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Today, I was reading through Google News and stumpled upon some articles about this new music blog aggregator called Shuffler.fm, which just launched out of its private alpha today. The site is described by co-founder Tim Heineke as “Pandora for music blogs” or “Stumbleupon for music” and it takes a different route than HypeM and Elbo.ws by presenting the music on various blogs by channels determined by genre. It uses Last.fm’s API to assign genres to the songs posted on blogs. It also avoids playing the same song twice and always goes to a new blog. What is also great for us bloggers is that whenever a song is playing the listener will be viewing the blog post in its entirety. One thing I am excited about is that it will support Vimeo, SoundCloud and YouTube in the future. Soundcloud is already supported by HypeM (not sure if Elbo.ws does) but I know Vimeo and YouTube aren't supported. In my opinion, if a song is officially released via YouTube and I don't have permission to post it, I find it much more appealing to just embed the YouTube video and change the height to 25 pixel rather than upload a webrip and risk getting a C&D. According to Wired, Shuffler will be free for up to 20 songs per channel per month and that the company plans to advertise certain blogs or bands to support this free version. They also said that a one-time fee of $9 will remove the 20-song-per-channel-per-month limit but I don't think that is implemented yet, so I believe there is no limit at the moment.
Anyways, I thought this was cool service that has a lot of potential. I know that it is very difficult to be accepted by music blog aggregators unless you apply very early on in the aggregator's existence or have been around for over a year, so I wanted to give you all a heads up before the service really takes off. I learned that lesson the hard way through my blog being rejected by HypeM and by it being stuck in Elbo.ws' purgatory. I added more information about Shuffler below. Check it out!
Submit your blog via email at:
we@tone.fm
Site:
http://shuffler.fm
More info:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/shuffler-channels-blogosphere-into-simple-music-stations/comment-page-1/
http://www.psfk.com/2010/08/shuffler-a-surfboard-to-the-music-blogosphere.html
http://www.thisisbrandx.com/2010/08/meet-shufflerfm-the-music-blogospheres-newest-aggregator.html
http://shuffler.fm/about -
Thanks for the tip Jess, this seems really cool.
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but, my entire blogging point it to blend seemingly unrelated genres of music and making it work...
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Ya, I don't like this. I mean, I love the functionality, but I don't like the fact that it draws people away from the audio player I've built on my own site. It'll be crap for pageviews, which is a core component of my master plan. I've seen some traffic from them, so I assume I'm on the list already. The pageviews:visit ratio on that traffic? You guessed it: 1.0. I think I'm alone in my selfish world on this one...
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Yeah, that is true in your case since your site has a similar type of functionality. Regarding the pageviews:visit ratio, even if someone is at your page for just that one song, if they see your blog enough I am sure they will be more likely to go to there on their own in the future. I can only see this as a positive.
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not too sure how i feel about this as a blogger, but i am super psyched as a music listener/internet user. of all the music aggregators/players/discovery tools on the internet, i think this is the coolest and most useful ive seen (first impression).
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i think it's great. it fills a niche for people looking within certain genres and it gives blogs full exposure while doing so.
we can talk about spontaneous music discovery among several different genres and all that jazz, but for people looking for a genre fix and discovering new artists within that genre, this is ace.
i wonder if copyright/complaints will become an issue. that's another story. -
Meh, I already tried to nail down the "new artists within genre" gig. That's how my playlist functions. Still waiting for the copyright/complaints...
To be clear, this is an awesome idea. I'm just a little jealous and concerned for my site's wellbeing -- though I'm pretty sure there's nothing for me to worry about. -
so far shuffler has really spiked my traffic - like an extra thousand uniques or so yesterday. mostly because unlike Hype or Elbows, the user doesn't know they're visiting your site until they've already done so. I don't expect there's much in the way of deep digging through the site - probably just a single page view until they click to the next site - but it's something.
on the down side, my referral log is a solid block of "shuffler.fm" links and if there's anything else interesting directing traffic my way, I'm not going to see it. -
Can't imagine that it's going to slow down this week:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/shufflerfm-is-a-clev.html
http://lifehacker.com/5615427/shufflerfm-plays-a-continuous-stream-of-songs-directly-from-music-blogs -
oh good, now maybe some people will discover this local-ish band I saw on the weekend. they're called "arcade on fire" or something...
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Looks similar to We Are Hunted on first glance (aesthetically, anyway). Not sure about the 'blog as a genre' tag, but it's otherwise a nifty idea because it's actually bringing the traffic directly to your blog.
