album spot and the year still shown.

Also wasn't 100% clear on how to play the track, and the 'Try next source' should look like a link, not like any other text.

Otherwise, pretty cool. Got it playin' in the background as I type :)

While I'm at it, a few feature suggestions:

* Export playlist in standard format for external players.

* Need a way to share playlists with friends (sharethis.com or addthis.com?).

* Post playlist onto other sites (Facebook app for example).

* A way for artists to add themselves to the search.

* Continue playing current song in iframe while I'm searching for others (see thesixtyone.com for example).

Good luck!

One more thing (minor bug report): I selected a song in a 2nd search but it added one from my first search instead when I saved the playlist (I clicked songs from 2 searches for my first playlist).

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I'll have to look into those bugs you found. I do admit though it's far from perfect atm and there were lots more features I wanted add before launching, but hacker news has taught me to just throw it out there and get a response, so my server is taking a pounding for it I type.

A good implementation of an idea I've seen before.

The really impressive part of this is "mixturtle". I remember it and its easy to type. You've got time to improve the interface. The name is very clever: WIN on branding.

dude you're smoking crack if you think you can run a biz by export your itunes library, parse the meta data, and stick it online with a google-like search interface. I say this while I'm listening to some Ozzy from your site (works great, but taking over right-mouse button is rude). This is cool as your personal web front-end to your library, but if it gets any traction (free music tends to get traction) you're in for a smack-down. Good luck , rock on :)

First off, I probably wouldn't have tried the service without such a badass turtle on the frontpage. Good artwork.

1. There's no indication of what the service does — "The Music Search Engine" is written too small and in a horrible font.

2. After entering my favourite artist and waiting nearly 1 minute there's still nothing happening. MAKE IT FASTER.

3. The font in the footer also looks horrible (Mac user).

4. I _hate_ it when someone changes the default right-click menu.

I just lost my music hard drive to the click of death, so this is really hitting the spot right now.

Two things that would have made my first 5 minutes better: 1. Giant play button 2. Giant playlist link, or playlist always visible in a column, or something.

Have you considered hooking into a service to pull more thorough album information so stuff could be organized a bit better than just a list of songs?

I'm really enjoying this. Thanks.

If you're going to do something that is as jolting to the user as hijacking the right-click menu, you'd better get it right. As in, get it _perfect_.

When I right-click near the right edge of the browser window, the playlist pops up off-screen and hidden, creating scrollbars. Novices won't get this at all, esp. since it's not the interface people are used to.

Good job - I like. Functionally streamlined, clean design and creative branding hook - I'll be checking back in the future.

I'll be honest, my first reaction was to talk shit but it is actually pretty solid. The only thing I was a little confused of was how to start the playlist. I right clicked and then played it inside the playlist, but is it possible to play it in the main view? Maybe you could just have a big play button in the corner of the page.

search works well. Found 3 tracks for Sounds Like Chicken - my reference Obscure band.

but major FAIL in usage terms.. * I start saving out a playlist - then realise there's nowhere to play it. * Normally I'd leave, but I figured I'd sign up. * Signup worked fine - and then I clicked on My Playlists * And I'd lost my playlist!

Love the design though.

I like the idea.

When you click [+] it would make sense for it to change to a [-] in case I want to remove it (right-clicking is not obvious). The ability to pause a song and change the volume would also be nice.

You should add some kind of visual tutorial (but keep it simple) at the top of the page so new visitors know what to do.

Sometimes I get annoyed when my cat is particularly vocal and won't respond to, the usually effective, shhhhhh. I can only imagine the frustration the people at the RIAA feel with so many smart people trying to figure out how to take them out of the picture. Including many musicians!

Great visual design. Throw together a "getting started" or a "features" page with screen shots of the functionality that the website offers.

In my opinion this is something that Wordpress does especially well: http://wordpress.com/features/

I really, really like the simplicity of the interface. The slow-typing/auto-complete was irritating until I realized why it was taking so long, and then I liked it for finding new music.

This is much better than Baidu's MP3 search. You should run this in China and make some serious cash.

looks awesome. two questions: 1) which technologies was used? 2) how do you handle high loads?

