Filling the gaps in Blip search

[Figgywithit]

Loving blip.fm but its search and the database are sorely lacking. I've been uploading songs slowly, but so many are missing. I think we need several things:
-More people uploading
-A list of the best upload sites (mine sucks, but I already paid for it)
-A Blips wanted page where people can ask for certain songs to be uploaded

What do you think about search? Any suggestions for how to improve it?

[PaulFrankRizzo]

I use PlayList.com to add music to BlipFM.
Type a Song Title or Artist into the Search Bar on the Main Page of Project Playlist.
You then go to a Results Page. Right Click the "View Site" Link.
Copy the URL of the Song, Paste into BlipFM's Search Bar.
Preview it to make sure it plays. (Does 9 out of 10 times).
Blip It into CyberSpace.

You can also Add Songs to Blip by going into Settings on your BlipFM Profile and adding a few URLs that way.

Yours in Music,
PaulFrankRizzo

[Figgywithit]

Thanks for the tip! I've been manually uploading my own mp3s to a third party site and it's a pain in the butt!

[craigz]

Thanks for the search/add url procedure PaulFrankRizzo! Also, thank you for reminding me about Project Playlist, I've got some nice playlists there from the time immediately proceeding my discovery of blip.fm. http://www.playlist.com/craigz

[PaulFrankRizzo]

Thanks for the Link to your content. We would love to hear your thoughts on the usability of Project Playlist. Is there anything missing over there? Does the site give you what you need in terms of music? What changes would you make to it? (Please start either a Blog Entry or Forum Discussion with your answer.) Thanks, PFR

craigz said:

Thanks for the search/add url procedure PaulFrankRizzo! Also, thank you for reminding me about Project Playlist, I've got some nice playlists there from the time immediately proceeding my discovery of blip.fm. http://www.playlist.com/craigz

[gReg0r]

i'm already adding like an idiot ^^ ... but the tip with the search bar is also new to me. thx for that! - a nice page i use for searching existing mp3 is hypem.com (blog crawler). only prob is, that music blogs often delete their files after awhile :/

[PaulFrankRizzo]

Very True, they do delete their content after a while. How you find out about it is when you go to play your awesome playlist for someone, and it doesn't work.

gReg0r said:

i'm already adding like an idiot ^^ ... but the tip with the search bar is also new to me. thx for that! - a nice page i use for searching existing mp3 is hypem.com (blog crawler). only prob is, that music blogs often delete their files after awhile :/

[GR8FL]

Well developed mp3 ID Tags are critical to yielding good search results. I learned this the hard way after uploading a few songs. Searching on blip reminds me of how search strings were used for engines such as Alta Vista. Key in precise words using quotes will give more exact results if the the tags were done properly. For example, I want blip 'Noveau Americain by Brazilian Girls'. I could type that in exactly (surrounded by quotes) or just 'Brazilian Girls' to get the entire list. If I key in Brazilian or Girls, I would end up with much more and could reach my breaking point to look through all the results.

What I would really like to see improved is the removal or at least the labeling of crap quality songs and/or incomplete songs (samples). It's very frustrating to get search return of 10 for the song I am looking for only to find out after I blipped that #1, #3, #7 were so muffled it was inaudible, and #2, #4, #10 were so-called samples.

[paulzy]

I desperately want a way for the site to figure out you are dealing with a 30 second preview of something. Those things are a blipstream flow killer. Search should just ignore those little bastards. Step 1... don't link to them!!!

[PaulFrankRizzo]

I absolutely agree with you. But I think BlipFM wants as much content in there as possible in the early years. You are so right about the Search Results, though. I mean I put a Song Title and Artist in Quotes and it gets listed like half-way down. WTF? Like you said earlier, it's all about the mp3 tags.

Adding songs is OK, but tedious. They don't always work. And we all can't stand when we can't find our preferred song ANYWHERE.

paulzy said:

I desperately want a way for the site to figure out you are dealing with a 30 second preview of something. Those things are a blipstream flow killer. Search should just ignore those little bastards. Step 1... don't link to them!!!

[ZachsMind]

Uploading? I rarely upload anything. I just use blip's search engine and I'd say about seven times out of ten I'm satisfied with what I get. The rest of the time I have room to be 'creative.'

I honestly don't understand any more what's legal as opposed to what's right when it comes to the proliferation of online music. I used to spend gobs of time studying all that and trying to understand the argument and the law. It's a bunch of insane mumbo jumbo. It's frustrating. People who obviously don't care about music are deciding how I'm allowed legally to show how I care. I gave up trying to understand them and where they come from.

I only ever uploaded three songs to blip.fm before it stopped allowing that behavior. All three songs were written and recorded by a friend of mine who gave me his permission. He was the bass player of the band that recorded the songs. The lead singer on those tunes is no longer with us, and my friend and I both agreed it important that people get to hear Lee's awesome talent. He's sorely missed. Thanks to cancer, I'll never be able to hear a third album with his incredible voice. At least they managed to cut two before he died.

