Show HN: My side project just reached #6 on App Store music charts

[epaga]

Congratulations! What did you do to market the app? Just stick it in the store? Or did you get blogs to do write-ups?

It seems like discovery has always been a huge problem for app developers.

[dinnison]

I've built up a list of 14,000 subscribers to the free web app over the past year and also had a journalist at LifeHacker who wrote about the project before. I offered the journalist an exclusive write up and then sent an email blast to the 14,000 subscribers all within an hour (starting today at Noon) and the app shot up the app store within a couple hours.

Still don't know launch day numbers since app store reports don't update until later tonight.

For further coverage, I'm reaching out to app review sites and any journalists who have covered similar apps in the past.

[qzervaas]

Good job! It's on the App Store, so treat yourself to a full version number ;)

(I wonder if people would be less likely to buy it having "0.0.2", thinking it may not yet be worth buying. In any case, why not just call it 1.0.2, etc?)

[dinnison]

It was my first ever app, so I admittedly wasn't 100% sure what I was doing in xcode. I agree with you though, it would have looked better to have a full release number. I'll bump it up next version.

Thanks for the feedback.

[psteinweber]

There's a web version too. Handy for checking out the type of music: http://noonpacific.com/

edit: First song convinced me already.

[dinnison]

Sweet thanks for checking it out. Working on a redesign for the web version too, not quite as slick as I'd like.

[enimodas]

for some reason this makes my aurora+bunch of extensions lock up and crash

edit: extension-free version of aurora also spikes cpu and starts eating all ram. Must be somewhere within the 8tracks embed, if i block 8tracks with requestpolicy nothing happens.

[mbosch]

Did you get 8tracks API permission for use in a commercial app?

http://8tracks.com/developers/terms: For commercial use of the API (including ad revenue) you must receive permission. Please contact [email protected].

[dinnison]

Yes, 8tracks approved my API use and even promoted the app on their twitter: https://twitter.com/8tracks/status/435873866548662272

[SmallBets]

Loved the first song I heard on web version, +1 for Android.

Good example of non-technical value creation - can't fake good curation. That your project has done so well tells me that the streaming music players have not cracked the code yet.

[dinnison]

Appreciate it. People seem to love the simplicity of having the music delivered to them instead of trying to search/browse through tons of artists. Huge fan of Spotify, 8tracks, etc. but I think you're right that the music discovery aspect is still lacking.

[L_Rahman]

How are you handling issues related to copyright? I don't have an iOS device so I can't tell if the app simply streams the music from sources that have legal access or if its locally caching the music.

[dinnison]

I don't make the songs available to download so it is only streaming the songs via 8tracks API. All songs are legally acquired through various blogs and sites like Soundcloud.

[coldtea]

By ignoring them I'd guess.

[clemsen]

The concept and screenshots look great! Do you have last.fm support? Because (for me): If it doesn't scrobble it's not a music player :-)

Edit: Just downloaded the app. It doesn't scrobble but otherwise the app works as advertised. Thanks for posting here on HN! Not only music discovery but also app discovery is hard sometimes.

[dinnison]

We don't currently have last.fm support, but the app uses the 8tracks API, so it might indirectly scrobble via that. I'll look into it, good feedback.

[hol]

Congratulations! Just trying this out now and I love the mix I've had so far.

It's so easy to make music these days that it can be difficult to find the gems in all the noise. For me, having places you can trust to do some curation/filtering for you is really important.

[dinnison]

Thanks, that's exactly what I built it for.

[niklasber]

The quality of the screenshots on App Store is pretty poor. You should save them as PNG files instead.

[dinnison]

Thanks for the tip

[mokkol]

This is an awesome app! Really nice unknown (at least for me) music!

If I can give you some feedback, the UI need some tweaks. the whole screen bounces when you touch it. Would be nice to have more details about the songs. A progress bar would be nice.

Really nice app!

[dinnison]

Thank you for the feedback!

[shriphani]

I liked the first song I heard on your website and signed up. Very nicely done!

[dinnison]

Just saw your subscription, thanks!

[dorian-graph]

Bought! To show support and so far the mixtapes are totally up my alley.

How long did it take till you felt comfortable with development on the app, as far as quality, amount of bugs, etc., to release it on the app store?

[dinnison]

Thank you! It took about a week of QA to feel comfortable with it going live. It's a pretty simple app, but wanted to make sure everything would work great, especially since it was not a free app.

[rhymeswithtart]

So basically hype machine in an app?

[dinnison]

I'm actually a big fan of Hype Machine (and love their app), but I'm attempting to do something different with Noon Pacific. It's considered more of a music newsletter with hand curated tunes and hopefully more of a personal touch.

[dinnison]

Thanks for the support so far! Appreciate all the feedback.

[technotony]

Nice work, now please can we have it on Android!

[dinnison]

Thanks! and yes we will have one out for Android in the next month.

[juliann]

You just got a new fan! thanks for this.

[ldad]

nice work! Check out hoot.ch. A similarly minimalist music discovery web-app.

[dinnison]

I'll check it out, thanks for the suggestion.

[almosnow]

As fake as king.com's future valuation.

[almosnow]

Yeah, 15 reviews for a Top 10 App Store app...

Use your fucking brain man...