Feature Friday: fredwilson.fm

So this is not really a feature. It’s a relaunch. But I figured I’d use this regular friday column to announce the relaunch of fredwilson.fm. I posted a few weeks ago that this was coming. And it has been live for about a week now.

Anyone can create a yourname.fm website. Here’s how:

1) get yourname.fm from your favorite domain registrar. I use Hover to store and manage all my domains but they don’t sell .fm domains. You can purchase .fm domains at GoDaddy.

2) set up a tumblr with that custom domain.

3) create a soundcloud account and start liking tracks to create a liked feed. Here is mine.

4) go to your soundcloud profile page, click on the share button, then the embed tab, and copy the embed code

5) make two edits to the embed code as shown below in red, then paste the code into your tumblr.

<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/users/xxxxx/favorites&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;visual=true&amp;auto_play=true" height="450" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe>

So that’s all there is to it. I love having a private radio station. You might too.

While we are talking features, the one feature I would love to have added to this SoundCloud embed is a shuffle feature. Nothing better than shuffling through your favorite songs instead of listening in reverse chronological order.

#My Music

Comments (Archived):

  1. jason wright

    why Hover?

    1. Vineeth Kariappa

      Options;1. Fred invested.2. Fred likes them.3. Fred’s friend likes them.4. It’s Fred’s blog.

      1. jason wright

        5. he likes things that hover.

    2. fredwilson

      we know the CEO of the parent company. we are not investors

  2. Donna Brewington White

    fredwilson.fm has gotten me through many a late work night. It was a good balance between songs that fit my tastes and helping me to stretch a bit (okay, sometimes a lot). Then when I switched over to turntable.fm “Indie While You Work” fredwilson.fm is where I went to get some of the first songs for my playlist when I got up the nerve to dj.I always thought it was generous of you to do this. And now generous of you to share the step-by-step of creating our own. I love the internet!Congratulations on the relaunch. And thank you. I’ll be listening.

    1. awaldstein

      Generosity is a core piece of community, not just showing up and pontificating but doing stuff, meeting people offline cause you connected here, building and giving back.I’m hiring you as a speech writer Donna!

      1. Donna Brewington White

        As if you need my help. 🙂 But thanks.And so very true about generosity and community.

    2. Jim Canto

      @donnawhite:disqus Since you were connected to Turntable.fm,…especially “Indie While You Work” (which was a large room) …then you must already know about Plug.dj. If not.. check it out.

      1. Donna Brewington White

        Thanks, Jim. I do recall some of my “pals” on TT talking about migrating over to plug.dj. Turntable.fm represented a sweet season for me — another chapter in my social web awakening. I’m not sure if that particular season has passed for me or if I am just still in mourning (for TT). Or if my gregarious nature makes those settings a little counterproductive for me as an accompaniment to burning the midnight oil. .:)Do you hang out on Plug.dj?

        1. Jim Canto

          “sweet season” … likewise. And yes; it was incredibly addictive and counterproductive (for various reasons) at the same time. I’ve only hung out on Plug enough to offer the opinion that they did a great job creating the softest landing possible for TT users. Many rooms migrated with low casualties to their micro-communities.The platform itself is interesting. You can spin videos from YouTube, Audio from SoundCloud or upload your own “stuff” (I believe.) That provides for some interesting use cases IMO.

  3. Dan

    Doesn’t look like Hover supports .fm domains. Just an FYI.Looks look there’s an “official” .fm registrar (www.dot.fm) and they even accept bitcoin…

    1. jason wright

      that’s what i was wondering.and also, is there anything particularly musical about the dot.fm registrar’s offering? isn’t it just yet another registrar?

      1. Ken Schafer

        Ken from Hover here!We’re about to officially launch .fm support. Right now we’re testing registrations and we’re not entirely happy with the lag between us and the registry itself, so it won’t be live until we figure that out.In the meantime, if you have an urgent need for an fm domain, contact us and we’ll work something out manually. Tell them I sent you from this post.

        1. jason wright

          very nice Ken. thanks.

    2. Brandon G. Donnelly

      namecheap doesn’t either :(dotfm is $$$

    3. fredwilson

      yeah, i messed that up. i modified this post to reflect that. sorry about it.

