[HN Gopher] Show HN: BandMatch - "Tinder" but for finding musici...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: BandMatch - "Tinder" but for finding musicians to create
       bands/collab
        
       Author : pg5
       Score  : 426 points
       Date   : 2024-05-03 18:11 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bandmatch.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bandmatch.app)
        
       | 999900000999 wrote:
       | Cool idea, but I'm not giving you my location. Please allow me to
       | select a city manually.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | I figured that "allow once, approximate location" would be
         | sufficient for the privacy conscious.
         | 
         | A little scared to make it selectable, as it would make it much
         | easier for spammers/scammers to target locations, as the only
         | verification is email. I do realize they can still change their
         | location that with an emulator.
        
           | 999900000999 wrote:
           | You're only keeping honest people out. It's trivial to spoof
           | location on Android.
        
           | feoren wrote:
           | > A little scared to make it selectable, as it would make it
           | much easier for spammers/scammers to target locations, as the
           | only verification is email. I do realize they can still
           | change their location that with an emulator.
           | 
           | So there's not really any hurdle at all for automated
           | spammers who can fake their location easily, but you're
           | making it more difficult for genuine users anyway?
        
             | pg5 wrote:
             | My thought process was that clicking allow or allow once
             | would be less difficult for genuine users than searching
             | for their city.
        
               | hyperadvanced wrote:
               | IMO you're losing more people due to the location
               | requirement than you are gaining a bad rap from
               | scammers/spammers. I just went through the exact
               | experience of the above poster, I blanket deny loc
               | tracking.
        
               | jolmg wrote:
               | The concern's probably that in order for location
               | tracking to not give you their exact home location,
               | they'd have to drive a good distance away from their home
               | or something before allowing it once. That doesn't seem
               | less difficult than searching for the city from the
               | comfort of their home.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | Keep in mind the privacy concerns of the HN are
               | significantly higher than for normal people. It might not
               | be much of an issue at all.
               | 
               | That said, one thing that is useful with being able to
               | select a city is that it would allow me to browse my home
               | city when I'm abroad, or look for people to play with
               | while I'm traveling.
               | 
               | Tinder offers this as a premium feature.
        
               | notfed wrote:
               | Then support both?
        
           | mmclar wrote:
           | What if I'm not in the location I care about? Musicians are
           | famously people who are often on the road.
        
             | earthnail wrote:
             | Great premium feature. Like on Tinder. Put location choice
             | behind a paywall; keeps fake profiles out, too.
        
           | earthnail wrote:
           | I think asking for location is perfectly sensible and the
           | right thing to do. Track how many people say no, but if the
           | opt out rate is too high, work on the wording to increase the
           | rate before you allow manually entering a city.
        
       | grumpymouse wrote:
       | I'm not going to install this because I'm not looking for a band,
       | but it would be cool if you could keep in mind solo musicians
       | often need to hire a band in order to play
       | 
       | This could be a good way for people to find that when they don't
       | have other musicians in their network who can fill that role for
       | them.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | seems like something a website could do and not require an app.
         | I hope the dev learned a lot about making an app while building
         | this, as that seems the only purpose for app only to me. Unless
         | they want to get at all of that precious data hoovering money
         | potential. I have become so callused and cynical from malicious
         | devs, that's my first thought on anything that is an app
         | instead of a website
        
           | drusepth wrote:
           | I think the "app" form-factor is preferrable to a "website"
           | for a lot of people. Almost every website I've built over the
           | past 10 years (summing to ~900k-ish users) has had constant
           | streams of users always requesting an app alternative to the
           | website, quote "even if it's just the regular website in an
           | app".
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | You just described a web app. Go forth and sin no more
        
               | dumbo-octopus wrote:
               | People don't like web apps and don't know how to install
               | PWA's (by design of the OS manufacturers that make money
               | from developers needing to pay to be on their hosted
               | platforms). Like it or not, if you tell someone you have
               | a product to use on their phone, they're going to want it
               | to be in the App Store.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Web apps should be able to be listed in the app stores. I
               | understand why people want to find things in the store.
               | Younger generations don't really use the internet the way
               | us old farts did. Discovery is no longer something that
               | SEO and ad driven search makes organic any more, so
               | discovery is nearly impossible. Instead of Yahoo style
               | search of webpages, we have the curated search of apps
               | via stores. Not that the app search is amazing, but it's
               | still a smaller subsection than all of the internet which
               | makes it easier.
        
             | kmoser wrote:
             | Why not both? Assuming it's running off a DB in the cloud,
             | it should be simple enough for the developer to write a web
             | front-end for it.
             | 
             | I try to keep my phone lean and mean, and I'm not inclined
             | to install an app for something I don't use all the time.
             | Heck, even if I were to use this all the time, I would much
             | rather use it through a web interface.
        
           | pg5 wrote:
           | A good chunk of my motivation for building this was to get
           | learn React native and get experience with building out real-
           | time messaging.
        
       | ajakate wrote:
       | I downloaded the app, but running into an infinite spinner on the
       | main "Artists" tab, so can't really comment on the what the app
       | is like...
       | 
       | What I will say is that it seems a little unfortunate that so
       | many "matching" apps take the tinder swipe model these days when
       | it really makes the matching experience worse.
       | 
       | I have a friend who's a drummer in central Illinois. He's used
       | https://www.bandmix.com to find multiple groups that he's been
       | jamming with for a while now. The UI is such that you can see a
       | grid of all the bands/artists matching your criteria, and can
       | facet and filter your search in the sidebar with a lot of other
       | options including distance, commitment level, genre, etc.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Thanks for checking it out. Ugh, I thought I had fixed the
         | infinite spin, but it seems to happen on the first app open
         | occasionally still - its related to permissions dialog
         | 
         | I intend to add filtering, but didn't initially because 0
         | people use it currently, and also wanted to get an mvp out
         | quickly
        
         | colonwqbang wrote:
         | Why does swiping make it worse? Is there a better alternative?
        
           | unixhero wrote:
           | Why not just list everyone... tables and filters for the end
           | user
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | You give up on a lot of data you could otherwise have
             | collected by doing that, data which could have helped the
             | product in other ways.
        
             | onion2k wrote:
             | Filters are useful to narrow a list but they're useless for
             | actually recording a decision against each item in the set.
             | They're just not a mechanic for assigning a (boolean)
             | value. Swiping is, and that's what's happening here.
        
           | Anduia wrote:
           | The swipe feature, while familiar to users, may not be the
           | most efficient way for musicians to connect and form bands. A
           | UX that allows creating a band and receive applications could
           | prove more effective, then perhaps you can use the swipe to
           | accept or reject them into your band.
        
         | yashvg wrote:
         | By swiping you force people to 'rate' everyone they see. You
         | can then use a method like the Elo rating system to match
         | musicians of similar skill levels (or desirability?) more
         | easily.
        
       | FailMore wrote:
       | Can't download of find it on the iOS App Store. Based in Uk
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Ah sorry - initially only launched in the US/Canada because I
         | don't have translations set up. I suppose there is no reason to
         | not make it available in the UK though.
        
