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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

I can't access the article right now, but my site: Like.fm basically is the same thing as Ping except it actually reports and keeps track of songs as you play them. It's also a web app and doesn't base itself around driving iTunes sales.

I was a little unnerved to see apple do practically my exact idea after 3 months of hardcore dedication to Like.fm, but it's ultimately validated my idea and glad to see Pings initial response isn't so good.

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On your site, it says "takes 2 minutes" below "Free Signup". It might just be me, but I stopped for a moment to wonder why the signup would take so long. I think that bit of text might have a different impact than you intended.

Cool thanks, I'll remove it.

If it takes two minutes to fill in the signup stuff, please keep it there.

I actually never timed the whole process. Filling up initial signup takes actually less than 30 seconds, and maybe 10 seconds if you use Facebook. Then there's a wizard after signup , though not technically part of the signup, that gets you setup with the clients and follow some people. I just thought 2 minutes sounded fast for the whole process.

"It takes seconds to sign-up" then. Between ten to 120 :-D

I just signed up at your site. Initial impression: it looks good and works well, though I'm wondering if dododo's comment about competition with last.fm might be right. Can you write some more about the story behind the site? How big & who is the team, what did you build the infrastructure on, that sort of thing. Also, are you working on Android/iPhone clients?

Android iPhone clients aren't high on my list, as I'm not sure what I can do for them. They might be useful for scrobbling TV shows and Movies you watch (a future target area) or manually scrobbling tracks. Was there something you had in mind for mobile clients?

Nothing specific. Just that I've been listening to music more and more on my Nexus One lately, even when I'm sitting in front of Macbook. It just sort of subconsciously works. The default Android music player does have some annoying quirks.

I've been an AudioScrobbler user since it's inception. I stopped seriously scrobbling shortly after they (LastFM) got acquired by CBS and things went downhill for people trying to share their music for free, to users who weren't paid subscribers. I've been using SoundCloud to disseminate my music since, but I'm on the lookout for something that bridges the gaps between data mining, free distribution and social aspects of such services.

Give listeners and artists an import tool for LastFM/SoundCloud/iLike/Spotify/etc., learn from SoundCloud about player usability, and you might attract lots of users who got disenchanted with your direct competitors and predecessors.

Good luck & keep up the good work. Judging by the scripting.com review, Ping is just another top-down sales-driver. We still need somebody to do it the right way.

Importing is a great idea, but it seems Last.fm's API restricts using user data for commercial purposes. While I'm not commercial yet, I have intentions on becoming commercial. I'm not sure how well importing would work but it's definitely something I'm looking in to. I guess I could let the user somehow export their own data, if that's even possible, and import it themselves.

and you're not worried by CBS-owned last.fm or spotify? they seem very similar. what's the difference? i couldn't find anything on the page that convinced me to switch or use in addition to these.

p.s., those side-sticking things are really annoying.

Well I'm adding Last.fm support to my clients very soon. And my API (not yet released) is based on Last.fm's API. So soon you won't have to switch. You can use both!

I can't say about Spotify since I've never used it, but how strong is their social component? Can you use the service, share links, and browse profiles via a browser for Spotify? It seems Spotify is for listening to music like an iTunes replacement, where Like.fm is for analyzing and sharing what you listened to (the info). So we have different focuses.

Hey dododo can we chat more about this? My email is chris@like.fm. I'd like to find out what I can do to make you want to use Like.fm, and maybe bounce some of my planned features off you.

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