Invitation to betatest May 21, 2011 6:41 AM   Subscribe

So, back in January, a bunch of us hung out in Listening Room and it was groovy but the unilateral 'remove' option caused quite some graar. This led to some of us thinking about rolling our own versions ...

(Listening Room, meanwhile, is in a private beta and is apparently much altered and improved)

Narwhal bacon was quick off the mark with his awesome open-source 'collaborative jukebox' (meta, mefi projects, source code, live site: mixparty.org)

About the same time Narwhal started, I started too, working with a different technology stack and plodding along a lot more slowly. My effort is now ready for some testing by real people:

There is a room for mefites at:
http://46.137.84.92/Room/mefi
... or you can go to the homepage and create your own room.

I've learnt so much putting this together, its been worth it just for that. Its not quite ready for mefi projects, and the server definitely wont cope with an fpp, but I hope some of you can drop in and test it out. I'm curious to see how my code holds up to some sustained load. Cheers!
posted by memebake to MetaFilter-Related at 6:41 AM (40 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite

Yay!
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:09 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


In case you'd forgotten, your favorite band sucks.
posted by carsonb at 7:10 AM on May 21, 2011


Yay!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:56 AM on May 21, 2011


I hope everyone likes 60s girl groups forever
posted by The Whelk at 7:56 AM on May 21, 2011 [4 favorites]


Pretty trendy domain name, but I think 46r.137r.84r.92r might be more evocative of the social nature.
posted by DU at 8:19 AM on May 21, 2011 [6 favorites]


Nice!
posted by hapax_legomenon at 8:38 AM on May 21, 2011


Enjoying this!
posted by likeso at 8:39 AM on May 21, 2011


Each room has a user-limit, and the first mefi room might soon reach it, so if you can't get into
http://46.137.84.92/Room/mefi
then try
http://46.137.84.92/Room/mefi2
posted by memebake at 8:42 AM on May 21, 2011


server went a bit nuts around 17:00 bst but seems to be back again now.
posted by memebake at 9:10 AM on May 21, 2011


This is fun
posted by Sailormom at 9:26 AM on May 21, 2011


I am being Thematic.
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


I never know what you guys will like in these rooms, so I hesitate to upload much. But they're fun to drop by.

Seems to be working well.
posted by philipy at 10:32 AM on May 21, 2011


One feature the others had that would be nice is knowing the ETA for different tracks. Even better if you could maybe say: "Wake me up when we get to this one, go silent til then."
posted by philipy at 10:35 AM on May 21, 2011


I never know what you guys will like in these rooms, so I hesitate to upload much. But they're fun to drop by.

I suggest developing a casual disregard for other people's opinions. If they don't like it, whatever, they'll vote to remove. And I'm assuming most of us won't judge you for your taste in music.

/uploads a Justin Bieber track immediately followed by squeaky Japanese avante garde
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:45 AM on May 21, 2011


Maybe a "Mute this song" button- keeps mute on until the next track kicks in.

More complicated, maybe an upload queue? It would make it less annoying than uploading 1 song at a time. The complicated part would be including the ability for other users' to upload and interrupt, so you don't end up with one person uploading 50 songs and locking everyone out.
posted by yeloson at 11:57 AM on May 21, 2011


Yay!
posted by taz at 12:28 PM on May 21, 2011


The beginnings of songs seem to get cut off for me. (uh, I'm using the latest version of Chrome?)
posted by aubilenon at 1:26 PM on May 21, 2011


Oh! I noticed that a couple of times... FF latest.
posted by taz at 2:31 PM on May 21, 2011


This is awesome.