           | benenglish wrote:
           | Yes please
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Updated both app stores to make it available in the UK, might
         | take a bit to take effect
        
       | block_dagger wrote:
       | Installed iOS version. Looks like I can't even browse content
       | without (1) giving away email and (2) entering profile
       | information. So I uninstalled it. Please consider showing content
       | before you ask for personal info from the user.
        
         | spacebacon wrote:
         | I agree, musicians are a finicky bunch. Show profiles and
         | onboard after peaking an interest.
        
           | entropicdrifter wrote:
           | I agree with this sentiment as well, but my OCD requires me
           | to inform you that the word you want is "piquing"
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | That is fair, I may have copied the tinder model too literally.
        
           | treme wrote:
           | I disagree. People on HN won't even signup for Twitter
           | because "reasons". I think gate keeping finicky people is
           | fine, you should at least A/B test how likely you can
           | encourage registration because building initial network
           | effect for something like this is crucial.
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | I agree with this, don't get too bogged down by what people
             | here think, focus on your target audience. This is the
             | crowd that would have passed on Dropbox because it's so
             | easy just to use rsync.
        
               | codedokode wrote:
               | When you use rsync, you don't have to share your data
               | with foreign intelligence.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | I'm aware of the benefits of rsync but you've sort of
               | proven the point. Regardless of the niche concerns of the
               | HN crowd Dropbox was an extremely viable product and the
               | company went on to make a lot of money.
        
         | willsmith72 wrote:
         | i definitely get this sentiment, but as someone who's used
         | similar apps for other stuff, i prefer knowing that people who
         | are viewing my profile at least had some email verification
         | 
         | yes anyone can use a throwaway email, maybe it's all
         | irrational, but i know from user interviews i'm not the only
         | one who feels that way
         | 
         | same thing for app vs web. there's at least a feeling that
         | scammers/hackers/creeps on the other side of the world have
         | less access to my personal info. again maybe it's fake, but the
         | perception is there. (otherwise generally i would prefer web >
         | app 100 times out of 100)
        
           | Pine_Mushroom wrote:
           | App is a dealbreaker for me also. Neat idea though.
        
       | srameshc wrote:
       | Great idea, I always wanted to build something to do with music
       | and musicians but never did I think of this case. I can see it
       | useful and a website instead of an app to begin with will make it
       | easier for many to try and test.
        
       | debo_ wrote:
       | Drummers are probably going to be the "attractive person"
       | equivalent on this app lol
        
         | rozap wrote:
         | We did have a drummer but unfortunately he died in a bizarre
         | gardening accident.
        
           | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
           | On stage or off? (What? There could be a band that does live
           | gardening as part of its routine.)
        
           | toddmorey wrote:
           | I heard you've gone through quite a few drummers, actually.
           | 
           | List of Spinal Tap Drummers, all deceased
           | https://zeroenthusiasm.tumblr.com/post/47032679583/list-
           | of-s...
        
           | RajT88 wrote:
           | Now _technically_ he died by choking on his own vomit. But
           | the thing is - it wasn 't his vomit. But you can't very well
           | fingerprint vomit, innit?
        
         | tnolet wrote:
         | What's the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?
         | 
         | You only have to punch the beat into a drum machine once.
         | 
         | (Had bands and multiple drummers. Love'm)
        
           | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
           | My Roland MC-505 is in violent agreement.
        
             | toddmorey wrote:
             | Sure, sure but can it still drum when you turn it
             | completely upside down like Tommy Lee?
        
               | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
               | As long as the cables reach because it's a drum machine
               | running from a program.
               | 
               | You can even go Marty McFly on the ground jamming on the
               | keys and kick over the subs if you really want to.
               | 
               | EDIT: PS: If you kick over my sub, your foot will break
               | from either the sub itself or this 6 pound sledgehammer
               | foot detector. Fair warning.
        
         | bravura wrote:
         | What does a drummer use for birth control? Their personality.
         | 
         | (Agree with sibling posts, getting a great drummer is hard and
         | amazing.)
        
           | beretguy wrote:
           | I'm slow. Can somebody explain all the drummer jokes? What's
           | wrong with drummers?
        
             | meowtimemania wrote:
             | Often the drum pattern that best fits into a song is
             | simple/boring. Maybe stereotypically, it's hard for the
             | drummer to resist "overdoing" the drums.
             | 
             | I think there's a metaphor that can be applied to software
             | engineers.
        
             | lukas099 wrote:
             | There are jokes about all instruments, but some seem to get
             | the brunt of them. In orchestra it's the viola
        
             | nineteen999 wrote:
             | They beat on things with sticks, like a caveman. It's low
             | hanging fruit. The bass player often cops it to a lesser
             | extent as well, it's how singers and guitar players retain
             | our false sense of superiority. We actually usually love
             | our drummers (but only if their playing is on form,
             | otherwise they cop abuse).
        
               | wyclif wrote:
               | Hard to find a good drummer. If you're in a developing
               | world country, even harder because drum kits take up
               | valuable space.
               | 
               | Pro tip: Having a hard time finding a good drummer? Steal
               | one from another band. Of course, your band has to treat
               | them better than the old band. This is a time-tested and
               | proven stratagem.
        
             | dec0dedab0de wrote:
             | we're the coolest, it makes the note players jealous.
        
           | commandlinefan wrote:
           | Do you know what they call people who hang around with
           | musicians?
           | 
           | Drummers.
        
           | maw wrote:
           | How do you know that there's a drummer at your door? The
           | knocking speeds up.
        
         | jaybrendansmith wrote:
         | you meant to say "good drummers"
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | Can we page the owners/devs of the app to at least explain what
       | they've built and at least answer some questions about it?
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Hi, I'm here. I built this as an alternative to city-based
         | Facebook groups (for people who don't use it) and in part to
         | learn React Native.
         | 
         | It lets you create an artist profile, view nearby ones, match
         | with them, then have a real-time chat with your matches.
         | 
         | Added a "nearby concerts" tab mainly so that the first adopters
         | in new areas would have something useful besides a blank
         | screen.
        
           | htrp wrote:
           | Did you try/build on other frameworks ? What made you choose
           | ReactNative?
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | That's effectively what 'Show HN' means - someone is posting
         | their own work and is around to talk about it.
        
       | higgins wrote:
       | awesome app! how did you source the initial musicians before
       | launch?
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Thanks! I suppose the answer is that I didn't. It's pretty
         | empty right now, besides friends and the results of a recent
         | Meta ad campaign.
        
       | jyash97 wrote:
       | Wow, I had a similar idea back in 2018 and I created a visual
       | prototype for it with bunch of screens and did user interviews.
       | 
       | I didnt get chance to look into the app fully yet, but my idea
       | covered musicians and people ( like restaurant owner/mgr or other
       | ) to hire musician, I also handled a way to find other band
       | members too. Would love to share my idea and details in case you
       | are interested
        
         | ktbwrestler wrote:
         | Damn this piques my interest, would love to hear more:
         | 
         | jhg7nm at Virginia.edu
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | In my spreadsheet of possible expansions, I do have "artist",
         | "band" and "venue" specific profiles and some way to provide
         | value to them, but I haven't really thought it through.
        
       | throwaway22032 wrote:
       | The League of Legends role selection screen comes to mind...
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Is that a good or bad thing?
        