  4. JimHirshfield

    Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.

    1. jason wright

      coming up with a workable definition of ‘free world’ might keep you busy.Crimea’s ethnic Russians want to be free of Ukraine, but the EU and US don’t want it. i would cite Kosovo and tell them both to go away.

        1. jason wright

          I know Neil Young. Harvest is one of the best.you’re in SF. know anything about the dudes behind .fm?

          1. pointsnfigures

            <iframe width=”100%” height=”450″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”no” src=”https://w.soundcloud.com/pl…”></iframe>

          2. JimHirshfield

            I’m in NYC with about a dozen other Disqusers. HQ is in SF.I don’t know the .fm peeps.

          3. jason wright

            how many locations does disqus have?

          4. JimHirshfield

            SF and NYC.

          1. JimHirshfield

            That video not available in my country. But I see the title and get the message.

          2. jason wright

            kidding? what a web!

          3. JimHirshfield

            Not kidding.

          4. jason wright

            something not right about that sort of thing. needs fixing.music industry is still in denial. Fred thinks they are f%$#ers. i’m beginning to come around to his way of thinking. denying access to content seems counter intuitive.

          5. JimHirshfield

            Word.

          6. jason wright

            i will say that if content is not openly accessible it isn’t truly content. there ought to be a new word to describe that sort of stuff.

  5. pointsnfigures

    what if you have a tumblr blog, and a soundcloud site? Can you do this with your existing stuff?

    1. fredwilson

      yes, then just drop the embed code into your existing blog. my colleage brian watson did something like thathttp://brianwatson.me/music

  6. Bruce Warila

    Assuming that you are trustworthy quality filter, I listen to the songs with the lowest play count first. New music discovery is hard work. Always happy to have someone else do it for me.

    1. Bruce Warila

      on a related matter, in my last blog post, I suggested to artists that going direct-to-influencers is more effective than pursuing a direct-to-fan strategy. fredwilson.fm was one of my top examples http://j.mp/1eFNOeT

  7. Raj

    Flaming Lips covering Guided By Voices FTW.

    1. Matt A. Myers

      Ya, listening to that right now. Has a great sound.

      1. Donna Brewington White

        What are the chances that I would be listening to Flaming Lips on fredwilson.fm right this moment as I read this comment?

        1. Matt A. Myers

          Probably fairly high actually if it’s in an auto-play list… 😛

  8. Eliot Pierce

    What an amazing song / cover to relaunch fredwilson.fm!

  9. Salt Shaker

    I actually got into your playlist when you posted it a week or so ago. Nice curation! Wonder where you find the time to sort through all the shit that’s out there? Open platforms allow anyone to post their music, which In theory is a good thing, the prob is time management and filtration for listeners.

    1. Jim Canto

      The problem is made worse by a lack of clear genres. Users pollute genres with their tracks trying to steal traffic/plays. Makes following a vibe very difficult. (I’m fortunate enough to stream music all day and into most nights. So I’m on the front line as a user on this one.)

    2. fredwilson

      i don’t sort. i just listen. and like what i like.

  10. Murtaugh

    Hover tells me it doesn’t support .fm domains. Bummer – that is my favorite registrar, too.

    1. jason wright

      exactly

    2. Andrew Kennedy

      I got the same problem

    3. fredwilson

      sorry about that. i updated the post. but hover is getting .fm domains soon.

  11. William Mougayar

    Is Hover better than GoDaddy?

    1. jason wright

      doesn’t GoDaddy have a rep for making life difficult when registrants want to move domains to another registrar? I don’t know how Hover is on this point.

    2. aminTorres

      Anything is better than GoDaddy.

      1. William Mougayar

        Ouch…I’m happy with them. Maybe I don’t ask for much. I have a 12-15 domains there.

        1. aminTorres

          I moved 33 domains to namecheap in the last years when they announced their support of Sopa and Pipa.Still have one with them but letting it expire.I take issue with their up-selling practices, their auto-renewing approach and the never failing surprise of finding stuff on my shopping cart in the last step that I did not add myself during the checkout flow.Their UI hurts my eyes terrible, regardless of their many attempts to make it better. Customer support is crap. I still don’t know what jean claude van damme and danica patrick have todo with tech or the internet.

