fredwilson.fm

Fredwilsonfm
A while ago, I bought the urls fredwilson.fm and fredwilson.tv and have been sitting on them. A few weeks ago, someone called the banners that run at the bottom of this blog and my tumblog "fredwilson.fm". It made me think that I should activiate that url.

So with the help of Nathan Bowers who did the redesign of this blog during the summer, we’ve now got it up and live. It autoplays, which I would not ordinarily recommend, but since the only purpose of that page is to listen to music, I think it’s appropriate.

This was pretty simple to do. We used the tumblr api, the streampad player, and a web server. I’d love to see tumblr and streampad work together to make it even easier to do. Everyone who posts music to the web should have their own radio station.

Let me know what you think.

#My Music#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Fraser

    Happy to have contributed back to the community with (unknowing) push that made this happen. Thanks for 4+ years of great music recommendations!

    1. fredwilson

      thanks for revealing the source of the idea fraser. i couldn’t remember who said it. you join the long list of good ideas I have taken and run with!

      1. Fraser

        np, that’s the basis of any community – making stuff better throughcollaboration and input 🙂 thanks for bringing us all together.I’m actually listening to fredwilson.fm now – the new ben kweller song isexcellent.

  2. daryn

    looks and works great, although one new song added to the front of the playlist each day (more or less) isn’t the most dynamic radio station in the world 🙂

  3. scott

    Pretty cool. How did you/Nathan set this up?I’d like to use a similar one for my personal blog- Scott from VentureDig

  4. Brian

    I was messing around with this awhile ago and setup radio.thebrianhayes.com to embed my last.fm suggestions. One of the biggest UX I made after a day or so of use was to add a button labeled ‘mini’. This opens a new small window which i can minimize so I don’t accidentally close the tab.Could be important because of the non-random playback of streampad

    1. Dan Kantor

      We are working on a mini player that you can pop-out from the bottombar. Stay tuned!

  5. Jeff Judge

    kick ass – good idea

  6. Dan Kantor

    Looks (and sounds) great!

  7. Kendal H

    Awesome. I know what site I am having on in the background during work this week! Xm Online will get a week off.

  8. BmoreWire

    Hey, can you have Nathan share the server side source that he used?

  9. Dan Ostermayer

    Pretty neat Fred. Concept is like sort of like last.fm although not quite as useful since the music will never change and at most only have one song added a day. You should post out the code if you can so others can do this.

    1. BmoreWire

      1. make a tumbr account.2. add the code to your tumblr page following these instructions.http://blog.dankantor.com/p…3. get any old free server (maybe godaddy or even geocities) post some mp3’s on there4. submit the url’s of the mp3’s (you can do as many non-hosted links as you want) or you can take mp3 links from other aggregators like seeqpod.com5. style and re-host the page however and wherever you want

  10. Trip

    I would very much like to do the same thing for my playlist of indie electronica, but I’m concerned about rights issues. Fred, I’m curious: have you cleared all the music you stream on your site? What are the rules of the road for this.Thanks for any pointers.Trip

    1. fredwilson

      No I have notHowever, I have been posting music to the web for about five years now and have only gotten one take down notice

  11. kskobac

    this is really cool – great decision to activate the url and the utility!

  12. Anton

    Fred, have you seen Soundcloud? They have a really nice “dropbox”-widget where your visitors can send you nice music. And of course, a lot of other cool things but that’s the feature I think is most interesting for you.It’s just a tip, but check this cool German/Swedish startup! http://www.soundcloud.com

  13. Jill Stern

    great..you are a very cool dad.how can i get different songs from fredwilson.fm–am i missing something? i couldn’t figure it out.

    1. fredwilson

      Just look at the bottom of the page and hit the fast forward button

      1. Jill Stern

        that was easy!thanks

  14. Ed

    I think I love this simple, powerful quote from your post: “Everyone who posts music to the web should have their own radio station.”

  15. Dan Routman

    I’m curious how you can deliver music without paying royalties. Or do you pay royalties?

  16. ebrittwebb

    This rocks. Thanks for the inspiration. Pardon my ignorance, but how did you handle the copyright protection of these songs, so that the RIAA doesn’t come after you for streaming these to the world?

    1. dean collins

      he’s not. Technically he should be paying licensing fees based on the number of visitors per track……Cheers,Dean

      1. ebrittwebb

        Yikes!

  17. alwayslookaround

    Awesome idea, Fred! And I’m totally loving your playlist. Hopefully you’ll keep this fresh over time. Considering your love of music, I’m sure you will. 🙂

  18. jaymeydad

    Here’s a feature idea – add some error handling and a “Will be back soon” page. I get a “Service Unavailable” error (via Safari’s Activity window) but on the website itself there is no indication that there is a problem. I will email you a screenshot (too bad I can not upload to Disqus — but that’s another feature idea…).

  19. BoulderFreeRadio

    Hey Fred, mind if we play you on air (pirate FM radio) from time to time?BFR

    1. fredwilson

      Any time

  20. timraleigh

    Great stuff. Your playlist has introduced me to some great music…Thanks.

  21. Guest

    Very cool. I’m continuously amazed on how we find information. For example a tweet from @fredwilson on twitter –> http://fredwilson.fm/ –> streampad (great service) –> google fredwilson.fm to find this blog post –> google Nathan Bowers to find a great blog (now in my RSS feeds).In terms of the page, as an avid music lover, and someone who posts music, I love the idea of creating a simple page to post music, one that’s not beholden to any one particular service. I WAS one of Blip.fm’s biggest supporters, to their credit they got it right. They have a simple UI, robust search, easy to find music and like minded DJ’s, and a community of dedicated music lovers. But with recent events (“Trouble Ahead For Blip.fm?” http://www.techcrunch.com/2… I can’t see myself spending any more time on the site at http://blip.fm/benjaminjtaylor. Essentially, the service is useless. Like Last.fm a music preview site.As a result, you’ve inspired me to think differently about the way in which we consume and share our music. A readily adaptable single page that can pull from multiple sources (if needed) seems to be the right answer. Building it is the challenge. I’m not a developer but this sounds like a perfect summer project.

    1. fredwilson

      Its interesting to note that fredwilson.fm is built on top of tumblr, streampad, and soundcloudIts simply a nice front end