           | throwaway22032 wrote:
           | Running joke that if you pick support you'll match in 1
           | second
        
       | irskep wrote:
       | How does this differ from Vampr and Bandmix, which claim to be
       | the same thing?
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Haven't used Vampr. I made this in part because I did not enjoy
         | the "retro" UX of BandMix and the fact that you have to pay
         | money to send a message.
        
           | irskep wrote:
           | It's literally a Tinder-style swipe interface for musician
           | matching. I recommend taking a realistic look at your
           | competition.
        
         | javier123454321 wrote:
         | From what I can tell, it's worse than Vampr, but also has a
         | smaller network.
        
       | wizardwes wrote:
       | Installed to give it a look, but, sadly, as expected, nobody in
       | my area, and concerts are basically non-existent.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | I considered making my own profile visible to everyone
         | regardless of distance.
        
           | wizardwes wrote:
           | Would be cute, kinda like MySpace, but I think would detract
           | from the experience if there are people in your area, unless
           | it was always the first one to show up, and only ever when
           | you first open the app
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | Unless there are somehow millions of musicians looking to get
       | matched in a single city, the "swipe" UI is pointless and will
       | just make the whole thing unusable. The search + filter pattern
       | for online datasets was perfected many decades ago. Use it.
        
         | Philip-J-Fry wrote:
         | Yeah, swiping is a dark pattern employed by dating apps.
         | 
         | Even with millions of users, there's better ways to match
         | people up than a simple swipe. It's to keep people at the mercy
         | of an algorithm where spending money is the only way to get any
         | sort of control over what you see.
         | 
         | It exists only for shady monetisation.
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Actually if you use the same interface for recommendation
           | systems for content (say RSS feed items, videos, etc.) you
           | get much better results than western content recommenders
           | which don't get accurate negative samples. It finally hit me
           | the reason I didn't understand a lot of the recommender
           | literature is that it doesn't make sense and it's
           | transformative to treat recommendation as a classification
           | problem the way TikTok does. The real Dark Pattern is that
           | YouTube and every other western app looks like
           | 
           | https://marvelpresentssalo.com/wp-
           | content/uploads/2015/09/id...
           | 
           | where you can't conclude anything at all because a user
           | didn't click on an item. (That and the scan-ignore-repeat UI
           | paradigm that has kept RSS readers thoroughly out of the
           | mainstream forever)
           | 
           | Even if you want to have a search-based UI it would still
           | make sense to show you one match at a time and let you thumbs
           | up and thumbs down and have the system remember your choices
           | so you can come back next week and look at new items without
           | the considerable cognitive burden of ignoring. But say "see
           | something once, why see it again?" and people look at you
           | like you're a psycho killer. The whole advertising economy
           | though is based fundamentally on spamming you with the same
           | crap over and over and a 'dislike' button that works
           | (negative sampling) would end it overnight, i guess there's a
           | reason why you can't explain something to a person whose
           | paycheck is based on not understanding it.
        
             | derefr wrote:
             | > it's transformative to treat recommendation as a
             | classification problem the way TikTok does
             | 
             | Treating recommendation as a classification problem has all
             | sorts of flaws, mostly down to normalizing the user's
             | indications into a larger model. People will be more
             | passive sometimes and more engaged at other times.
             | Sometimes they'll blindly accept and watch everything that
             | comes along (or blindly swipe right on every match, etc);
             | other times they'll be very choosey.
             | 
             | It's kind of the same problems that asking users for star
             | ratings has -- people interpret the meaning of "one star"
             | or "three stars" or "five stars" differently; and there are
             | selection biases on when people will bother to vote at all.
             | (The Netflix Prize was a _challenge_ for a reason!)
             | 
             | You can avoid all these temporal and selection biases,
             | though, because content recommendation is actually
             | ultimately a _ranking_ problem: any recommendation
             | algorithm ultimately wants to generate a subjective ranking
             | of its universe of items, such that everything gets put in
             | a sequence, with the thing the user would most like to see
             | next, first.
             | 
             | And conveniently, we already have a mathematically-perfect
             | way to do ranking: ELO. Or, in app UX terms: the classical
             | HotOrNot design, where you're presented with exactly two
             | options, and you have to pick one as being better than the
             | other. And you get to see the each option several times,
             | paired against different other options each time.
             | 
             | In user-engagement terms, a HotOrNot interface would be
             | just as much of a "dark pattern" as a Tinder interface. But
             | in recommendation-tuning terms, the backend of a HotOrNot-
             | UX app _could_ build you a subjective scoring function that
             | 's much more accurate, much sooner.
             | 
             | > you can't conclude anything at all because a user didn't
             | click on an item
             | 
             | The real negative signal that sites like YouTube (and to a
             | degree, TikTok) use, is landing on something though a more
             | passive engagement action (e.g. auto-play next) and this
             | inducing engagement in a previously-passively-consuming
             | user to "get away" from this content.
        
               | PaulHoule wrote:
               | Classification gives you calibrated scores that you can
               | use together with other information. A classifier may not
               | be the ideal recommender by itself but it is a good
               | component.
               | 
               | A probability score for "will he like it?" works as a
               | ranking score in my experience with some caveats which
               | aren't so much about the score as a score but that
               | recommendation is really a sequential problem. That is,
               | if I get different versions of the same news article that
               | all score 0.9, it might be OK to show me one or two
               | articles from that list. I believe people's satisfaction
               | with an article is greatly influenced by being spammed
               | with too much of the same thing and that is not so
               | influenced by ranking scores.
               | 
               | I'll go so far as to say full text search should also be
               | treated as a classification problem, in particularly you
               | need a probability score if you want to make a service
               | like "Google Alerts" where you tell people about new
               | marching documents. Also if you are trying to combine
               | several radically different searchers (like IBM Watson
               | did back in the day) the probability score is essential.
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | I mean. Tinder is pretty awful in general. But the UI does
           | have some merit. It's exactly the idea of _not_ filling out
           | pages and pages of details about yourself that is great. And
           | likewise, being able _in principle_ to randomly find
           | potential partners that you would not had you gone the route
           | of manually tweaking a bunch of search parameters that your
           | potential partner has to fit.
           | 
           | Swipe UI is not the problem. Tinder is separately awful
           | independently of its UI.
        
             | gizajob wrote:
             | The UI has some merit for attractive people.
        
         | solumos wrote:
         | wait, why isn't there a dating app that has this?
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | Because then people would drill down and either find their
           | perfect partner quickly, or figure out there's nobody
           | compatible with them on the app quickly; and either way,
           | delete the app.
           | 
           | Dating app monetization creates a principal-agent problem:
           | both subscriptions (for paid apps) and advertising/data-
           | brokering (for free apps) are revenue streams that depend on
           | people engaging with the app as much as possible -- which
           | people who actually manage to find solid romantic
           | relationships won't do.
           | 
           | The only good dating app monetization model, would be a one-
           | time-fee model. This would induce the correct incentives: as
           | long as people are on the app, they continue to be a cost
           | burden on the service with no further revenue -- so, like
           | people hogging a table at a restaurant, the service would be
           | motivated to satisfy them and get them out the door!
           | 
           | But AFAIK, nobody has ever done this yet. (I think it's just
           | because such a site would make so much less money than the
           | traditional "milk your user base eternally" type of dating
           | site. And people who build dating sites are usually in it for
           | the money.)
        