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I Love mp3 blog aggregators. The more the better and they keep getting better. From a user standpoint, I want the quickest and most painless way to get right to the mp3. This shuffler is slick, takes you right to a stream and the page so you can get at the mp3 pretty quick and avoid (for the most part) the words. Not sure though how they determine genre and I don't like that I can't do a search.
It's getting better and better though. Perfection will be a direct (1 click max) path to the mp3. Totally bypass the words. I can make those up myself. Maybe Google is still the best.
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Getting tons of traffic, so much so that it's hard to see anything apart from shuffler.fm in the referral lists.
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Seriously guys? I've gotten 45 hits in 3 days from them...
To the above point, all I'm getting is pretty mainstream stuff. Arcade Fire and of Montreal for 75% of the "indie" tracks. -
I was in the same boat as you Jason with only getting a trickle of traffic from them up until a few hours ago - but after posting the new Shit Robot track I've had about 600 hits in a few hours - not to be sneezed at by any means.
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It's getting better and better though. Perfection will be a direct (1 click max) path to the mp3. Totally bypass the words.
That it doesn't do that is exactly why I like it. -
It may or may not matter to you, and this may or may not be happening, but it looked to me that the service (unlike the Hype Machine) hotlinks to your mp3s. So that every time someone clicks along through and the music starts playing, it's another download. I mentioned this when I asked the dudes to remove me from the service, and they didn't correct me on that, so if you aren't on a plan with unlimited bandwidth you might want to watch that.
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@Sean I think Dewi may have been using sarcasm? I'm not sure. Don't mean to speak for you, Dewi - just comes off that way.
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I sent an email earlier to be on it & a tweet, turns out I already was. All it's doing is, when it goes to my site, it streams a song I have in my post that is already available to stream. The big difference is that the user is actually on my site (albeit through a frame/player) and can read my post while playing the musics. That's a big win for shuffle.fm, imo.
I'm not sure how long I've been part of their service, but I logged in to my googles today and it said 114 visitors. That could be from one day or one month. No clue.
@chromewaves -- when clicking through "indie pop" to see if I come up, I came across Chromewaves about 5 or 6 times for a single TSURURADIO post. However much you are paying them, I'm going to double it for my offer. -
@tsuru - swear to god I have idea what kind of algorithm they're using or why I'm weighted heavily in it. the traffic is nice but it also reminds how inherently valueless this sort of drive-by traffic is. and yet I'll be sad when it inevitably levels out again.
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uh huh.... ;)
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@J HoaS
It does matter to me if it's happening. I assumed they were doing something similar to Hypem but if they're just out and out hotlinking then it's a definitely a 'No, thank you' on my end. -
@Lee | KnoxRoad - Yes, exactly. Thanks for picking up on that.
@Sean R - Sorry, as Lee correctly pointed out, I was using sarcasm about mp3 blog aggregators of which I am not particularly endeared to. I think it maybe was a little too much though since I've just involved myself in the neighborhood. No personal offense intended to anyone here.
BTW, at least from another look (may be wrong), I think J Hoas is VERY likely to be correct. Can't verify though since my little Tumblr is not on there.
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well I'm glad I don't host most of my MP3s myself. PR companies and label sites, beware!
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I don't know if you can call this "hotlinking". It goes to your post page, displays it, and plays a song from it, just like it would if someone went to your site normally and you had a player like yahoo/steampad/etc and they pushed play themselves.
It just does it with your site loaded within it's player frame. Much like a stumbleupon short link http://su.pr/1xpW7r
I like it. You have to stay on my page while it plays the song, so there's a chance they may clickthrough to the main page or other links/songs/etc while there. Pretty nice, imo. -
Also... @chromewaves... I stand corrected, looks like shuffler is now my #2 referrerereerrrer after hypem. I guess my payout worked! ;)
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Sorry... one more post. The only problem I'm seeing with their programming is the repeat factor. Tinkering with it just now in "indie rock" got me The National's "You Were A Sadness" 3 times out of 6 songs from 3 different sites.
Too bad it can't make sure that the same song doesn't get repeated so quickly? -
I'm wondering if the high traffic, and high repeat track-play, is partly due to it being quite new and not having the 10,000 or so blogs that HypeM and Elbows has? The more blogs they follow, the more tracks they can play, and the more variety there will be.
Which is why I sent them a mail asking to add me /blatantplug -
Too bad about the hotlinking, but my mp3s probably aren't up long enough to make it any worse than other hotlinkers. At least they do take people to your blog.
