You are definitely right and we'll be continually looking at better ways to integrate seamless sharing into the app.
Seamless sharing is also a "band-aid." It gets users sharing your app at the beginning but there's definitely some users who are turned off by it.
So although this is where a lot of our referral traffic comes from at the moment there are undoubtedly better ways to do this and we're working on it. These are early iterations on the product and we'll be circling back very soon.
To answer your question here: we use your email to send you notifications of likes/comments/follows as well as three emails a week of trending music on wavo. Eventually this email will be personalized to you. As for why it's not clear up front - we made a conscious effort to keep the landing page as clean as possible. Ideally, our explanation should be part of the facebook connect dialog, but that's not actually possible. Probably when we add multiple signin options, we'll add more explanatory text there.
We recently added clearer ways to turn seamless sharing off with Facebook. You can either disable it for four hours by clicking on the switch in the top right or by going into your preferences and disabling it permanently.
Right now Facebook makes life easy in certain ways and is obviously an effective way to acquire users but we're getting to the point where we've got most of the basic user experience figured out so a secondary way of signing in is moving up in our priority list. Really glad you like the emails and hope we can get you on-boarded into the full experience soon.
I’m one of the co-founders and just wanted to give a bit more info on what we’re trying to do with wavo.me. We’re artists, bloggers, event organizers and fans. We’ve felt for some time that existing services are missing key parts of the music experience. A truly excellent music service should connect artists, bloggers, labels and fans together. It should create a community that encourages discovery and dialogue. Wavo.me is our attempt to create a social network for music.
We’ve started with a service similar to Pinterest -- A simple and beautiful way to discover, collect and share music with friends.
It’s a big project. We’re at the very beginning and we’d love your feedback.
(FYI, you can only sign up with Facebook right now... We know, we know... alternative ways of signing in are coming, along with a mobile version)
I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare yourself to Spotify (at least on HN). I think a big part of Spotify's business is that they have agreements with the big 4 record companies for each country, and they're rolling out their service as they get the deals signed in each country. So if I use Spotify, I'm listening to music legally, and a lot of music is available.
You are using Youtube, so you're limited by what's on Youtube, and various other strings attached.
Anyway, I think the site is a lot of fun, rock on! =)
Yes, you're 100% right. When you look at it from a business model point of view, we're not at all the same as spotify - at least not yet. What I was trying to get at, though, is that we're really trying to fix what's broken about the existing experience - Spotify has some social elements, but it's not their DNA. iTunes had ping, but that didn't last. What we want to do with wavo is really connect artists, labels and fans together in a meaningful way to create a shared experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Just as an aside: its not clear in the Uex but you can also search Soundcloud.
I wonder if car companies are going to be looking at lessons from the tech world specifically Apple and Microsoft and think: Ok maybe these guys ARE the new apple of car companies ... We don't want to be the microsoft of car companies so let's innovate instead of dying. I know innovation isn't exactly at the heart of the car companies but these guys can't be living in a total vacuum. Every single publication in the world is likening Tesla to Apple. The significance and parallels can't be lost on them. I would be really surprised if BMW & Lexus & Audi don't come out with their own competitive answer. Unless it's already too late?
If you have a page you're interested in following just add it to your interest lists on Facebook. This way you can turn Facebook into your own personal reader. The main Facebook feed has its downfalls and limitations but if you take a couple minutes to create your own personalized friend lists and interest lists you bypass this problem completely.
Coming in through the frontpage is rough as most of our referral traffic comes through Facebook viral loops so we've allotted our waking hours to optimize for that funnel. But you're right and we're going to be overhauling the whole design soon to get it cleaner and more minimal once we finish building out the BETA features! (Conor CEO wavo)
In the screenshot the ad blends into the rest of the UI instead of being clear that its an ad...And its prominent placement in the UI makes it very clickable. Following your logic shouldn't it remain in the same place but be more clear that its an ad so that people are not confused that its part of the product? This would have the result of being seen but not accidentally clicked.
First: it may not be quite so apparent from the screen shot, but the ad is framed to make it distinct form the rest of the app. Going further might well do more harm than good, as it could disrupt sight lines and make the UI garish regardless of ad content. The ad itself also draws distinction with the surrounding widgets by employing a different font, a different icon style, a different background, and a different icon size.
As the article describes, people aren't misclicking because they've looked closely at the ad and mistaken it for an application function. Misclicks are predominantly people who really aren't sure what they are clicking on, don't know they are clicking, and/or didn't intend to click at all.
Either way, in practice Yahoo's optimization efforts if anything create incentive to minimize misclicks, not the other way around.
Except Spotify isn't for discovery and virality. What your talking about is getting people to discover music. Usually done through blogs, social media, youtube. But when your talking about a service like spotify which is really a one dimensional store for storing, putting music on your mobile device that doesn't drive merch sales or concert tickets or even fans then they should be paying there fair share to artists. Granted maybe with FB open graph integration this is changing. And of course this isn't just a Spotify problem this is a label problem (of course now they're one and the same). Anyways the question isn't whether giving your music away for free or not is a good idea -- The question is why isn't Spotify doing what they say there are there to do?... Pay artists.
I disagree - I've been using Spotify for a couple of years to discover new music. The 'Related artists' panel, and then the 'Top Hits' easily lets you find similar bands/musicians and sample their most popular songs.
I'd prefer someone to discover a song of mine of Youtube, or read about me in a blog or a Twitter post, and spend the day streaming everything I've done - come to my show and singalong. Looking at listings for my local venue, I'll regularly spend the preceding days / week listening to who's coming to play before I go and see them live.
I'm aware my views differ from some, but we're in an age where you can pirate an album in 30 seconds. Those that are going to steal it, will. Similarly, those that want to pay, will. Until you have enough loyal fans/generic TV/radio coverage to buy your single on iTunes, why not just let them hear it wherever and ask them to donate or buy a t-shirt or vinyl?
Answering the question as to why Spotify isn't paying artists - the system may not be perfect at the minute, but it's certainly pushing the boundaries much better (and more legally) than anything previously. Which is a great, great thing, IMO.