             | zero-sharp wrote:
             | We need an open dating platform. "OpenHinge"?
        
               | gizajob wrote:
               | When it first started, OKCupid was about the perfect
               | dating platform until Match.com bought it and totally
               | killed the functionality with monetisation.
        
               | eddythompson80 wrote:
               | I don't know if the timeline of events supports that
               | entirely. Match.com bought OkCupid in 2011. OkCupid
               | didn't start becoming Tinder-like until Match merged with
               | Tinder in 2017.
               | 
               | There was also very little changes made to OkCupid core
               | functionality between 2011 and 2016. Most monetized
               | features predated the match.com acquisition, though I
               | think the price increased at some point.
        
               | excalibur wrote:
               | In the world of dating, "open" doesn't mean what you
               | think it means.
        
               | zero-sharp wrote:
               | "AjarHinge"?
        
               | RunningDroid wrote:
               | Sounds like Alovoa: https://alovoa.com/ /
               | https://github.com/Alovoa/Alovoa/
        
           | eddythompson80 wrote:
           | Because they all used to be that (see old OkCupid, match.com,
           | Plenty of Fish, etc), but swiping apps stole the majority of
           | their user base when they came around and every app had to
           | become another swiping app to attract users. 9 times out of
           | 10, the person being approached is gonna look at the
           | approaching person's pictures and "basic stats" (age, height,
           | kids, religion, job, education, pets, smoking) and decide
           | yes/no. So what's the point of all the other stuff?
        
           | RunSet wrote:
           | LokiList.com[0] is a free, anonymous online personals site
           | intended as a replacement for Craigslist's Casual Encounters.
           | It also allows searching by A/S/L[1].
           | 
           | [0] https://www.lokilist.com/about.php
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age/sex/location
        
         | saila wrote:
         | Considering how important style is in most genres, I think the
         | swipe interface could be a good way to quickly find better
         | potential matches, assuming there's a pre-filter based on your
         | selected genres.
         | 
         | If I was looking to start a band today, I'd definitely give
         | this kind of thing a try.
        
         | chrisin2d wrote:
         | Furthermore, this photo-forward interface design pattern
         | presents candidates' physical attractiveness as the most
         | salient feature. While this is desirable in a dating app, this
         | is probably not very relevant for assessing people for their
         | potential as musical collaborators.
         | 
         | From the top of my head, I'm going to guess people want (1)
         | personable and agreeable bandmates with (2) compatible music
         | styles, (3) musical talent and skill, and (4) can play
         | instruments or roles that a band is missing.
         | 
         | So the interface should support users in presenting and finding
         | these traits. If I were to design it, I'd have:
         | 
         | - Auto-playing music sample gallery. This is the most important
         | thing to present. The current design asks the user to dig into
         | Youtube and Soundcloud links -- which is very high-friction and
         | would have the user jumping between this app and other apps
         | every few seconds.
         | 
         | - One-minute self-introduction video. This helps the user grok
         | the general 'vibe' of someone.
         | 
         | - Allow users to connect their Spotify or other music accounts.
         | Then show users their shared music interests. This can provide
         | another clue about having compatible musical personalities.
        
           | arcticfox wrote:
           | I like your ideas, and I feel like tiktok/reels would be the
           | better base for this type of app than tinder
        
           | pg5 wrote:
           | I agree with pretty much all this. I avoided in-app videos
           | because of the complexity and cost of building a
           | transcoding/streaming system. But I suppose audio-only
           | wouldn't be too bad.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Good point, I do intend to add genre and instrument filtering.
         | I figured I had some time to do that since there are barely any
         | users. Not much point of having filtering if there are 5 people
         | in your area.
        
       | PUSH_AX wrote:
       | Ease of recording has made remote bands and collaborations very
       | common, you can trade stems with people anywhere and make music.
       | 
       | This would be a million times more useful without the
       | geographical restriction, although I concede if the true intent
       | is to make in person bands then sure, it's useful. Just consider
       | the wider market.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | A lot of people have mentioned this, so I'll add the toggle to
         | disable "local artists only" to the top of my TODO. Though I
         | suppose genre filtering would need to be built first, or it
         | would be obnoxious.
        
           | hyperadvanced wrote:
           | Genre is probably a prerequisite, yeah. I wouldn't want to
           | use something that basically firehosed every metal guitarist
           | on earth into my feed when I'm looking for someone who's into
           | post-rock (or whatever)
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Using this terminology you might as well call Uber: "Tinder" but
       | for finding a cab driver.
        
       | eweise wrote:
       | Looks good. Wish it was a website though.
        
       | winternett wrote:
       | Does the app feature music by musicians? As a musician that's
       | what I'd expect to see myself, because seeing a bunch of people
       | only talking about what they do is useless in terms of conveying
       | style and skill. It also enables scammers and fraud if people
       | aren't required to at least upload a video of themselves in
       | action.
       | 
       | Back in the old days, we had a local paper that allowed musicians
       | to connect from a classified section, and boy was it scary
       | meeting some of the strangers that posted in there to jam.
        
         | wheels wrote:
         | There's a simple website for where I live (Berlin) which is
         | basically musical want ads. Biggest problem is that while it
         | allows it, most musicians don't include an audio clip. People
         | self-describing their musical ability is almost entirely
         | useless.
        
           | jdiez17 wrote:
           | What's the website called?
        
             | wheels wrote:
             | https://www.berlinmusiker.de/
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Since this is the first iteration, I went the easiest route
         | where people link their SoundCloud/Spotify/or Youtube channel.
         | 
         | I considered having MP3 uploads or even video uploads, but
         | didn't seem worth it building a transcoding/streaming system,
         | when someone could still upload things that is not them
         | playing.
         | 
         | Another idea is to "verify" linked Spotify accounts by having
         | the artist place a short random code in their Spotify bio, to
         | prove they are actually the artist.
        
           | wheels wrote:
           | You're missing the bulk of the already small market if you're
           | assuming people signing up for your app will universally have
           | Spotify tracks up or their own YouTube channel. Soundcloud is
           | more likely, but still not a given, as it's geared towards
           | mostly finished tracks. Hint: the most sought after band
           | members are bassists and drummers, and they don't tend to do
           | solo tracks.
           | 
           | You want people to be able to have a low quality video of
           | them noodling or playing along to something for 30 seconds.
        
             | hyperadvanced wrote:
             | I think, fwiw, I would rather work with someone who has the
             | drive and motivation to finish a track of their own than
             | merely recruit a noodler. I think that from a management
             | perspective, I would also abhor opening up any sort of
             | video/audio sharing because then you're a target for the
             | majors and you get DMCA'd into the ground when kids start
             | uploading their remixes of Taylor Swift songs or whatever.
        
