The SpotDJ Blog

It seems that a small number of users encounter a problem when installing SpotDJ that results in this message. Luckily, we have a temporary fix you can use until we are able to track down the root cause and modify the installer.

To fix the problem manually, you get to enjoy the magic of manual DLL registration. Don’t worry — it’s easier than it sounds. Children in Redmond, WA learn this in second grade!

1. Click the “Start” button and select “Run” from the Start Menu.
2. In the box, type “cmd” (no quotes) and click “OK”. A command prompt comes up.
3. Type “cd c:\Program Files\Context Optional\SpotDJ” (again, no quotes!) and press RETURN
4. Type “regsvr32 AudioCtl.dll” and press RETURN.
5. You should get a message saying that DllRegisterServer succeeded. Hooray!
6. Start SpotDJ. Tell a friend!

If you’re still having problems after trying this, please send us a message and we’ll do our best to help you out.

SpotDJ got some press on Sunday, and we haven’t even launched yet! In the “Radio Waves” column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ben Fong-Torres said:

“When I was a kid wanting to be on the radio, I got an album called “You Be a DJ” and pretended that I was on “WBDJ.” I’m certain that’s how I got to be on KFOG and KSAN. Now, a local Web 2.0 startup, SpotDJ.com, lets you record bits — opinions, news or gossip about artists and songs — and fellow SpotDJs will be able to hear them as part of their iTunes listening. It’s essentially short-form podcasting, in a musical environment. SpotDJ goes into beta mode in mid-October.”

For those who are unfamiliar, Ben is a legend in music journalism. He was senior editor of Rolling Stone magazine from almost the magazine’s inception and throughout the 1970s – a role in which he’s portrayed in the movie Almost Famous. He was also a rock DJ for San Francisco radio station KSAN during the 70s and has a book with The Doors (The Doors By The Doors) coming out later this year.

We are so excited to have had our first press mention, and there is no better person to have broken the story than Ben Fong-Torres.

Read the original article

Some of our most productive DJs and most eager listeners have written in with their opinions on what makes a good spot. Here are some tips from the pros:

#1) Write Ideas, Not a Script
We know that talking into a mic can make you nervous. A lot of people write stuff down before recording a spot, but that can sometimes backfire. Users have told us that they generally prefer spots that sound like they were recorded off-the-cuff to spots that seem scripted.

That said, we think it’s a great idea to think about what you’re going to say ahead of time and take down some notes. Just keep it casual and you won’t sound like an encyclopedia.

#2) Keep it Short!
Unless you’ve got a killer story about the band that takes a minute to tell, you should try to keep your spots short and sweet. When the length of your spot starts to rival the length of the song itself, people might start to tune out and they’ll just skip the spot. Some of the best spots are less than 20 seconds long. They tell you what you heard and give you a brief nugget of info.

#3) Remember When Spots are Heard
Spots are heard after a song is done playing. Remember that your listeners have already heard the song. So you don’t need to say “You should really check out Heart of Glass” if that was the song they just played.

You may, however, find it useful to give recommendations. So it’s fine to suggest Heart of Glass in a spot about a similar song.

#4) Put Yourself in a DJ’s Shoes
Sometimes it’s helpful to temporarily forget that you’re in front of a computer and pretend you’re in a DJ booth. You’ve got a mic in front of you and you just played a song. There are people out there listening, depending on you for interesting commentary and context. Thinking about SpotDJ this way might change what you say and how you say it.

#5) Make Sure Your Spots are Heard
Remember that SpotDJ matches spots with songs by looking at the information in iTunes. So if you record a spot for The Beetles (note the misspelling), odds are that nobody will hear it unless they have the same misspelling.

If you accidentally record a spot with incorrect song or artist information, all is not lost. You can log into the SpotDJ web site and click on the spot (under HOME -> MY SPOTS) to correct the information. You can also change whether the spot refers to that particular song or all songs by the artist.

#6) Stay Up to Date
Since we’re still testing SpotDJ, we release new versions of the product fairly frequently. When you get an update notification (SpotDJ checks for a new version when you open it), please download and install the new version! There are often changes that affect sound quality, fix bugs, or offer useful enhancements.

#7) Make it Personal
Often times, it’s more interesting to hear a DJ talk about their personal experience with a song or artist than to hear them state some encyclopedia-like facts. There’s certainly plenty of interest in factual spots, but also consider talking about why you like a song, what it reminds you of, a funny story about going to that artist’s concert, or your own interpretation.