1) php,mysql,js,flash 2) Not very well. My server is dying. I'm about to upgrade but I'll have to take the site down for the nameservers to propogate to the new ips. Anyone know how long this takes?

I considered using amazon for scaling but the article below this one says amazon is down, hehe.

I'm not an expert on this stuff but if you're just changing the IPs and not the actual NS records for the domain, the changes will be pretty much instantaneous, depending on how quickly your DNS service registers updates. I use DNS Made Easy and they usually take about ten or twenty minutes to accept a changed IP; once it goes into their records it's reflected everywhere immediately.

re: nameservers, it depends, most newer systems have it updating within about 4 hours, that being said, some ISP's DNS cached can be borked, so it can take up to 24-48 hours.

You should really leave up your old site in parallel with the new one while you're moving it, I'd say go for a period of 7 days just to be on the safe side.

Hope this helps your needs.

The Login and Signup... "links" don't even feel like they're clickable because they're not underlined, the cursor changes to text editing instead of a hand, and there's no hover effect at all. Same for the X's to close the login and register popups.

A bit slow, but steadily I find I can find what songs I want and build up those playlists. Feels good - http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/mean-green/

I liked it. For my search it brought back some very obscure artists so I am not sure where you're getting your data. But I discovered some music I liked by some new artists so that was great. Memorable URL.

This is great but with the RIAA suing 12 year olds and all, I'm pretty sure they'll shut you down for allowing me to listen to the beatles and metallica for free.

Awesome app though. It looks like a great starting point.

It would be pretty cool to export finished playlists to Muxtape. I mean, you can create your own playlist sharing system, but might as well play along with the marginally bigger dogs.

I tried it from explorer first it didn't work (search for avril lavigne), and it just showed the picture for loading. the same with firefox and then returned can't open file

am I doing something wrong?

this is sick... mainly because I was able to find what I wanted right there...

wondering how long before someone else copies this idea and takes it mainstream... also the elephant in the room, DRM.

Please change the blog so I can subscribe to it. I'd love to see how this develops over time. Plus, if I'm ever feeling timid, I can just go check out that turtle :)

Slow enough to be useless here. A search took a few minutes :/

Several times the song has started, but then whatever method is used to determine if its working caused it to stop and keep looking for another source.

Now on cNet WebWare http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9995938-2.html

I'm not sure what possessed you to design a music player UI without a Play/Pause button! Other than that, looks great.

Needs controls to play/stop/pause, and a volume slider please!

I also hate having my right-click menu hijacked. Please re-think that...

That turtle scares me. Otherwise, awesome.

Where are you grabbing the tunes from? Isn't RIAA going to go ballistic and shut off your supply?

don't understand what the fuss is about, there are plenty of website like that around, in particular i use www.melodyshot.com, its the same concept, only difference is you can download and there a way way more results.

Instant access to Barry Manilow; Mix Turtle Rox!

...i write the songs...i write the songs.

having three different X's in the playlist view gets pretty confusing. perhaps use "clear" for the clear playlist feature and a trash can for the remove item feature.

Need a visual for pausing and playing. Looks and works well.

need audio controls. Pause, play, stop, next, back, etc. Ability to build a playlist and then just have it loop through your playlist, or shuffle through it.

Needs a volume slider. Hate the turtle but thats just me.

Amazing!! 5 stars!! Will definitely buy again :-)

great design, so far it is still searching and its been like 3 minutes ... so I don't know what to say

by far, the most badass turtle i've seen.

still searching after 2 minutes...

this is awesome! ^_^

louislouis great start.

I'm some competition...lol

http://www.myplaylist.biz/

I would recommend Linode for hosting/scaling. you need controls, SEO advice, legal statement - have a read of this: http://thenextweb.org/2008/01/30/the-music-wars-continue-war...

Good luck with the app, it looks great.

The site is pretty slick. Though, I have to admit that there are many sites that do pretty much what you have done. Nevertheless, I guess it’s a huge market and there is room for many players. Question to agentbleu( I have used myplaylist.biz, interesting!) • How do u monetize such service- Google ads? • How do handle the legal issues with music companies. This scares the shit out of me. I was reading about Michael legal issues with music comp and how they were targeting his car, house and everything. • Though u don’t store any music files, why would legal folks come after you