Anything else I have to upload may not be acceptable for uploading, due to current copyright laws here in the US. I don't know for sure, cuz like I said I don't understand the laws and no longer care to try to understand them. They make no sense.

I think the bastards who try to make uploading music to the Internet illegal, make up crap as they go along. It's frustrating. Information wants to be free, and repeatedly there's evidence that shows music on the Web increases people's interest in said music, and increases profits. No one's stealing anything from anybody, here. Still, the laws on the books are too murky for me to know what's what, so I'd rather not mess with it. So I don't upload myself, but if it's already up there, I find nothing ethically or morally wrong with downloading it for personal use.

With that said, the search function in blip.fm is amazing. There are times when I can't blip exactly what i wanted. If I don't get exactly what I searched for, I can still get pretty darn close. Sometimes if I can't get close, the end result is often more rewarding or entertaining than what I originally intended. Sometimes when I search for X and end up with Y, I learn something and have a better experience than if I'd listened again to what I already know. Blip.fm is a curious beast, but even when it's bad it's still pretty good.

This is closer to how things would be, if there weren't people out there trying to make music sharing a crime. It's more than just duplicating songs. It's sharing what you know about music with people who don't know what you know but know as much or more than you about other parts of music, and as a group everyone becoming more informed because we're educating each other. Perhaps that's what The Powers That Be really fear the most: we aren't dependent on them to tell us what's good, or what's on top. We know better than top 40 radio, because we make up our own playlist and each decide for ourselves what's worth our time and money. They want to make musing sharing a crime, because they are losing control of us as consumers. We decide if we're gonna buy Sting's new CD, or the latest release by Paul Tabachneck. We aren't limited to what they tell us deserves attention. We decide for ourselves.

[PaulFrankRizzo]

Zach, that was the greatest Blog Post ever written about the whole Music Sharing topic. Props to you for writing it. It's like they want people to pay for a song every time they play it. Well, let me ask all of you, do you pay for other products you bought each time you use them? Did you put $1 into your Coffee Maker this morning? Did you Re-Buy your Snow Shovel? Don't they know that Social Music is Promoted Music, which is Good for them?

ZachsMind said:

Uploading? I rarely upload anything. I just use blip's search engine and I'd say about seven times out of ten I'm satisfied with what I get. The rest of the time I have room to be 'creative.'

I honestly don't understand any more what's legal as opposed to what's right when it comes to the proliferation of online music. I used to spend gobs of time studying all that and trying to understand the argument and the law. It's a bunch of insane mumbo jumbo. It's frustrating. People who obviously don't care about music are deciding how I'm allowed legally to show how I care. I gave up trying to understand them and where they come from.

I only ever uploaded three songs to blip.fm before it stopped allowing that behavior. All three songs were written and recorded by a friend of mine who gave me his permission. He was the bass player of the band that recorded the songs. The lead singer on those tunes is no longer with us, and my friend and I both agreed it important that people get to hear Lee's awesome talent. He's sorely missed. Thanks to cancer, I'll never be able to hear a third album with his incredible voice. At least they managed to cut two before he died.

Anything else I have to upload may not be acceptable for uploading, due to current copyright laws here in the US. I don't know for sure, cuz like I said I don't understand the laws and no longer care to try to understand them. They make no sense.

I think the bastards who try to make uploading music to the Internet illegal, make up crap as they go along. It's frustrating. Information wants to be free, and repeatedly there's evidence that shows music on the Web increases people's interest in said music, and increases profits. No one's stealing anything from anybody, here. Still, the laws on the books are too murky for me to know what's what, so I'd rather not mess with it. So I don't upload myself, but if it's already up there, I find nothing ethically or morally wrong with downloading it for personal use.

With that said, the search function in blip.fm is amazing. There are times when I can't blip exactly what i wanted. If I don't get exactly what I searched for, I can still get pretty darn close. Sometimes if I can't get close, the end result is often more rewarding or entertaining than what I originally intended. Sometimes when I search for X and end up with Y, I learn something and have a better experience than if I'd listened again to what I already know. Blip.fm is a curious beast, but even when it's bad it's still pretty good.

This is closer to how things would be, if there weren't people out there trying to make music sharing a crime. It's more than just duplicating songs. It's sharing what you know about music with people who don't know what you know but know as much or more than you about other parts of music, and as a group everyone becoming more informed because we're educating each other. Perhaps that's what The Powers That Be really fear the most: we aren't dependent on them to tell us what's good, or what's on top. We know better than top 40 radio, because we make up our own playlist and each decide for ourselves what's worth our time and money. They want to make musing sharing a crime, because they are losing control of us as consumers. We decide if we're gonna buy Sting's new CD, or the latest release by Paul Tabachneck. We aren't limited to what they tell us deserves attention. We decide for ourselves.

[nitetalker]

Very useful! Thanks, PaulFrankRizzo

PaulFrankRizzo said:

I use PlayList.com to add music to BlipFM.