Ask A Sound Guy

I made a quick blip about Mixcloud awhile back after I soomehow weaseled my way into the site. Since then, I’ve spent a large portion of my daily online routine on the site listening to mixes, compuslively adding people, and generally feeling the site out. It is my opinion that, seeing as the site is only in its beta release, it’s on track to be one of my favorite new websites. Here’s a quick rundown of the site:

Introducing…

The frontpage is the hub of the entire site. From here you can see what mixes are the most popular (screenshot), what the featured mixes are (I’d like to know how these are chosen, personally), what people on the site are doing (adding people, commenting on mixes, etc), and what new mixes are being uploaded as we speak. From this page, you can also filter via genre what kind of mixes you’re looking for. The number right next to the title tells you how many people’ve listened to said mix.

From the front page, you have access to the main navigation menu:

Clicking “Popular” will take you to what mixes are most popular (think of it as the Billboard charts of Mixcloud). “Featured” takes you to the most recently featured mixes, “Upload” is where you upload your mixes, and so on…

My only beef is the “Activity” window. I’m hoping that in it’s first official release there’s some type of privacy feature released that either lets you broadcast your activity, not broadcast your activity at all, or only let your followers/people you’re following see your activity. Not really a huge deal, but sill something I think should be considered.

Mix Page

Once you click on the title of a mix you want to listen to, you’ll be brought to a page that looks a lot like this:

You can launch the mix by hitting the play button (subsequently, you can also launch the mix in the Player by hitting the play button next to the mix on the frontpage). Otherwise, there’s the playlist and often times an image to accompany the mix on this page. You can also view comments, how many people have played the mix, and how many people have favorited it.

User Page

Pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Displays info, whos following you/who you’re following, your uploads, and recent activity. It’s not the most original thing in the world, but it’s functional and is as Web 2.0 as the rest of the site.

The Player

Obviously the music player is the most important part of the website. Luckily, it’s also one of the best.

As you can see, it’s got all you need in a player: a timeline, a play button, a playlist, a list of genres associated with the mix, an image, and a little blurb about it. It’s also got volume, which is also oh-so-important.

The player, so far, is pretty free of any bugs. I haven’t had it randomly crash, stop playing, or, most importantly, bug the audio out. Everything is visible and quite clear and you won’t have any problems navigating around it.

That being said, the “share” function (like the share feature on Soundcloud) is not yet available. But do remember: the site is still in beta. I can’t wait to see this feature as it’ll open the site up to new people very quickly.

I’d really like it if the player had a timeline-select feature. Meaning, I wish there was away that I, the DJ, could select on a visual waveform (or representation thereof) points in time where I transition into different songs. Then, when the listener clicks said song, it would take them right to that designated point. Likewise, having some sort of visual representaion of markers on the player’s timeline would be great. Aside from that, I think they’ve got all the important stuff in there.

Uploading

Obviously if you’re thinking about using this site, you’ll probably be uploading content. The upload feature is just fine so far. There’s a number of rules you must follow, however:

• Currently, you can only upload files from your computer. There will be an option later to upload a mix from a file sharing service (ex. zshare, Mediafire), but this hasn’t been implemented yet. Having a feature like that will make it oh-so-easy for DJs to build up quite an archive of past mixes.
• Your files MUST be long-play files like podcasts, radio shows, or DJ mixes. No single tracks here, folks.
• For now, you can only upload mp3s under 100MB. Hopefully we’ll see an increase and size and maybe more supported audio formats (like Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or WMA).
• As you can see in the screenshot, playlists are required…which is amazing! A feature like this will keep content a step above and allow you to easily pick out your favorite songs from mixes.
• You can name your mixes with up to 50 characters.

Conclusion

I really am a fan of this site, and if it keeps up like this, I probably will be one for a long time. The only things I see lacking are relatively small ones (although I do think the timeline stuff’d be nice). Obviously off-site sharing (via widgets perhaps) will be available soon.

The site is also missing a user forum, but I suspect that with time one will be introduced.

I suggest, if you’re reading this, to apply for membership or find someone with an invite code (all of ours have been used). This site should prove to be seriously addictive. And if you get to join, hit me up!

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