Twisten.fm: Discover Music on Twitter! Maybe…
I noticed a new service offered by my wonderful friends over at Grooveshark the other day, Twisten.FM (). I was intrigued by what they said it did: Discover music through Twitter. I decided to check it out, and I gave them (grooveshark) my twitter email and password. Hopefully, they will support OAuth when Twitter finally releases it. I know some of the members at Grooveshark and I would trust them with my login; they aren’t going to “hack” you or anything, they just need your following list so they can show you songs that your “friends” have posted. I recommend you follow because every hour they tweet the “song of the hour”, which is automatic or manual?? Either way, I so far have enjoyed the songs they recommend.
Everything sounds good so far right? Alright, well the service is unique because all songs are linked to Grooveshark and you can play them right from within your “dashboard” on Twisten.fm. However, when searching for a song, you are only presented with the first 8 results (left picture), and there is no scroll bar to see any further. Also, when clicking on a result, it takes up to 10 seconds to register your click and bring up the “tweet” box (right tweet). Also, after updating y0ur “status” the “Latest Twisten:” just goes blank, and they don’t use AJAX to add your latest tweet to the top of the list like Twitter. However, they have an RSS Feed for every user and that is pretty neat! Good job Grooveshark!!
After I made that tweet, I realized that Twisten.FM had a with Twitter. I emailed about the issue and I will be in contact with Grooveshark when I get a reply back. The tweet still shows up fine in Twisten.FM’s Dashboard, however.
Back to my review: You can easily interact with Grooveshark by playing a song listed or favoriting it. The favorite button, when clicked, makes the whole song flash red, but it should keep the favorite button red and for any other favorited songs, it should have them red when the page is loaded. Also, you can easily play a song, but it takes a few minutes to load. They have provided a neat loading icon, however users may not realize that it also acts as the “Stop/Pause” button. When you are within Grooveshark Lite, there is a “Tweet This…” but there isn’t a “Twisten.FM this…” or something similar.
However, I would say the biggest problem is with the parent service, Grooveshark. Grooveshark has millions of user-uploaded songs, however the selection still may not satisfy all songs that you may want to “post” on Twisten.fm. It would be better for Grooveshark to offer a “Upload this song” option for songs if they could not be found or if the user can’t find a matching result. This would bring more users to Grooveshark itself and it would give them a larger song base. Another big problem is with downloading; you used to be able to download songs via Grooveshark for $.99, but that has been shutdown ever since they went to only Lite and no “Beta”. I have mentioned many times to various employees that they need to get downloading up and running, for revenue and because users want it! I never recieved any reply back regarding the situation so I think it might have to do with licencing or something similar.
To make the service even better, a desktop application could be provided that would play Grooveshark songs and interact with both Grooveshark and Twisten.FM. I would use Grooveshark 24/7 then! I would make a nice Adobe AIR application, but I’m not familiar with coding AIR and I don’t have the time. Anyone interested? Shoot me a or email and I will get you in touch with someone at Grooveshark and get you API access. I have sent most of the above enhancements to both and at Grooveshark.
One more thing: , Twisten.FM as a source parameter on Twitter! Please :)
(The site is currently in a beta stage and will be fully-released this weekend!)
Update 1: Alex and I have decided that it is a encoding issue and I have contacted both Skyler and Josh Greenberg at Grooveshark about the issue.
Update 2: While playing around with Grooveshark, I noticed that Twisten.FM actually didn’t correctly set my favorited songs!
Update 3: Favorites are not synced between Grooveshark and Twisten.FM yet! Josh and both seemed enthusiastic about the points I brought up. Let’s hope we can see some of them soon!
Overall not a bad service, but it has it’s shortcomings.
- James Hartig
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