We're busting up some kind of ye-ye celebrity hour right now, and it is fantastic.
posted by winna at 3:20 PM on May 21, 2011


It's pretty fun. I'm also experiencing the beginning cut-off problem. Also would be good to ask for user name on launch---it was a bit weird to get assigned someone else's name that apparently just happened to be stuck in the cache server-side.
posted by waterunderground at 7:30 PM on May 21, 2011


This is awesome. I wonder whether there's a middle ground on the delete button since not being able to skip a song could be as disruptive as someone deleting everything. What if a troll uploads an hour long hampster dance track (yes, that's how it's spelled)? Maybe there could be some kind of majority rules scheme where a the currently playing track is skipped if a large enough proportion of listeners vote to skip it?
posted by zachlipton at 8:34 PM on May 21, 2011


Oh wait. There is a feature like that, though it's just hidden under the weird "more" link. Why not turn that into a button and have some kind of display of the votes?
posted by zachlipton at 8:35 PM on May 21, 2011


Also, tell us how many people are in the room please :)
posted by zachlipton at 8:53 PM on May 21, 2011


Nevermind, you give us that too at the bottom of the window. I promise I'll stop commenting now, but maybe the UI needs a bit more thought? Or maybe I lost the screws that hold my head on.
posted by zachlipton at 8:57 PM on May 21, 2011


I dunno, I like the UI. It's really simple.

The only question I had is what happens to the tracks? Do they get auto-deleted when they drop off the page?
posted by winna at 9:06 PM on May 21, 2011


This looks great! I hope I can pop in with other people around so I can get the full experience.
posted by narwhal bacon at 11:33 AM on May 22, 2011


Thanks for dropping in, everyone!

yeloson: ... maybe an upload queue? It would make it less annoying than uploading 1 song at a time.

Hmm, I'm not sure I want to encourage people to upload too many tracks in one go. And the server might struggle if too many tracks come in at once. I was thinking more the opposite - restricting the number of queued tracks each user could have, to help get a balance of tracks from different users. Not sure if I'll get round to that though.

aubilenon The beginnings of songs seem to get cut off for me.


Yes, I've had this happen too. The rooms work on a polling basis - they check every 7 seconds or so what the current track is (Narwhals version was cleverer and used 'comet' techniques to keep two way communication going all the time). This means that if the poll happens at the wrong time, you miss the start of the track. I should be able to 'tune' it better though, because usually the timing of the start of the next track is predictable. I'll look into it.

waterunderground Also would be good to ask for user name on launch---it was a bit weird to get assigned someone else's name that apparently just happened to be stuck in the cache server-side.

The site assigns you a randomly generated user name when you first arrive - Listening Room and Collaborative Jukebox do that too, and I liked the way it just lets you get going without asking you any questions. So far not too many people have had accidentally rude random names either. Bonus points for anyone who can guess what random name algorithm I'm using ...

zachlipton Why not turn [the vote link] into a button and have some kind of display of the votes?


I was going to do that originally, but then (inspired by how the StackOverflow guys talked about site design influencing behaviour) instead I went for something deliberately low profile. I didn't want to site to be a 'your favourite band sucks gong show' sort of thing where everyone was looking at how many votes things got. So at the moment, the voting is deliberately opaque (it doesn't tell you how many votes are needed or how many have been cast) to encourage people to discuss the voting among themselves. Basically, its for 'emergency use only' and to use it effectively you need to talk to the room and get a consensus. Its been used pretty sparingly so far, which is what I hoped for.

winna: The only question I had is what happens to the tracks? Do they get auto-deleted when they drop off the page?


Soon after uploading, the tracks are re-encoded to 96 kbps and the originals deleted. Then the 96 kbps version gets deleted a few minutes after it finishes playing - because I need space on the server, and its the polite thing to do : )


Thanks again everyone, I've heard some great music and uncovered some very buggy bugs, its been really interesting to see how the site coped with the traffic. The site is staying up for the foreseeable future, so feel free to drop in whenever.
posted by memebake at 7:33 PM on May 22, 2011


Soon after uploading, the tracks are re-encoded to 96 kbps and the originals deleted. Then the 96 kbps version gets deleted a few minutes after it finishes playing - because I need space on the server, and its the polite thing to do : )

Fabulous!

I really like this - it's a neat toy. And now the friend that I told about it (he is also a mefite, although he doesn't post) will feel free to come and play, too!
posted by winna at 7:40 PM on May 22, 2011


Hmm, I'm not sure I want to encourage people to upload too many tracks in one go. And the server might struggle if too many tracks come in at once. I was thinking more the opposite - restricting the number of queued tracks each user could have, to help get a balance of tracks from different users. Not sure if I'll get round to that though.