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@Dewi
Gotcha. You basically sounded like Squashed so I didn't detect the sarcasm! ;)
I do think this kind of aggregator has the right idea, as they're simply acting as a gateway and taking you right to the source. Whereas on something like Hype you can easily just stream the track and never know anything about the blog that posted it. Then again, in the era of 'the cloud' it might be a weird idea to actually download an mp3 when you can stream it 24/7.
I'm curious how the streaming works now, because I was just taken to a blog on Tumblr and there was no download link, just the Tumblr player. Maybe there's a really simple way to get a Tumblr mp3 link and I'm just not aware of it. Then again, another blog just had a video posted with no mp3, so clearly they're hosting/streaming from somewhere. -
@Dewi "it might be a weird idea to actually download an mp3 when you can stream it 24/7"
Bit tough to stream it when you spend most of the 2 hour commute underground! Which, by the by, is the problem I've got with all these streaming solutions. I like having a file I can put on my iPhone or iPod and listen to wherever I am. -
Guys and Gals, this really picqued my interest. I saw something weird last night but was too tired to check into it further.
For the most part it appears that they are linking directly to an mp3 on your page and streaming it. That could (very loosely) be classified as hotlinking; however they are also displaying your webpage which negates that and is a good thing. This obviously benefits you since you get more traffic, more exposure and hopefully repeat visitors. A good thing for you folks. Therefore, appears legit. Also, it appears that they can pull audio from a video and stream it.
Ok then, the perplexing part. I witnessed the Tumblr thing Sean R pointed out. Not sure I've got that one figured but it may be this. I was on a webpage (name redacted) and it was streaming a song that was linked on their page. Ok, fine. Good so far. I then went to "view page source" and the audio source it was extracting was from another completely different blog. I scratched my head for a little and then said "Whoa, wake up Dewi!". The blog page it was showing and track it was streaming from that blog page was actually hotlinked from another blog. So, the blog that was showing was getting the traffic but the actual host of the mp3 was another blog who was getting hotlinked and therefore bandwidth stolen from him. Therefore, this was a blog to blog hotlinking issue and no fault of shuffler.
And then maybe another connection. I bet a lot of Tumblr's hotlink mp3's from other blogs. Tumblr only allows a max of 10MB audio uploads per day so it may just be more convenient for them to do that (but, of course, nor fair to the blog that's hosting it).
The service appears to be legit and not a bad idea at all. The question's I would have are how long will the upswing of traffic last and how many of these visitors will turn into repeated visitors to your blog? I guess that's really no big deal though since you are getting more exposure and will get some new repeated listeners, no matter how many. It appears to be all good.
**disclaimer** I am not an expert on this stuff so may not have this all right but that's what I came up with. The Tumblr thing though is still a bit perplexing.
@ Sean R - Squashed, yes perhaps that fits the comment. However, my grasp of spelling is quite superior. :D
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With Tumblr there might be a workaround with the flash player, and I could understand that. But with Youtube they are either streaming the audio from the video (didn't sound like it on the one I saw) or they are grabbing the mp3 somewhere else.
I also noticed in several of these situations with Tumblr/Youtube that the mp3 was tagged pretty poorly in their streaming player (e.g. 'song_12_audio), making me think they are either ripping the audio or grabbing it off some random site. -
Yeah, I don't want my "random" dislike of aggregators get in the way but there still is something that bothers me with it. Which is definitely on the wavelength of what you have mentioned. I wish I was a little more savy on these type of things. I like puzzles but more so being able to sort them out.
Anyways, it still does appear to be fairly legit. I get skeptical though when all of a sudden people are getting huge traffic spikes but maybe that's because the site is new and has been advertised very well. The other thing that puzzled me was what jason@indieshuffle reported. I am not really familiar with his site but did a little research and he draws some pretty good traffic. I gathered though, from another thread, that his site is setup quite different than others. So, maybe that's the difference?
Well, probably over analyzing it? Do sincerely hope it's a good thing for you all. You folks put a lot of effort in your blogs and deserve to get the exposure. And that's a genuine comment not a sarcastic one. ;-)
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They've pretty much confirmed the hotlinking: "if you are worried about the streaming costs you can just take down the mp3s and we'll skip your posts automatically" -- which sounds snottier to than he meant because I'm taking it out of context. But that's appropriate enough, as the service itself messes with the context of your page, automatically streaming the chosen song first, overriding your content with a play bar, before you're given the opportunity to plug a track into place with your words or pictures or whatever. (Pictures would make the quickest impression. So if you're listed in the service, and still want a chance to make an impression to Shuffler's visitors, I suggest you post only music you hate along with giant photos of infected vaginas.) I don't know about you, but I never read the promotional text on the side at AOL's Spinner or whatever, I just hit the convenient play button.
