I've been a fan of Rdio for years now (which, come to think of it, is probably why I work for them). More interesting, though, than the question, “What music service do you use?” is, “How do you actually use it?” Here then, is my answer. For starters, it should be noted that while in general I love Rdio’s UI, there are various things I’ve found to be missing that I’ve gone ahead and built for myself using Rdio’s lovely JavaScript API (which, as it turns out, I also built; that’s how I know how lovely it is). With that in mind, let’s take a tour:

The Tunes Must Flow

I listen to music most frequently while working at my computer. During the workday, I just want to have excellent music playing, and I want to stay in the flow. For me this means whole albums, because each album has a consistency that doesn’t grab your attention with each track change. This also means being able to queue up a whole bunch of albums ahead of time, so I don’t have to stop and fiddle with my music periodically throughout the day. Fortunately, Rdio excels at thinking in terms of albums, and it’s got a fine queue. Every so often, when the queue runs low, I’ll jam a new pile on; I’ve generally got dozens of albums lined up.

Discovery

When I’m not working, I do like to fiddle with music, as a leisure-time activity. In the evenings I sometimes wander around, checking things out, adding new stuff to my queue or favorites, etc. This is the modern-day equivalent of my old habit of haunting music stores, looking for that next great find. If I'm looking for new music, I'll use Fathom or the social stuff that shows up on Rdio’s homepage feed or the "here are new albums from your favorite artists" feature that shows up in notifications.

Once I’ve found a promising-sounding album, I toss it on the queue for a full listening during the workday. Every few days I go to Music Triage which shows me any new albums I've listened to that I haven't already triaged. Here I quickly add things to my favorites or mark things I didn't like. In this way I make sure nothing falls through the cracks, without having to pay attention throughout the day.

Rediscovery

It turns out music discovery these days is so great, I’ve got a new problem: hundreds of albums I’ve discovered and liked enough to add to my favorites but never listened to again because I was off to the next big thing. To listen to music I already know I like, and hopefully connect more deeply with things I’ve discovered, I pull up Collection Random and use it to quickly queue up a bunch of albums. I find this "show me some stuff randomly from my collection" better than any sort of rational sorting… otherwise you end up falling into ruts.

Mid-Queue Interruptions

My next-most-frequent music-listening station is in the kitchen while cooking and cleaning. I usually want to listen to something entirely different there; more upbeat and attention-grabbing. If I think of it before leaving my computer, I push an appropriate album ahead of the queue (in Rdio’s Mac interface, it’s command-clicking the play button on any album). Unfortunately, Rdio’s mobile app doesn’t support such things, so I’ve made Mobile Queue to support reorganizing the queue on my mobile web browser.

So there you have it

…my music “workflow”. Who knows what my music rhythm will be like in a year, but for now this is working great, and I love having the power to customize my interactions as needed.  At the moment, I think I’ve found a good balance between finding new stuff and listening to favorites, with a minimum of ongoing effort (not counting the initial development time, which was fun noodling anyway).

How about you? How do you use your music service?

Labels: music

Fathom is simple enough, but it's actually got a lot of my design philosophy packed into it. I'd like to go into detail on each of these points eventually, but for now I think it's worth just getting the broad brush strokes out here. So, in no particular order:

Rather than focusing on the recommendation algorithm, I'm focusing on the presentation/exploration interface. Recommendation algorithms have gotten lots of attention, so it's hard to move the needle there; interface not so much, so there's lots of potential in that area.

Make it fun, inviting, and safe to explore… eliminate click friction; make it easier to just try something than it is to think about whether you should.

Rather than completely passive (like Pandora) or completely active (like Amazon), you get to choose and fluidly slide between levels of involvement.

By using APIs, I can focus on my strength (user interface) without having to build up all of the required data ahead of time. Also, by being connected to those other sites, we become just a little entwined… no website is an island anymore. This approach has its challenges, of course, but I feel it's worth exploring.

The interface scales to fit your window, however big or small.

The content is the interface, as much as possible. Controls appear when needed and disappear when not.

Animation is used to explain what's going on… you see where things are going to and coming from.

Focus on albums, rather than tracks.

Promoting album cover art and reconnecting it with the music in people's minds.

Minimize unnecessary clicks; for instance, you don't have to click an extra “play” after selecting an album.

An album's “neighborhood” of related albums gives it context… you start to get a sense for the space.

Having new albums come in with every move keeps things fresh and gives a game-like exploration feel.

