I solved my own problem. What's next?
Posted by matthiastorm@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 19 comments
So I was hosting a party with friends at my place last year but one of the guys always kept going back to my laptop to put in more of his Schlagermusik (which we all don't like).
That's when I thought hey there must be a solution to this. I want everyone to be able to participate to the music queue but also not too much from one person at once. I googled it, but all the options were either Spotify-exclusive or I didn't like the general approach. I have a TV where we were at, so I wanted to incorporate that in some way.
So I built it myself. I'm not going to post a link here because of the no ads rule but I'm kinda proud of the result too. (I rewrote it twice in the last month)
Is there any chance of this being useful to someone else? I already made it open source but like is there a point of trying to market this kind of product?
Mrqueue@reddit
The solution is talking to them about it, classic engineering solution though, rather than having an awkward conversation you build something
SchonoKe@reddit
Engineers will do months of work to avoid minutes of conversation
BeerInMyButt@reddit
god DAMMIT I can already tell that's going to be echoing inside my head
WachaWan@reddit
Got a couple friends who dgaf and just blast 20 ABBA songs into the queue after a few pints. Would be nice if the tech could tell them to fuck off instead of me for once 😂
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
yeah this is exactly what i built this for.
Mrqueue@reddit
Hack the router and block their MAC addresses
Jaded-Reputation4965@reddit
Share it for free in potentially interested communities and find out. None of us can know
nobuhok@reddit
Is this like a SMS-based service where guests can queue their requests while a single frontend/web service plays the videos?
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
Kind of. Not exactly SMS but yeah. One user can host a room, they get a unique room code and the host displays a QR code for others to scan and add songs to the central queue. I can send you the GitHub link if you want to dive in deeper though
nobuhok@reddit
Sure. It's just I worked on a project before that's very, very similar.
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
Which means... It's a problem that actually exists and people seek solutions for. Developing a product no one ever has before - most of the time - means no one cares about the problem you're solving, so by that you're just fueling my enthusiasm even more, thank you!
Think-Memory6430@reddit
Not trying to buzzkill, but I also built this in 2003 for my local Internet cafe, and it used voting and stuff, and icecast to stream the music. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not really a super novel technical problem or solution, the “hard” part would be actually making it into something for sale.
I’d recommend just enjoying it, maybe make it open source if you’re proud of the work and have it be a part of your portfolio.
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
I know that it exists already, I just didn't find something that was quite up to what I wanted. Everything else has too much friction to add songs or too many features nobody is going to use at a party. You just want one feature when adding a song - adding songs. It actually is open source already too, which is why Im posting this, to find out if I can do something more with it.
chaim_kirby@reddit
Add a payment model to it and you've got a jukebox app that you could potentially sell to bars and restaurants as well as maybe other entertainment venues.
There are companies and apps in that space, but it might be worth looking into
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
Okay yeah I've actually thought of that, until now I was like focused on B2C, but maybe this would be a good sell to businesses too?
LogicRaven_@reddit
As a B2C, try to find a target market that has both needs and money. For example partying often and has money - hedge fund traders?
As for B2B, think it through and talk with some folks. For example the owner might want to restrict which songs to pick from, like no trash metal songs in a country music place.
Try to sell it.
Might be relevant, YC Startup School on sales: https://youtu.be/hyYCn_kAngI
chaim_kirby@reddit
Hard to know. Not sure how many non-entertainment type venues are interested in giving visitors access. If it is only staff that are playing music they are probably happy using spotify playlists setup by the manager or a staff person each day.
Entertainment venues also generally are already dealing with the music licensing bodies. Others would run into legal difficulties
TheFIREnanceGuy@reddit
Step 1 - find friends...
matthiastorm@reddit (OP)
I've used it with my friends on new year's eve and everyone seemed to enjoy it, over the course of the evening we had about 140 songs queued by 6 different people
I focused heavily on a frictionless experience for users who want to add songs. The TV displays a QR code that anyone can scan and they can instantly add songs without even logging in.