It's not like every visitor to your page streams or downloads tracks, so Shuffler's an unusual draw on bandwidth in that sense. I haven't thoroughly followed the traffic from it, but other than repeat visitors to a particular entry I haven't noticed anyone clicking around. But there has been traffic, and eyeballs are eyeballs. And I'm sure right now folksare just getting used to using the service itself and aren't much using it to explore the blogs it aggregates; that may come later. -
Shuffler.fm went live with me in it. Surprise, hitcounter!
Had good timing, though - I posted a new set of over a dozen songs just after the buzz started and the links started rolling in via google, boingboing, etc.; shuffler.fm seems to prioritize recent tracks, as Hypemachine does; my post's songs were tagged in four categories, dragging up the hitcount - so I'm treating the last two days as a test of what shuffler.fm does, and how it impacts me. And you'll find no complaints here.
The hits have faded back to within 20% of normal since the huge buzzday yesterday, probably as my songs moved deeper into the queue - for someone who posts twice a week, this won't be a killer. Unless this grows immense, I can absorb the bandwidth draw. And like others, at the current level, I think that the "page view for bandwidth" trade-off is worth it. -
I have a feeling that because my MP3s aren't explicitly linked on the page, I'm suffering on this one...
Edit: Having just checked the landing pages, I can confirm that this is indeed true. Basically this service benefits the bloggers who are (most likely) posting MP3s illegally, and providing explicit download links. Fail. -
@jason@indieshuffle ...or just posting sanctioned MP3 links provided by the band or label.
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Sorry guys, but I don't see this as hot-linking at all. It's shuffler.fm visiting your site (actually showing the post) and playing a track for a listener that forces them to keep your page up while it's playing (maybe they'll read your post for those few minutes?).
Isn't that the point of all this bloggerin'? Giving that artist some love?
If you can't handle the bandwidth bump, what would you have done if you got the bump through other means, like stumbleupon or a p4k nod or whatever? -
@chromewaves thus my use of the words "most likely" -- there are obviously a few (in the minority) who post releases sanctioned by the artist. all you have to do is spend 5 minutes on hypem to see that a huge chunk of bloggers post whatever the hell they feel like :-). hell, i've been guilty of it myself...maybe i should just start linking up all these tracks for download.
has traffic continued at a good, steady pace for all? -
Not as good, but still noticeable so I'm happy.
I'm with Tsuru on the not thinking this is hotlinking as well. If they just indexed the mp3s and streamed them with just a link that would be bad, but I get a full pageview too so that can only be a good thing in my book.
On a similar note though I managed to get beemp3 to stop indexing TBW mp3s recently. Apparently writing emails like a lawyer gets more of a response than a straight up request to stop - who knew!
Oh and Jason - TBW is about 99% legal. -
culture bully... 69% legal - hey-oh!
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HEY-O!!!
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Lulz
Confucius say: In music blogging world, there is no such entity as a legal mp3
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Was talking to Tim from Shuffler, looks like they are going to work on the song repeat issue. I was using shuffler as a radio on Sunday and I think I heard that new Cotton Jones song about 5 times in a couple hours. They are adding soundcloud support too, considering they pull genres from last.fm, it should be interesting to see when it's going!
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Ah! I'm not the only one!
All these shuffler.fm links have been showing up in my stats for a couple of weeks now, and my traffic has risen significantly in the last week in particular. I was a bit uneasy about it at first too, but since it shows your page as well I guess it's ok. Thanks for answering all my questions before I even had to ask them! -
I'm all for shuffler. It's a complete win for everyone involved:
-People are really listening to the songs posted (as proven by time on page)
-People are hopefully reading as well
-Blogs are getting great traffic and more recognition for people to follow
-PR folks can see which blogs write about what genres and target them
-and in the end, artists music is getting listened to
Win. (Butler) -
Shuffler's quickly becoming my radio station of choice around the house..... love it! I'm at a blog called TAIT I've never heard of listening to Au Revoir Simone. <3
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I agree with dysonsound. Shuffler is great. Out of no where it started accounting for 4-8% of my traffic. I figured only popular bands would get plays, which is often true, but some small completely unknown local NJ bands songs are getting a few hundred plays thanks to shuffler. I'm also using it myself quite often.
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