               | wheels wrote:
               | I work in the music industry. An important thing said
               | once to my arrogant twenty something self by a product
               | manager: "Our market is amateurs. The pro market is a
               | unsustainably tiny." There's basically no product in the
               | music industry that can be supported by just pros. There
               | just aren't very many of them.
               | 
               | And again, most drummers and bass players don't create
               | complete tracks on their own, and they're the main thing
               | people are looking for. And honestly, a lot of drummers
               | and bass players don't want to come into a band where the
               | guitar player has already decided what the bass and drum
               | parts should be. You can get a lot from listening to
               | sketches / noodling. (By noodling I mean mainly
               | improvising something unaccompanied, not necessarily
               | trying to win the gold medal at guitar gymnastics.)
               | 
               | I'm a bass player. A younger version of myself lived from
               | playing bass for a couple years. I still play quite a few
               | gigs. I very, very rarely produce tracks (one every few
               | years), and there's very little of my bass playing
               | online.
        
               | hyperadvanced wrote:
               | Interesting. My perspective is pretty skewed as a semi-
               | pro musician and someone who is mostly a recording artist
               | and not a live band/jam guy. I think there are a lot of
               | people who CAN do it all but might be open to collabs
               | with the right person(s). You are correct that the pro
               | market is vanishingly small but if OP thinks they're
               | making any money off of bassists who could just post on
               | Craigslist I think they're in for a surprise.
        
               | wheels wrote:
               | I've used sites that are trying something similar to find
               | bands in the past. So I think I'm pretty close to the
               | target market (or have been in my past). I don't want to
               | post bass-player-looking-for-band on Craigslist or such
               | -- did it once, and you get swamped by shitty bands who
               | mostly still don't send any audio.
               | 
               | As a bass player, I want to hear if the singer can sing,
               | and if the sketches of songs are good.
               | 
               | I can also play all of the standard band instruments at
               | varying levels of competence, but I'm not much of a
               | songwriter. What people expect from bass players and
               | drummers is that they are good at catching things quickly
               | and writing interesting parts.
        
               | hyperadvanced wrote:
               | For sure. When I've played bass in bands or filled up a
               | stage for a live show, that skill is indispensable. And I
               | don't mean to downplay the importance of gigging or band-
               | formation for this kind of thing: OP should cater to as
               | many people as possible. I was originally just saying
               | that I understand the desire to outsource content hosting
               | to avoid the long fingers of the majors or user-generated
               | content controversies.
        
               | jimbokun wrote:
               | So you don't need an app like this in order to find gigs
               | or collaborators.
        
               | hyperadvanced wrote:
               | I don't know. Similar to comment OP I don't "need" it but
               | I think it's cool and it has the potential to be better
               | than Craigslist.
        
             | jimbokun wrote:
             | Record a couple minutes of you playing something, upload it
             | to your YouTube channel, and submit the link.
             | 
             | You're acting like young people wanting to join a band
             | don't know how to post things on the Internet.
        
               | wheels wrote:
               | Are you a musician? Have you ever used a site like this?
               | 
               | My comments are literally based on the disappointments in
               | using similar sites in the past. Most people don't add
               | audio. Profiles without audio are useless. Making (and
               | possibly providing minimal vetting?) people post audio
               | would already be a big step in the right direction.
        
               | teucris wrote:
               | Just my experience but as a musician who used Bandmix for
               | a while, I found that most profiles I was interested had
               | audio. It felt like it was expected and profiles without
               | links to audio weren't complete.
        
           | hyperadvanced wrote:
           | It's awesome that you did the simplest thing. Whenever I've
           | done these kinds of attempts to collab with strangers online
           | kinds of things, I've always found that people will express a
           | desire to be in a band but are awful at creating music. Just
           | requesting that someone posts a sample through another
           | channel is a great idea. Do you think this could become toxic
           | though? Like people stealing tracks and trying to release
           | them? My guess is no but you never know.
           | 
           | Anyway - great call on the song requirement, for a lot of us,
           | it's important to know that the people we work with can
           | operate a daw and solve their own problems and care about
           | creating a finished product. Unless they're incredibly
           | talented instrumentalists (usually not the case, they find
           | bands) at a certain point it becomes either a jam sesh (not
           | interested) or you become a producer for someone who isn't
           | very good.
        
             | wheels wrote:
             | > _Unless they're incredibly talented instrumentalists
             | (usually not the case, they find bands) at a certain point
             | it becomes either a jam sesh (not interested) or you become
             | a producer for someone who isn't very good._
             | 
             | For the case of instrumentalists finding bands -- the times
             | I've used sites like this in the past are right after a
             | move or considering stepping out of the music scene that
             | I've been in (going from techno back to bass).
             | 
             | Also I feel like the Tinder-like mechanics would be suited
             | to cities with big music scenes. You're right that it's
             | easy to just stumble into everyone in smaller places. What
             | I've enjoyed some on musician-finding sites is the ability
             | go genre shopping to some extent. Sometimes I run across
             | stuff I think I'd enjoy playing that probably wouldn't have
             | popped out of my social network.
        
         | jimbokun wrote:
         | Would be cool to have a version of this app that banned photos,
         | and only allowed music samples as an introduction.
        
       | novaomnidev wrote:
       | What does swiping left mean? I may not want to collab with
       | someone for a particular project but that doesn't mean I never
       | want to see their profile again. Also swiping left feels like
       | rejecting them. What if I'm just browsing the artists? I don't
       | want to be rejecting while I'm browsing options.
       | 
       | Also why am I limited to my area? I want to be able to
       | collaborate digitally. I don't need to be in close proximity to
       | do that. I ran out of people in my area after 2 left swipes.
       | 
       | I would like to just click on the genre of artist I want, hear a
       | sample of their work and then be able to message and favorite the
       | ones I like.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback! Having a skip, but not reject sounds
         | useful.
         | 
         | I have in the roadmap a "don't limit to my area" option!
         | 
         | Also plan to have some sort of inline playable sample on the
         | profile, but haven't figured out the best way to do that -
         | video vs audio vs embedding SoundCloud or YouTube.
        
           | financetechbro wrote:
           | A neat idea would be to have "projects." Each account/profile
           | has a default/personal "project," meaning a contained
           | instance of matching. But they're also able to create
           | additional "projects." So if someone wants to look for a
           | match for a specific project or a new band they can create a
           | new project and swipe across all accounts. Would be cool to
           | set up filters when creating a project, so that the options
           | to swipe are more relevant to the current "project" at hand.
           | Making it easier to find a match
        
             | chillingeffect wrote:
             | Love this! Bc my various music styles are very different!
        
           | trenchgun wrote:
           | TikTok is your top competitor. Your edge aganst it is that
           | you are focused on musicians only. BTW TikTok has swiping
           | down to go to next video, up to go back, left to go to live,
           | and the like, follow, comment etc.
           | 
           | But yeah, "don't limit to area" should be top priority if you
           | want to scale.
        
           | bredren wrote:
           | > but haven't figured out the best way to do that...
           | 
           | The best way is whatever the musician has available and is
           | comfortable sharing. Allow any of the embeddings or ability
           | to upload a clip you'll host. Start with the easiest and ping
           | your subscribers each time you add another one.
        
         | ramraj07 wrote:
         | So you're asking for okcupid of band mates when OP made
         | tinder..
        