          1. Frank Traylor

            I’m in the process of moving all of my domains to namecheap as the expire also. All except the names that require a special registrar – such as my daughter Kacee’s super cool domain – kac.eeWho else has their name as a domain?

    3. pointsnfigures

      I usually use namecheap.com

      1. William Mougayar

        I will check them! thanks

  12. William Mougayar

    What does the “Dropbox-Send me your track” link do?

    1. leapy

      My reading was that anyone could ping Fred a track to listen to. Doesn’t seem to accept a soundcloud URL though. .. I guess you could upload a text file containing a web address 🙂

    2. fredwilson

      you can send me tracks to listen to on soundcloud

  13. leapy

    Love the Dropbox link.

    1. fredwilson

      it was the first feature of soundcloud i ever used. led to our investment at the end of the day.

  14. leapy

    Linking from Disqus on mobile browserhttp://soundcloud.com/jimps…

    1. leapy

      Well, that works! Thanks Disqus

    2. fredwilson

      oooh. nice track. and i love the soundcloud embed in the disqus comments!

  15. Kirsten Lambertsen

    Listening to FredWilson.fm now. I like the mid-century modern green background 🙂

  16. kirklove

    Call me a #hater, but why jump through 5 steps to simply embed a list I can hit via your SC profile?Also, the beauty of the prior fredwilson.fm was its openness across the web. SoundCloud is great no doubt, though one source, and limited at that. I’m biased but exfm had it right – make the entire web your jukebox. To me anything less than that now is weaksauce.

    1. Dan Kantor

      woot! 🙂

    2. fredwilson

      i agree with you but streampad broke and nobody came up with a good replacement for that, including ex.fm

      1. kirklove

        Yup

    3. William Mougayar

      I still have a liking for exfm. I still use my playlist there. You had a lot of pieces right.

      1. kirklove

        Exfm was closest for sure. Online music is a damn tough nut to crack.

  17. Seth Lieberman

    Any way to build a spotify playlist that automatically updates with new tracks?

  18. JamesHRH

    right about 3) , I started thinking about how much it would cost to have someone else do this for me.Long live the mavens.

  19. Aaron Klein

    Sorta seems like Soundcloud could make all of that a one-step signup process in exchange for, I dunno, five bucks a month?

    1. Matt A. Myers

      It’d likely have to be free – and then maybe insert ads and offer an ad-free version. Freemium.

  20. John Revay

    Can’t wait for sound cloud to have a SONOS plugin

    1. Rick Dronkers

      This worked for me, soundcloud on sonos rockshttp://www.hirahim.com/proj…

      1. fredwilson

        i’ve been meaning to do this kluge. i may do it today. thanks for the nudge.

        1. kirklove

          Just set this up. Worked like a charm! Been wanting this for a while. Thanks @rahims!

      2. kirklove

        very cool. thanks for the link.

  21. Emil Sotirov

    Another way (for people who already have a blog) would be to do the SoundCloud embed on a dedicated page (not post) with a special URL – like avc.com/fm or sotirov.com/fm.Here is my recent favorite:http://youtu.be/pYrN9nxI0gM

  22. theschnaz

    Does anyone know if there’s a way to integrate Shazam into something like this? If you tag a song with Shazam, could it appear on your .fm site?Shazam is cool but it’s such a black hole…

  23. George T Bundy

    Hi Fred, Thanks for the Shout-out! Hover do not offer the .fm TLD, as this time. A full list of Retail Registrars is available @ http://get.fm/registrars

  24. BruceBPelfrey

    I tajke issue withj their up-selling practices, their auto-renewing approach and the never failing surjprise of finding stuff onj my shopping cart in the last sjtep that I did not adjd jmyself djuring the cjheckout jflow. http://num.to/77-40-22-74-7

  25. Frank Traylor

    Great stuff Fred. I’m gettin it done now. Thx

  26. Ela Madej

    Neat!

  27. Seth Lieberman

    Found this awesome hack for SoundCloud + Sonos integration http://inburst.io/soundclou… . Now “channeling” Fred into my house.