Music is right-brain; your interface shouldn't be left-brain classics like the spreadsheet (iTunes) or huge pages of text (Amazon).

Of course Fathom is just one possible expression of these ideas. I look forward to future explorations along these lines. What do you think? Did I miss any? Are there other good examples of these principles out there?

Labels: design, music

I've finally gotten around to adding Rdio streaming music support to Fathom! This means everyone now hears at least samples of all the tracks, which already makes for decent music discovery. If you have an Rdio account, however, you'll hear full-length tracks, which is even better! You don't need to log in to Rdio on Fathom; as long as you're logged in on the Rdio site, it just works (thanks to the great Rdio API).

So what are you waiting for? Get hunting!

Labels: music

It seems like the music tech scene on the Internet is bursting with potential these days. Unfortunately, I've been so distracted with other projects that I haven't had a chance to do all the crazy cool things I want to with Fathom… I keep telling myself I'll get to it soon, but, well, so far that hasn't happened. There are sketches in my notebook, but not much else.

The good news is it hasn't stopped other folks from taking some of the same ideas and running with them. At least I get to see them in action, right?

For instance, I wanted to do a kind of group DJ/party/jukebox thing where everyone collaborates to make the mix we all listen to. Well, someone has made that:


I also wanted to make a service that would watch your social feeds for links to music recommendations and give you a “music inbox”. Yup, someone has made that, too:


Here's another one I at least got around to writing up (well, in terms of books): an easy way to share music recommendations without having to know what service your friends use for streaming. Sure enough, someone's made it:


Of course, they're not quite exactly what I would make, so maybe I'll still get around to playing with those ideas, but in the meantime, it's great to see all these explorations happening! I mean, if I'm not going to get around to it, someone should.

Labels: interchange, music, seeds

I love music, and I love hunting for new musical treasures. I've spent countless hours prowling around music stores, searching for that next hot thing. Nowadays this happens online, which is infinitely more vast than the largest CD shop, yet the interface for exploration is woefully inadequate. You either have to wade through artist and album pages bloated with info, or you have to give up the hunt entirely and just let some recommendation engine pick things out for you.

Fathom is my humble attempt to turn this situation around. It strips it all back down to the crucial elements: the album cover and the music itself. It lets you glide effortlessly from album to album. It uses recommendations to make sure there is always more to explore, but you're the one in control, you're the one who decides which way to go next.



It's still in development (and let me tell you, I've got big ideas!) – mind the sawdust and all that – but it's already plenty fun to play with. Please, come on in, check it out, and let me know what you think!

Labels: music

I love music, and I love hunting for music. This post is to share a few of January's discoveries.

I'm using the Rdio embed; if you have a subscription with them you can listen to the entire alarm here, otherwise it's 30 seconds clips (sorry about that… if you know of a better embed for albums, please let me know!).

Labels: music

So, I've been hacking on the bookmarklet idea I mentioned a while ago (for getting between sites for a specific book or album) and I've finally got something together I'm ready to share. It's still quite rough, but please give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

You can find it, along with instructions, on this page.

Labels: interchange, music

I love iTunes, in the sense that it's where my music is, but seriously, look at that interface... it's just a big stupid spreadsheet with a play button tacked on! I don't want that; all I want are the beautiful album covers of all that wonderful music. Coverflow is a step in the right direction, but it's still too rigid and linear.

I love being able to set up a shuffle or a genius playlist and just go, but sometimes I like to get back into albums as albums. What's the point of getting new music if it's just going to dissolve into the sea of random shuffled tracks? Back in the days of CDs, whenever I got a new album, I'd keep it in the stack next to the player and it would go into heavy rotation until it had been burned into my brain.

Okay, so here's the idea: An app that gives you an alternative interface to iTunes that's all about the album covers. In fact, it's basically just a pile of album covers, some big, some little, arranged organically (no grids, no lists). Whenever you add a new album to your library, it shows up prominently. It pushes the other album covers out of the way a little bit. Albums you play a lot, or those you pick out special, stay prominent, while others fade away. Double-click on an album to play it. Delete an album if you don't like it. You could even have a Genius feature that highlights other albums like the current one, or causes them to all group together. Perhaps while the album's playing, the cover will get even more prominent, or we'll show other images related to that artist/album.

This app wouldn't be a replacement to iTunes. You may not even be able to access all of your music through it. It will, however, be a beautiful way to visualize and interact with your current high-rotation albums. If you're familiar with the old Mac app Clutter, it'll be a little like that, but more dynamic and more in tune with your play patterns.

Labels: music, seeds