           | mgbmtl wrote:
           | More like Feeld, imo :)
           | 
           | (Feeld also lets you skip a profile, and get back to it
           | later)
        
         | Stratoscope wrote:
         | This is the same problem that every modern dating site seems to
         | have after they copied Tinder.
         | 
         | Swipe left - I never want to see this person again!
         | 
         | Swipe right - I must contact this person right now!
         | 
         | What happened to the idea of curating a list of interesting
         | people who I may or may not want to meet right this moment, but
         | I would like to make a list that I can refer to later?
         | 
         | Just look at OkCupid for what a disaster this turns into. I see
         | an interesting young lady, but it may be late at night (like
         | 2AM my time right now).
         | 
         | I would like to put her on my personal list of someone I may
         | want to contact at a more reasonable hour, and after I've had a
         | chance to read her profile more thoroughly.
         | 
         | My only choices are to swipe left and forget her forever, or
         | swipe right and send her a "like" and I'd better send her a
         | message right now!
         | 
         | Maybe there are a few young ladies I may be interested in
         | contacting.
         | 
         | Why doesn't the site let me make a list of them?
         | 
         | I did finally figure out a hack. If I click the little "down
         | arrow" at the bottom of the main page, it takes me to her
         | profile. Then I can use the "share" link in Chrome to create a
         | draft in Gmail with a link to her profile!
         | 
         | I have a lot of drafts now.
         | 
         | This really sucks. If you are a dating site, just let me make a
         | list of the profiles of interesting young ladies!
         | 
         | The same applies to a site for musicians I may want to contact
         | to play music with.
        
           | vincefav wrote:
           | I would love a "maybe" button for apps like this. Apartment
           | List is the only one I've seen with this option, and it's
           | useful for all the reasons you've described. Glad to know I'm
           | not the only one with this frustration.
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | If there _were_ a  "maybe" button, then you could just click
           | "maybe" on every single entry (or have a bot do that for
           | you), and thus end up with the thing that's anathema to the
           | Tinder monetization model: a directory of all users, for you
           | to browse at your leisure, filtering and sorting and picking
           | and choosing from it as _you_ like, rather than as The
           | Algorithm likes. (Which in turn means they could no longer
           | upcharge people to appear immediately in other people 's
           | queues, etc etc.)
           | 
           | ---
           | 
           | Mind you, the more charitable argument is that allowing this
           | would also massively decrease matches. Everyone would just
           | say "maybe" to everyone else, because _nobody_ is ever
           | _immediately sure_ that they like someone; the likelihood of
           | two people both actually going back to their  "maybes" to say
           | "yes" to one another, and getting a mutual match, would drop
           | to zero.
           | 
           | The Tinder model forces you to make a decision before you can
           | move on, because the FOMO feeling generated by the possiblity
           | of never seeing the person again if you press "no", is
           | literally the only way to get a "yes" out of many people. An
           | app based on a requirement of _mutual_ matching, just wouldn
           | 't work without that coercion in place.
           | 
           | ---
           | 
           | That being said, there's a lot you could do to ameliorate
           | both concerns. You could limit the number of "maybes" someone
           | could hold onto at a time; and you could make "maybes"
           | expire, so that a person has to _eventually_ make a decision
           | on them before they can move on. (Instead of  "maybe",
           | perhaps call the associated action "review later"?)
        
           | tflol wrote:
           | a hack solution to your problem could be to become
           | romantically involved with every option in as little time as
           | possible
        
       | lovegrenoble wrote:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/BandMatch/
       | 
       | nothing
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | I'm not exactly sure what you were expecting - the app has been
         | live for a day
        
       | ElevenLathe wrote:
       | Congratulations on yet another novel attempt to apply the swipe-
       | based matching algorithm that has so effectively revolutionized
       | hookups to the world of music creation. It's heartwarming to see
       | how technology keeps pushing the boundaries of human interaction,
       | from love and sex to now forming musical collaborations. I can
       | just envision the future where we'll have swipe-based tools for
       | finding roommates, jobs, and even toilet paper preferences. But
       | seriously, best of luck to all the aspiring musicians out there,
       | may BandMatch bring you one step closer to your musical dreams.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | RoomMateMatch, JobMatch, and ToiletPaperMatch are all in the
         | works, I just have to copy paste the repo and find-replace the
         | brand names.
        
           | zero-sharp wrote:
           | Plot twist: ToiletPaperMatch doesn't use a swiping UI.
        
             | simondotau wrote:
             | Yeah, more of a pinch and twist.
        
       | RajT88 wrote:
       | Great. A whole new trend of exaggeration and outright lying on
       | social apps.
       | 
       | ISO - band. Lead guitar player, regularly practices Yngwie
       | Malmsteen songs.
        
       | aantix wrote:
       | What's the equivilent of marketing/engineering matching, for
       | founding a company?
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Have you tried YC's Co-founder matching tool?
        
       | hyperadvanced wrote:
       | Just a comment - love the idea, going to use this, I think it's a
       | good idea not to lead with "Tinder for X". At this point Tinder
       | occupies a pretty bad lexical territory of being one of the
       | classic examples of anti-user practices and enshittification.
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Ah, I wasn't aware of the connotation. Luckily, this post is
         | the only place where I've described it in that way.
        
           | hyperadvanced wrote:
           | Yep, just 2 cents from me! Excited to see how the app
           | develops!
        
       | arnorhs wrote:
       | Would be interested in testing, however not available in my
       | country.. is there a particular reason? Seems like some artists
       | like to collaborate across borders.. it's not like a dating app
       | where your location is crucial, and you want certain level of
       | usage saturation in a particular region before expanding.. I
       | guess what I'm saying is: why not open for all regions?
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | I didn't want to release the app without proper translations
         | for the target countries. FYI - I haven't yet implemented the
         | feature to toggle off "local-only" artists.
        
           | Angostura wrote:
           | Which language do you think is most popular in the UK? :)
        
             | Nevermark wrote:
             | Not American!
             | 
             | We _apologize_ for the inconvenience, but unfortunately,
             | our _specialized_ app is not _authorized_ to operate or
             | cash _checks_ from your financial _center_ due to a
             | _catalog_ of _regionalized_ legal financial terminology,
             | and therefore, we cannot _fulfill_ a properly
             | _personalized_ vernacular experience.
             | 
             | Unfortunately, this language barrier also prohibits any
             | user _dialog_ about future support for your _neighborhood_.
             | _See ya, buddy!_ _Aluminum!_
             | 
             | / _humor_
             | 
             | (Disclaimer - Not actually associated with the site, but
             | having lived in both countries, I feel so very qualified to
             | clear things up.)
        
               | lloeki wrote:
               | My tongue in cheek take :)
               | 
               | https://ibb.co/8DGyTyK
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | I'm imagining a version of your app where the artist profile
           | display is a solid color (chosen by the artist), the profile
           | is an audio clip, and when the second person swipes right, it
           | displays a text box that sends a message to the other person.
           | 
           | In v2, you could add profile pics, but the hard part would be
           | finding artists similar to previously "liked" ones.
           | 
           | Is there a foundation model for music yet? If so, I think
           | it's just a matter of sticking an embedding for each audio
           | clip into pgvector or whatever.
           | 
           | Anyway, since the gui has no text, you get
           | internationalization on day one!
        
           | lawlorino wrote:
           | IMO English only is better than nothing, support can always
           | be added later. I live in Finland and guess the probability
           | of translation to Finnish is somewhere on the order of 0.1%.
           | It's also not really needed since a large majority of people
           | here under the age of 50 speak English pretty well.
        
