MixApp

At long last the MixApp adventure is coming to an end. We'll discontinue the service the evening of August 27, and hope that everyone will take this coming week as an opportunity to say their good-byes.

We've been able to continue the service this far thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our premium subscribers. From all of us here at MixApp, a huge shout-out to all of you who believed in the community and helped build it.

In future we may post a more entrepreneur-focused post-mortem to go into detail about why MixApp didn't find its path to financial success (or at least stability), but to summarize the crucial factors in our decision to shut down:

1. Quite simply, we can't afford the hosting costs any more!

2. With several newer services now available to offer shared listening experiences (check out Listening Room, Turntable, and MuMu Player ), we're confident that the concept of listening together will survive, and thrive, even without MixApp continuing.

Thanks very much to everyone who encouraged the team along the way, helped shape the product with their ideas and feedback, and especially to those who played so much great music.

See you on the tubes!

—Matt, Marc, Nick, Ben, and Geoff.

PS Premium subscribers: your Paypal recurring contributions will continue to run through August 27 as well, at which point payments will no longer be accepted. If you'd like to cancel immediately, just let us know by emailing info@mixapp.com.

Set up MixApp to power your office through your work day, whether you're in one place or distributed across the globe.  Here's how Asana does it:

Every few days we would cloister ourselves in a meeting room with our laptops to share our favorite tracks on the office speakers, and dance around in our chairs while we coded and answered email.  [...]  As this became a daily occurrence, we started looking for ways to make our marvelous musical journeys even more magical — and share them with other asanas who craved the beatz, without distracting those who wanted quiet.

So we set up a room on the wonderful Web app Mixapp, which lets groups of people listen to the same music simultaneously. Then we elevated our sit-stand desks (which we have at Asana for ergonomics), and... victory!

Now anyone in Asana (and our many friends in other companies — some on the East Coast) can experience our musical escapades at the comfort of their own desks without distracting those around them.

Josh Constine at Inside Facebook on Why MixApp Could Change Music Consumption:

MixApp ports the natural desire to say "did you hear that? I love that part" into an online environment where friends can respond, "you're right, that was awesome. Thanks for sharing"...Discovering, discussing, and listening to music with friends is a fundamentally enjoyable experience. MixApp has developed the technology to span this experience across physical divides.

From chat today...

Get the new helper: http://mixapp.com/library/choose_download

We love MixApp, we believe this experience is the future of music listening, it's a damn good time -- and we need your help to cover our costs. It's not a lot, but it's enough to make us shut down if we can't cover it.

Please upgrade at http://mixapp.com/support to keep MixApp alive.

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Short version

We're in serious danger of shutting down MixApp due to costs.

Please upgrade to help cover our costs and keep MixApp alive.

Long version

As many of you already know, MixApp is at this point a volunteer operation. We want to keep it going -- we love it, we believe this experience is the future of music listening, it's a damn good time -- but we're no longer in a position to cover the costs (hosting/bandwidth plus misc. administrivia) which are currently running $900/month.

It's not a lot, but it's enough to make us shut down if we can't cover it. So we need you to help us cover our costs. 

If you enjoy MixApp, upgrade to VIP ($3/month). For that mere price, you'll

• Get a funky star next to your name in chat, and on your profile. 
• Get a date (on your profile, indicating when you became a VIP). 
• Be the envy of your friends. 

But most importantly, you'll be helping MixApp survive (and thrive!)

And if you're a serious MixApp user -- or if you're just someone who believes, like we do, that we have something special going on -- then go further:

• Be a rockstar ($10/month)
• Become a mogul ($20/month)

Of course you'll get a funkier star -- and you'll be a major building the future of hanging out online. Plus, if we can cover our costs, I promise swag!

Finally...if you'd like to do more, or you or your company would consider 'sponsoring' MixApp, email us, let's make it happen.

Please be in touch with questions, tell your friends, and thanks so much for keeping MixApp going.

That link again: http://mixapp.com/support

 

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For those curious about the $900/month figure -- It's pretty straightforward: the machines and bandwidth for our production system (on Amazon EC) cost ~$650/month. Development host, domains, and other services run another ~$100/month.  Add to that various administrivia (e.g. annual filings) and some unpaid bills, and you get another $150/month, for a total of $900/month.  

So no, no one's running off to the Cayman Islands with your support :-)

 

New in MixApp today: YouTube videos!  So now you can watch YouTube videos along with your friends, and enjoy the enormous collection of music available there.  

When you go to add tracks to the playlist in MixApp, you'll see a new set of tabs in the library window: 

Search for YouTube videos, and just click the thumbnail to add them to the playlist. (YouTube doesn't let us embed quite all of their videos, so you may occasionally find a video on YouTube that doesn't show up in our search results.)  The mp3 libraries that we've always had are under the middle tab.

