Re-thinking music with ZIIBRA

[omrim]

Hey HN,

I've been working on this project with a kick-ass team for the past 8 months, and we finally launched it last week.

ZIIBRA helps up-and-coming artists make music their full time job. Using our music, the more fans that pledge to purchase an album the cheaper a project becomes because the price is driven down through their social network outreach. Cheaper price = Happy fans. Plus, the artists benefit too. By pre-selling a new album, artists get fan reach, cash flow to fund the project, and a marketing platform to cross-promote their new work!

I was hoping to get some feedback back from the community, and see what the general reaction is.

Cheers,

Omri

[maxko87]

Awesome tool. Kickstarter has proven that a crowd sourced model like this can work, and it's good that the model is being specialized into certain niches like this (see indiegogo). I'm sure that you will have success with it.

As for critique, I can't tell at all what the big colorful title says. It's cool that you are targeting two different audiences (bands and fans), but consolidate your two mission statements on the front page -- they seem a bit redundant (maybe make each shorter and more pointed?) I would also go into some more specifics on the "How it Works" page, for example by including some details from the video (if somebody does not want to watch).

Good luck!

[omrim]

Hey thanks for the 2 cents. The title is a mash of genres... we intended it to be jumbled up :) But I like your view on making the mission statements shorter/ clearer... will mess around with some UI stuff soon

[coroxout]

I like the design but the grey font is a bit hard to read against a black background for me.

The fading coloured squares which fill space look pretty but they were confusing to me - are these links to more pages of results? Mousing over them in Chrome changes my mouse pointer as if they were links, so it took me a few clicks to decide they don't do anything. I like how they look so I'm not necessarily saying get rid of them; maybe just put some text over the top making it clear that the user has seen all the results.

Seconding other people's comments about Facebook and Twitter integration.

Finally, I see you've recorded the location of artists, and I'd love to see a browse by location to see if there are any local-to-me acts on here.

Good luck with the site!

[omrim]

Love the browse by location idea! Taking note :)

[omrim]

Hey HN,

I've been working on this project with a kick-ass team for the past 8 months, and we finally launched it last week.

ZIIBRA helps up-and-coming artists make music their full time job. Using our music platform, the more fans that pledge to purchase an album the cheaper a project becomes because the price is driven down through their social network outreach. Cheaper price = Happy fans. Plus, the artists benefit too. By pre-selling a new album, artists get fan reach, cash flow to fund the project, and a marketing platform to cross-promote their new work!

I was hoping to get some feedback back from the community...

Cheers,

Omri

[swayfm]

Don't make me connect my facebook in order to play music. http://cl.ly/0N1t3A3d013I061v2829 Don't care that it's only 30 seconds away, I don't want to give you my data before hearing some music and deciding whether or not it's worth it.

Also, seeing "30 seconds" in this interrupting popup (even before reading it) makes me think that I'll only get 30 second previews of the music.

That's as far as I got, since I can't play any music.

The model is neat. http://www.ziibra.com/browse looks really cool.

[omrim]

Thanks for the kind words!

We're doing the Facebook/Twitter (coming soon) login because we're going to add features that are centric to interacting with your friends on ZIIBRA/ your networks.

[anigbrowl]

OK, but don't forget those of us who either don't use FB/Twitter, or who want to keep separate online IDs for different things (eg if your Facebook identity is wrapped up with your day job and you'd rather your fellow librarians didn't know you were in an avant-garde industrial band named Earbleeder).

disclaimer: not a member or fan of any bands called Earbleeder

[Ralith]

What about those of us who don't use facebook or twitter? Or any social networking service, for that matter?

[omrim]

We're working on a log-in after we get twitter up. Will stay in touch and let you know!

[nodrama]

Music site. No music.

[techmm]

Aw, c'mon. They probably worked their ass off to get those artists to sign up with them before the site even launched. Watch a band like Radiohead or NIN give 'em a wink and it will blow up like stove top jiffy pop.

Also, my 2c on the site design: Its trendy and neat, but off-white, sans-serif font on a black background makes for a hard read. Otherwise I like it. Minimalism, hoo-rah.

I love the concept. I hope it takes off like crazy! And I think it will.

[nodrama]

"Aw, c'mon. They probably worked their ass off to get those artists to sign up with them before the site even launched."

That's right. And precisely because they worked very hard for that, I added my comment to let them know they are now throwing away most of that effort because they hide the music behind some login. I would put the music out there and annoy people with the login or at least, learn from the drug dealers: first time it's free (more like first 10 times it's free).

[omrim]

Haha thank you! We've been busting our ass off to do something we love.

Noting the off-white font comment!

-OM

[dcwest67]

Nice work Omri! I'm loving the UI, very clean. Good luck with ZIIBRA, and I hope I see more articles pop up here on HN! - Dan w

[omrim]

Thanks Dan!