             | pineaux wrote:
             | Same for the Netherlands. Fun fact: a majority of Dutch
             | people prefers to have their apps in English.
        
           | arnorhs wrote:
           | The internet would have never existed with that kind of
           | thinking.
           | 
           | Imagine if every website needed to be translated to 500
           | languages before you can order a domain.
           | 
           | Esp ironic, since I absolutely hate seeing my native language
           | (icelandic) in UI translations... It's rare and when it's
           | translated I have to translate the text to the English
           | counterpart in my head before I grok the thing.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | > I didn't want to release the app without proper
           | translations for the target countries.
           | 
           | Not a valid reason. No-one in my country cares whether an app
           | is translated or not. In fact, I find it kind of patronizing
           | that you feel the need to shelter us like that. I always set
           | the language to English even if the app has first-class
           | translations.
           | 
           | > I haven't yet implemented the feature to toggle off "local-
           | only" artists.
           | 
           | That's a valid reason.
        
       | ericyd wrote:
       | Love the idea, but I've tried similar apps in the past and they
       | all suffer from lack of critical mass, and/or lots of accounts
       | with little activity. I'd love it if this one were different, but
       | Craigslist has been the most consistent way I've found to connect
       | with musicians.
       | 
       | Other services I've tried are Hendrix (gohendrix.com) and Vampr
        
         | abhpro wrote:
         | Yeah apps like this are kinda doa unless you got a huge
         | marketing budget
        
       | paul7986 wrote:
       | I joined a similar app .. it has a lot reviews in the app store
       | (not to say those are real lol) and i was excited to join and
       | meet fellow local musicians.
       | 
       | If you thought online dating was hard and judgemental ... finding
       | musicians to play music is even more judgemental .. if you are a
       | good to great singer for instance these apps will keep you busy.
       | Personally i just wanted to connect and play music without the
       | judgement (tho do want you to be able to actually play an
       | instrument fairly well .. strum chords on guitar and lets sing
       | along as we strum together).
       | 
       | I posted songs i wrote where professional singers were singing
       | them and those got people reaching out. Their messages were like
       | good song and did you sing that (i noted i did not) but they
       | became disinterested when they truly realized i was not the
       | singer.
        
       | nineteen999 wrote:
       | Great, I was looking for a baritone sax player for a demo just
       | yesterday. Look forward to seeing it available in my part of the
       | world.
        
       | benenglish wrote:
       | Can't believe you don't have the UK :/
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Updated both app stores so it's available in the UK and
         | Australia. Unsure how fast it takes effect.
        
       | VoodooJuJu wrote:
       | I think this would be awesome as a normal search classifieds kind
       | of thing, not as a Tinder thing.
       | 
       | Tinder's selling point isn't the swiping mechanism itself, but
       | that it's taking something publicly taboo, harem culture, and
       | enabling it by taking it private, with a discrete, subtle, and
       | low-stakes mechanism for participating in that culture.
       | 
       | There's nothing to hide when it comes to finding musicians to jam
       | with, so that's why I think a more traditional search & filter
       | thing would be better suited for this.
        
         | arrowsmith wrote:
         | There are already tons of "find a bandmate" classified ads
         | sites that work exactly like you describe. E.g.
         | https://bandmix.co.uk/
        
       | biscuits1 wrote:
       | BandStand, Sideman, SoundMate... or eHarmony.
        
       | twobitshifter wrote:
       | I would rather see a playlist of musicians filtered by style and
       | experience and then skip through the playlist as I listen and
       | have a contact button. A tinder interface doesn't really make
       | sense for music.
        
       | liquid153 wrote:
       | What a dumb app
        
         | Minor49er wrote:
         | Found the guitarist
        
           | Ylpertnodi wrote:
           | As a guitarist I tend blame the bass players of the world.
        
       | _sys49152 wrote:
       | ugh. had this idea more than 14 years ago with nothing to do it
       | for. hope the concept takes off.
        
       | epcoa wrote:
       | Notably an even higher risk of VD than Tinder, sources say.
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | Timbre was right there.
        
       | bpm140 wrote:
       | I saw down below that you're not familiar with Vampr, which is
       | very similar to what your screenshots suggest.
       | 
       | Moments like this always make me sad. Even a cursory web search
       | would have surfaced Vampr, along with several other find-a-
       | bandmate sites.
       | 
       | Weeks or even months of work because Googling was too much
       | trouble.
       | 
       | So what happens now?
       | 
       | Do you let sunk cost dictate your actions and force you to
       | continue working on an undifferentiated and far less feature-rich
       | product?
       | 
       | Or do you stop working on your app and just start using Vampr?
        
       | 12907835202 wrote:
       | I think this would work better if it had 2 modes, one built by
       | scraping/bots from public listings, sound cloud etc, which would
       | let you discover and reach out on those platforms.
       | 
       | And one powered by "list yourself" where people would create
       | their profiles to make themselves easier to discover.
       | 
       | This would avoid the issue of not having many users initially
       | whilst also making it interesting to use.
        
       | 1270018080 wrote:
       | It's been awhile since I've seen one of these. The Tinder of
       | ________ is a vintage meme in tech entrepreneurship.
        
       | bustylasercanon wrote:
       | This is such a good idea.
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | I love this idea, two things:
       | 
       | 1) You should have "drum machine" or "sampler" as an instrument
       | option for hip-hop/electronic producers looking to connect with
       | other beatmakers, I get it's for live band type stuff but plenty
       | of electronic-based production teams double up and form teams.
       | 
       | 2) The email entry box on the first screen of the mobile app is
       | some non-standard input. I had to manually type in my email when
       | every other app autocomplted with 1password
        
         | pg5 wrote:
         | Ah thanks! I don't know how I missed #2, but both are easy
         | fixes and I'll knock em out.
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | I play guitar - never played live with any group. Has anyone
       | played in a "virtual band" does that even work or does the
       | latency kill it?
        
         | Ylpertnodi wrote:
         | Having a backing track is a great way to practice. You can
         | replay the tune over and over to practice, the band 'members'
         | never get tired...ever. Being able to program/ write backing
         | tracks (on computer) is a sneaky way of getting into
         | programming too (editing vsts etc).
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | I did this during the pandemic, using Jamulus. I'm a jazz
         | bassist. I felt that the amount of latency was a mixed bag,
         | depending on your Internet service. Just because you're in
         | close physical proximity to other players doesn't mean your
         | latency is short.
         | 
         | Also, it works as advertised if you play an electric instrument
         | and can block out the natural sound of your instrument with
         | headphones. For this reason, electric bass was a lot easier
         | than upright bass for me.
         | 
         | Many of the musicians are not techies, and explaining these
         | details is impossible. "I took my headphones off because
         | hearing the mix was messing me up" is a constant refrain.
         | Trying to maintain a sense of time under those circumstances
         | made it mentally fatiguing to play, and no fun, so I eventually
         | gave up and started just working on my technique and
         | improvisation.
         | 
         | Jamming with people outdoors was a lot more fun.
        
       | Perenti wrote:
       | How can I use this without a smartphone?
        