The video display will appear in the main MixApp window as needed, and disappear when you're just listening to an mp3.

Enjoy!  And please let us know what you think in the comments, or in the feedback forum.

From chat earlier this week:

Thanks to Avi and Leah for letting me post this!

MixApp is the only social music service that's actually social.

OK, that's an obnoxious thing to say. But really, how many times do you hear about a new music service that claims to be all about "social" — and then it turns out that, great as their service might be, their hot social feature is a facebook/tweet/share-this widget?

We built MixApp to do the one thing that we really wanted to do, and that no other service offers: actually listen to music with our friends.

Because there's something special about hearing the same thing at the same time. And "dude, check out this link" just doesn't cut it.

This isn't to take away from the many great companies (esp. startups) with cool music listening services. But let's look at the primary selling points of the main players:

1. Music discovery, which could be driven by algorithms based on what you listen to (Pandora, Last.fm), blogs (Hype Machine), user ratings (theSixtyOne), social networks (We Are Hunted), web pages you visit (ExtensionFM).
2. On-demand access to music (Rdio, Grooveshark, MOG, spotify, Rhapsody, Deezer, Jamendo, Guvera, YouTube/VEVO, Muziic, and of course iTunes.)
3. Building and sharing playlists (offered by most of the above, plus others that focus specifically on playlists, e.g. 8tracks).

(Yes, I've left out a lot of great companies that focus on other music areas, e.g. concert listings, artist services, music creation, games, analytics.)

So what's missing? Yeah, it's the social — not just sending around links, not just recommending music, not just reading about our friends — what's missing is actually being with our friends.

That's what MixApp brings to the table: it's a genuinely social music experience.

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To be complete: there are a few other startups that are working on simultaneous experiences, largely focused on video: synchTube, Qlipso, YouTubeSocial. But I just spent my workday listening to mp3s of live DJ sets, so you know where my heart lives.

Have you ever wanted to:

• Play a track for someone while you're IMing?
• DJ a private radio station with your friends?
• Find a way to "be together" with someone, even if you're working away in different places?

Us too.  That's why we built MixApp.

MixApp lets you and your friends listen to music together in a chat room, where everyone hears the same thing at the same time.  It’s like hanging out in your dorm lounge or living room with your friends and playing music for each other -- except that with MixApp you can be with your friends all day, no matter where you are.

Here's how:

1. Go to http://mixapp.com and log in with Facebook.  You'll see the rooms where your Facebook friends are listening, and you can jump right in. Or create a new room and get your friends to join in.

2. Each room has a shared playlist -- you can add MP3s from your computer, or from your friends' collections (if they're making them available to you.)

3. Here's the key: everyone listening hears the same thing at the same time.

Most people ask: "Wait, so anyone can add to the playlist, rearrange or delete tracks?"  Yup!  And no, this doesn't lead to anarchy -- when you're listening with your friends, there's social pressure not to ruin the experience for everyone else.  (And besides, everyone can just go to a different room if someone decides to be difficult.)

There's something special about hearing the same thing at the same time -- so give MixApp a try, bring your friends, stop listening alone, and start listening together.

Before tweets and retweets, facebook likes, and automated computer recommendations that knew our tastes better than we knew them ourselves, "music discovery" worked something like this:

You'd hang out with your friends in a room with a stereo, and someone would say "Hey, I'm going to play this track, I think you'll like it." And then you and your friends would listen together -- and you'd get signals, like heads nodding at the same time and smiles at the same lyrics.

There's something special about hearing the same thing at the same time. Something that "dude, check out this link" just can't reproduce.

Here's a taste of what's possible with simultaneous listening on MixApp:

• Hang out with your friends during the day, even when you're all in different places -- whether you're working at a desk job, or writing in a coffee shop, you're still hearing the same thing. 
• That friend who's always discovering new bands -- listen along as she plays what she's found. (And then you'll be in the know too -- so you can invite your other friends and impress them!) 
• Long-distance relationship? Share tunes to share the mood while you chat, knowing you're in the same emotional place at the same time. 

How do we know there's something special about listening on MixApp?

• Users are typing their favorite lyrics in chat along with the music.
• Folks are listening to, and loving, genres they'd never play on their own.
• People in long-distance relationships want to create MixApp rooms for just themselves and their significant others.

When I described MixApp to someone who graduated from college in the early nineties, he told me that he and a roommate who ended up on the opposite side of the country would talk on the phone and pick an album they both had -- then they'd get it playing at the same time while they chatted.

Hearing the same thing at the same time -- it's how it's always been done, right up until everyone plugged in their headphones and listened alone. But now with MixApp we can all listen together again.