Instead of Beluga, how about launching a nice tool that with one click lets content owners remove all of their unlicensed content from Grooveshark, block all of it from being re-uploaded ever again, and send us a cheque for any revenues earned when it was there.
Hey burrokeet, aspects of the content management functionality you mentioned will be part of the new artist platform. You can request early beta access here: http://greenroom.grooveshark.com/?beluga
We do pay royalties to licensed content holders - please email licensing[at]grooveshark[dot]com for more details
Congrats on the launch! I remember when we (I was a former groovesharker) started working on it back in November of 2010! Great to see that you stuck with the project through what I'm sure were many ups and downs :)
I'm curious to know how you see the product benefiting people. What do you see people actually using it for?
Right now it seems like a cute demonstration of a data mashup though not entirely factually correct. For example, if I search for "Coldplay" it says 85% affinity for Asian Indian and 82% Plastic Surgery and high Z-score for Hindi? How do you ensure the accuracy of this data?
I think you need to display the results of this data differently to users. If its correct, people without statistics backgrounds will get confused because not everyone can interpret what a z-score means, nor will they understand how it is useful to them.
Hey physcab, good to hear from you! We miss you, and we hope everything's going well.
We addressed some of your questions in the faq, especially different ways that artists can use Beluga: http://beluga.grooveshark.com/faq.html. Essentially we wanted to give artists a powerful - yet free - tool to let them understand their fan base.
As for data accuracy; although Beluga constantly surprises us with its insights, further investigation has always confirms those insights, at least as far as being solid statistics.
We toyed around with a lot of ways of displaying the data before coming to the final design. Oviously not everybody's going to know what a z-score is, but hopefully the interface is useful for those who don't and even more useful for those who do. We sprinkled helpful tooltips throughout the app to give some context to what's being displayed.
I was having trouble using this on Firefox 13 (beta). I keep getting "Invalid referer." dialog boxes when entering the artist in and three "Invalid referer." dialog boxes when going to a Artist Report. The only information loaded on the Artist Report is the Biography.
Hey gmig, thanks for checking out Beluga. I just tried in Firefox 13, and I couldn't reproduce the issue. Do you have anything that could be messing with your referrer, like addons? On api calls, as a safety precaution, we check to make sure the browser referrer is correct.
I don't have any add-ons/plugins that change or block the referrer. I disabled the add-ons/plugins I did have and still got the error. Though I created a new profile under Firefox 13 and the site worked fine on the new profile. Must be something wrong with my regular profile then.
Not that it matters too much, but why did you call it Beluga? Beluga is a pretty famous Facebook acquisition, and is the first thing I think of when I see Beluga, besides the whale!
We really like using aquatic references at Grooveshark, and since the beginning this project's code name was Beluga. We really liked the name, and, since Facebook absorbed the Beluga you're referring to for their talented employees, we decided to keep the name.
I find it interesting how the title of this post is tailored to the technical HN audience where as the Reddit post made reference to them getting sued:
From underground metal bands to mainstream pop, it seems pretty accurate from the demographics and highlights sections. Some other interesting tidbits in there about device usage.
Hey ScottWhigham, thanks for the kind words. We've made a couple suggestions on how to use the data in our faq at http://beluga.grooveshark.com/faq.html. We want to offer musicians like you tools such as Beluga to help you connect with your strongest would-be fans. In fact, Beluga is just the beginning. We're building an awesome new platform for artists like you to manage content, connect with fans, and get more out of Beluga all within the main site (grooveshark.com). You can sign up for an early invite at http://greenroom.grooveshark.com/?beluga
I understand it's also blocked in the offices of at least one major label. Not surprising given certain legal action, but must be annoying for Grooveshark that their potential big customers are actively blocking them.