#8 (bonus!) Listen To Your Spots Before You Tell Them Goodbye
Hey, I get giddy when I’m recording spots too and sometimes I want to just click “Upload” without listening to the spot I just recorded. Try to resist the urge! By listening to your spot before you upload it, you can make sure that it sounds the way the you want. If it’s too loud or soft, you might want to adjust your microphone volume. If it sounds fuzzy (especially when you pronounce the letter “P”), you should try moving a little further from the microphone.

Thanks to everyone who’s sent in feedback so far. Keep it coming!

Some time in 2005, I was riding CalTrain to work and listening to my iPod. Again. Hearing music that I liked — stuff that I had rated 5 stars. But I wasn’t really listening. I was flipping through tracks rapidly because I was getting sick of just listening to music. It was too passive and too repetitive. Over the next few weeks, I tried podcasts. They were engaging, but too active — I had to focus too much for too long and it was too early in the morning. Plus, I really liked my music collection, but it just seemed like there was something missing.

One day soon thereafter, I took my wife’s car to work instead of taking the train because I had a doctor appointment. I realized that for the first time in almost a year, I was listening to the radio for a significant amount of time. And it was great! Instead of just hearing back-to-back songs, there was a DJ giving me more information about the songs and basically guiding me through the music. I realized exactly what was missing from my iPod experience — a sense of context, some more engaging content, and the feeling that I was having a shared experience.

I quit my job soon thereafter to explore different possibilities around adding commentary to music. People are really passionate about music. They like to learn about it and gab about it. Shared music interests is a major way to connect with other people. Many young people list their musical tastes first when asked to describe themselves. Message boards and Wikipedia entries are great for doing active research into music, but there isn’t a way for people to experience added context within their normal listening experience. Given the explosion in digital music, this seemed absurd to me — everybody’s building these huge finely-tuned personal music libraries and there’s no way to learn more about the songs or share knowledge with other listeners. There’s no way to get the guided, engaging experience of a radio DJ on my iPod.

Around March 2006, I teamed up with Kevin Barenblat and Grant Goodale and we started SpotDJ. We’re building a companion for media players (by which I mean iTunes at the moment) that adds DJ-like commentary between tracks. Best of all, it’s user-generated. So, for example, let’s say you buy the Life Aquatic soundtrack and grow to like the Portuguese cover of David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” by Seu Jorge (it’s awesome, by the way). After you hear the song, you’d hear a SpotDJ user who speaks Portuguese interpreting the song, telling you that Seu Jorge didn’t translate Bowie’s words and the meaning is completely different. You can also record your own comments (we call them “spots”) by just clicking a button and talking. Other SpotDJ users listening to that song will hear your comment when the song is over.

In our testing, we’ve heard some really interesting uses of SpotDJ. How cool would it be to get an announcement that James Blunt is coming to San Francisco next week when you play his song? How cool would it be to hear an artist’s “audio liner notes” after their song? Or better yet, someone else’s interpretation that might make you look at the song in a new light? Our users have done everything from trivia to “Behind the Music” to editorials.

So that’s how SpotDJ came about. It’s truly a case of the founders finding a need in our own experience and building a solution that we hope applies to a lot of people. When we open up SpotDJ to the publicly shortly, we look forward to seeing how it fits in with the way you want to experience music.

The Mac version of SpotDJ will use whichever microphone you select through the Sound System Preferences Panel. To change your microphone settings, select “System Preferences” from the Apple menu on the top-left of your screen. Select the “Sound” item (it’s listed under hardware) to select your input device.

Under the “Input” tab, make sure that the correct device is selected. If you’re using a laptop, you’ll probably use “Internal microphone”. If you’re using a desktop Mac, you may have a USB microphone, or one of the sound input ports on your computer.

In the screenshot below, the internal microphone has been selected. Notice that the Input Volume has been set in the middle — a good starting point and the first setting to tweak if your spots are too loud or two soft.

Note: Some newer macs, like the Mac Mini, have an audio input port that looks like a microphone port but won’t work with a standard microphone. You’re better off with a USB Microphone. If you’re unsure whether or not your mic is working properly, watch the Input level on the Sound System Preferences Panel as you speak into it.

At SpotDJ, we love getting user feedback. And you, our users, have told us in no uncertain terms that you prefer audio that can be heard by both of your ears. For that reason, we decided to launch an updated version of our Mac client that no longer restricts new spots to just the left speaker.

If you’re using our Mac version, please update before recording any new spots!