       | blueprint wrote:
       | Too bad this one never took off - it looked amazing at the time
       | 
       | https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/3/16082864/treble-fm-social-...
        
       | timnetworks wrote:
       | I don't know how to play, but I would like to.
       | 
       | I'm the kind of person that needs stuff to be a group activity or
       | I lose interest very very quickly.
       | 
       | Clone the app and call it L2Play, there's a bunch of noobs just
       | like me.
       | 
       | edit - Lock it geographically, but not temporally. I'm as
       | interested now as I was 6 months ago and will be 6 months from
       | now.
        
       | VikingCoder wrote:
       | Please allow switching to Online Collaboration. I'd prefer to
       | find someone local, but until then, I'd be open to online
       | connections.
        
       | fagrobot wrote:
       | funk yes!
        
       | ultra-giraffe wrote:
       | Neat idea but the musician directory seems buggy. After scrolling
       | once through a few musicians I can't seem to return to them.
       | Eventually the entire list disappears and I get a "no musicians
       | in your area" message. No documentation, user guide, or support
       | that I could find. It would be cool to see this working or to
       | understand how to use it... i'm an amateur musician who has
       | thought of looking for others to jam with.
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Does anything like this exist for friends? 40+ is a lonely
       | existence. I have seen that at this stage the number of
       | interactions with friends are dwindling...
        
         | analognoise wrote:
         | Right? Can we just have tinder but for cool projects and
         | friendships?
        
         | neom wrote:
         | I used bumbles "Friends Mode" and found some cool dudes my age
         | to chill with...but.. then I realized I didn't actually want to
         | make new friends I wanted to be less lonely, so I just started
         | volunteering instead.
        
       | SethMurphy wrote:
       | I find that the more music creation and distribution is gamified,
       | the less gratifying it is for me. Discovery of the music and
       | people who share your distinct musical passions is such and
       | important part of the process of enjoying music and it's
       | creation. On first look I thought, interesting, why would they go
       | ruin the best (if also one of the more frustrating) parts of
       | music creation. No thanks, too derivative and solving a problem
       | in a way that feels icky to me.
        
         | normcoreashore wrote:
         | So true. get out there, go to shows, find/attend jam sessions
         | by asking around, visit studios, make friends in person.
        
       | pineaux wrote:
       | Lovely! When will this roll out in the EU?
        
       | paines wrote:
       | Is this country filtered? iOS->latest Update->not available in
       | Germany...
        
       | atmanactive wrote:
       | I found recommended concerts useful.
        
       | crawsome wrote:
       | This has been done before, and it was free. It was called
       | "Grouptones"
       | 
       | It was cool. Sadly it's no longer up.
       | 
       | https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/grouptones-help-to-bring-...
        
       | leadguit wrote:
       | Make sure you check the name - there is a website called
       | bandmatch already, which is a somewhat established platform
       | (granted, it's I think only for DACH meaning: Switzerland
       | (primarily), Austria, Germany, and is a traditional blackboard
       | style site, but naming conflicts are never fun). Unless your
       | affiliated with them of course: https://www.bandmatch.ch
        
       | nemoniac wrote:
       | Needs a GDPR statement to be legal in EU and UK.
        
       | teucris wrote:
       | I'm loving the feedback everyone is posting here. While there are
       | some cynics, you all have posted a treasure trove of useful
       | insights for this creator. And for people like me who are
       | constantly trying to improve user experience for the products
       | they make, reading these comments has been incredibly insightful.
        
       | tiimbz wrote:
       | Nice! How is this different from Vampr? [0] they use (or at
       | least, used) the same tagline: 'Tinder, but for musicians to
       | collaborate'
       | 
       | [0] https://vampr.me/
        
       | zerr wrote:
       | Please provide desktop or web app. Not everyone uses iOS or
       | Android devices.
        
         | derefr wrote:
         | I'm not disagreeing; they _should_ do this.
         | 
         | But I would like to point out that these days, releasing an app
         | as mobile-only really doesn't disenfranchise _that_ many
         | people.
         | 
         | * iOS apps _can_ be installed and used pretty transparently on
         | Apple Silicon Macs;
         | 
         | * and Android apps can likewise be installed and used pretty
         | transparently on both Windows 11 (via Windows Subsystem for
         | Android) and on ChromeOS.
         | 
         | So by choosing to release an app as mobile-only, you're "only"
         | excluding people without (even a very old!) smartphone, who are
         | _also_ :
         | 
         | * people with only Intel Macs;
         | 
         | * people with only Windows PCs, who are stuck on a previous
         | version of Windows;
         | 
         | * or Linux users.
         | 
         | That's... not too many people at this point. (And most of them
         | live so far behind the curve that they wouldn't be interested
         | in installing some bleeding-edge mobile app anyway.)
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | And, separate point, tangent to this:
           | 
           | I would guess that probably most people in that state of "no
           | smartphone _and_ no modern Windows /macOS/ChromeOS device",
           | who would _also_ actually care about installing some random
           | bleeding-edge app, are people who are in that state _by
           | choice_ -- i.e. they 're not _unable_ , but rather
           | _unwilling_ to use a mobile app, due to being extremely
           | concerned with their privacy /anonymity.
           | 
           | And being that kind of person, is actually kind of
           | incompatible with being a "member in good standing" of a
           | matchmaking service (whether the matchmaking is for dating;
           | for getting a band together; for finding a babysitter; for
           | renting a condo; etc.)
           | 
           | Matchmaking apps only "work" insofar as they 1. can prevent
           | catfishing, 2. can allow users to _permanently_ block others
           | who are harassing them, and 3. can allow users to _report_
           | spammers /scammers/etc in such a way that a bad actor will be
           | _permanently_ removed from the platform altogether.
           | Matchmaking apps that don 't make these guarantees, end up
           | being negative-experience generators and go down in bad-PR
           | flames.
           | 
           | With the rise of botnets that use proxy IP addresses to
           | register massive numbers of accounts on such services for
           | nefarious purposes, the only way matchmaking services have
           | been able to survive, is to require the user to at least
           | complete initial registration through a device that can give
           | a remote attestation that the user is _not_ in ultimate
           | control of the device -- i.e. the device has a Trusted
           | Computing Base _and_ has not been rooted -- and so the app is
           | not being tampered with or fed false device metrics. (See
           | also: browser integrity.)
           | 
           | Wanting to have absolute privacy/anonymity, is fundamentally
           | incompatible with using a device that's able to make such
           | guarantees.
        
       | xchip wrote:
       | I can finally pretend to be pretty and able to play guitar
        
       | cush wrote:
       | I tried the app and have a bit of feedback
       | 
       | Since it's designed to have people meet up, it's important to
       | require a photo. It's a safety thing.
       | 
       | This seems like it would be the first feature (what photo-swipe
       | is to Tinder) but it would be nice if, when the card is
       | displayed, you heard a sample of the musician's music. It's odd
       | that the cards are silent. The entire app should be a sonic
       | experience. Linking to YouTube is fine but why send people away
       | from the app?
       | 
       | Also, sad but true, don't forget to populate every major city
       | with a few really good looking and sounding fake profiles. There
       | were just 5 blank profiles near me.
        
         | electrondood wrote:
         | This is a great idea- sound samples per profile.
         | 
         | Love the app idea!
        
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