I was going to do that originally, but then (inspired by how the StackOverflow guys talked about site design influencing behaviour) instead I went for something deliberately low profile. I didn't want to site to be a 'your favourite band sucks gong show' sort of thing where everyone was looking at how many votes things got. So at the moment, the voting is deliberately opaque (it doesn't tell you how many votes are needed or how many have been cast) to encourage people to discuss the voting among themselves. Basically, its for 'emergency use only' and to use it effectively you need to talk to the room and get a consensus. Its been used pretty sparingly so far, which is what I hoped for.


Sorry about the double-posting, but I wanted to talk about these two pieces, too.

I really like the one song per go setup. I think it makes it much less prone to possible griefing that way, and it's more of a communal experience. Not that there's been any griefing, but it's best to head it off. I think that restricting the number of tracks in the queue might be a good idea when it got to be a much larger application, but right now it seems like user norms are limiting it without the technical limitation. I know I feel bad when I have more than one song in the queue, even when it was earlier today and I was the only person playing tracks!

I also like the opacity of the vote down option. I think it is good to have it there to avoid griefing, but it's also not something you want people to have access to easily for fear of little petty wars erupting.
posted by winna at 7:46 PM on May 22, 2011


Pretty quiet today, people wander in from time to time, but we haven't achieved critical mass.

If you want to try it out, lets aim for a meet-up at:
Tonight (Mon 23rd May) at 21:00 uk time - thats 16:00 est (ny), 13:00 pst (la), or 20:00 gmt

in: http://46.137.84.92/Room/mefi
posted by memebake at 9:24 AM on May 23, 2011


My friends and I have been killing a private room all day. Thanks very much for this, memebake!
posted by CRM114 at 10:58 AM on May 23, 2011


Thanks CRM114!

the mefi room is ticking along nicely just now...
posted by memebake at 2:22 PM on May 23, 2011


Looks like it isn't working in IE8 at the moment, other browsers seem OK. Might be a few days until I have time to fix it ...
posted by memebake at 11:39 PM on May 23, 2011


IE8 is now working, as far as I can tell. And I think I fixed the codec/conversion problem that was affecting certain mp3s, so it should be able to handle any mp3 or m4a now.
posted by memebake at 4:10 PM on May 25, 2011


New feature: type /theme into chat to set the theme of a room

e.g.
/theme mashups
/theme cover versions
/theme go through the alphabet
posted by memebake at 4:31 PM on May 30, 2011


New server:
http://87.106.106.142
posted by memebake at 12:51 PM on June 14, 2011


Thanks, memebake. I was just thinking about this last night while I was working and felt like listening in if this was still active...

I wish I knew when people were spinning, but also has a MeFi room naming convention been established? There are several possibilities, so I don't know if I'm just missing the right coinage: mefi, MeFi, metafilter, Metafilter, MetaFilter.

Do folks regularly find each other there? What room name?
posted by taz at 11:12 PM on June 14, 2011


Hi Taz, the mefi room is usually http://87.106.106.142/Room/mefi but it hasn't been very active recently.

However if you go to the mefi room and scroll to the bottom and press the 'Feeds' button, you can subscribe to an RSS feed which reports the number of people in the room. Its a new feature (on certain rooms) to help people find each other in there. Not sure how well it will work.

Mostly at the moment people are creating private rooms and posting them on twitter or facebook or wherever.

When the site is sufficiently 'finished' I'll make a Projects post and then the mefi room should get busy again for a bit.
posted by memebake at 12:43 AM on June 15, 2011


Lovely! Thanks, memebake. I really, really like this project.

Maybe we can convince Matt to put a wee RSS add on the front-page or MetaTalk sidebar just showing the population of the room if people are enthusiastic after the Projects post. Or perhaps only on our personal profile pages or something. I'd love a mefi direct connection.
posted by taz at 1:50 AM on June 15, 2011


There is now a proper mefi projects post

Many thanks to the people who beta-tested and posted here or messaged me, I've been able to make a lot of improvements.
posted by memebake at 3:15 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]


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