Yesterday, we launched some updates to the SpotDJ web site and new versions of the Mac and Windows clients. Here are some of the highlights:

Back and Forward in the Client
Many users told us that they wanted to rate or comment on a spot after the spot played, but by that time, the page allowing them to do so had disappeared. Now there are back and forward buttons in the SpotDJ application so you can return to a previous spot to read more about it, rate it, add the DJ as a fave, leave a comment, or send the DJ a message.

Be Social
We’ve added the ability to send a private message to a DJ via email. Just go to the DJ’s page (click on their name when you see their spot) and click “Send a message…”. The DJ will get your message and will be able to reply, but we won’t reveal anybody’s email address in the process. If you don’t want to receive messages from other SpotDJ users, you can uncheck “Allow other users to send me messages” on your Profile page.

Better Spot Selection
We’re always improving our machinery for deciding which spot to play for a given song. With our new improved system, every time you play a song, a panel of experts in Rochester, NY compares it to our database of spots and selects the best one to send you.

Fancy New Icons
Both the Mac and Windows versions of SpotDJ have shiny new 3-Dish icons. Thanks, Chad!

More Spot Editing
Did you know that after you upload a spot, you can change things about it? Just log in to the web site and click on the spot from your home page. You can change the title of the spot and you can now also change the name of the song and artist that the spot relates to. So if you accidentally talk about 50 Cent while listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary (I always get the two mixed up), now you can correct it.

Search!
Grant whipped up a pretty sweet search engine. The search field shows up on most pages of the web site. Just type in your query, and we’ll show you any matching spots, users, songs, or artists that we know about.

Faster Uploads
Not only do spots upload faster than before, but we will now resume your music while the spot is being uploaded. So you wait less time, and the time you wait is more pleasant.

More to Come!
We have many more features we’re working on for upcoming releases. Keep sending in feedback! It helps us prioritize and directly impacts the direction of SpotDJ.

So you’ve downloaded SpotDJ. You’ve fired up SpotDJ and iTunes and started playing your favorite music. And yet for some reason, you haven’t heard a spot yet!

Well, hang in there. A couple of things have to happen for you to hear a spot:

• SpotDJ needs to check if there’s a spot available – is your machine connected to the internet?
• We also need to be able to tell what song you’re listening to. Are your music files tagged properly? SpotDJ is pretty smart, but it’ll have a hard time figuring out what “Track 01.mp3” is.
• SpotDJ needs some time to download the spot from our servers. Is your network connection very slow? Are you downloading Britney’s latest feature-length movie right now? Are you skipping around, listening to only parts of songs?

Even if all that’s working, it’s possible we just don’t have a spot for anything you’ve played yet. Have a look around the web site and see what other people are spotting – if no one’s spotting your favorite artists, well, it’s time to pick up the microphone!

I’m extremely pleased to announce the availability of SpotDJ for Mac OS!

I’ve been a Mac user all my life. When my family got our first Mac in 1984, I’d spend hours just playing with MacPaint and MacDraw (and swapping floppies). By High School, I was writing Mac shareware and in college, I was lucky enough to be an Apple intern.

When we first started talking about the concept of SpotDJ, I knew that it was something Mac users would love — a small app that does something really cool and creative. The first prototype that we showed investors was an AppleScript studio application that used AppleScript to talk to iTunes. So while our Windows version technically came out first, the Mac version was always a high priority.

I hope that Mac users will find SpotDJ for Mac OS to be a high-quality piece of software, worthy of inclusion on your Dock. It currently requires 10.4 (Tiger), iTunes, and a microphone (if you want to record spots).

Like our Windows version, the Mac version is currently in closed alpha testing. If you’re already an alpha user, you can log in and download the Mac version now.

Welcome to SpotDJ! My name is Grant Goodale, and I represent the other half of the technical team behind SpotDJ. Over the next few months I hope we can give you, the reader, some insight into what SpotDJ is all about; in return, I hope you’ll tell us how to make it even better.

But first, the formalities:

• My favorite band/artist is, without a doubt, Ben Folds”. Actually, it must be The Roots. Or maybe DJ Krush, or The Shins, or Ryan Adams. Okay, I like everything.
  Please, recommend artists to me!

• My first concert was [cough] Great White and MSG. The encore was cut short when someone in the audience hit the lead singer of Great White in the eye with a cigarette during “The Angel Song”. Good times, man; good times. Sadly, no photos remain of me during my metal years; they all perished in a fire of suspicious provenance around the time I entered public life.

• My most recent concert was Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright – fantastic. I’m looking forward to the Pet Shop Boys west coast tour dates this fall.

On the work side, I’m responsible for much of the web site’s underlying
technology and dabble in the client apps a bit. If you’ve got ideas on ways to make the site better, let me know.