Hi Jon, I've been working as a DJ for 10 years so here is my experience from sifting through thousands of mix tapes/CDs/USBs/Soundclouds.

1. If you want to force people to listen to the whole thing then by all means force them too, but it will decrease engagement from people checking it out quickly. 2. Things I listen to first from a song, intro, chorus, breakdown, outro. If you're using Grids then this could even be marked out. If you have a waveform then this makes it easier and you can look to see the structure from the get go. 3. One thing to be aware of is that if music tastes do change (ie non-quantised music such as Electronic Dance Music) then your market could deacrease as I imagine you're placing yourself in the market as a online version of what Fruityloops was to kids back in the 2000's.

Hey Jon. Kudos for diving into this on your own and getting it off the ground like that. I suggest you focus on a mobile/tablet app next, it seems like a good fit for the product.

But one thing that precludes my own participation is, that beatlab is essentially a walled garden :-S. While this may be a fun app that brings kids closer to music, it's just impossible to attract serious musicians to a web-based step sequencer with no download options whatsoever. The Facebook login doesn't help either.

I've intentionally ripped the Come Together vocals and am going to use them in a way that even YouTube infringement algorithms aren't able to fingerprint. Just for the sake of truly creating something new out of the samples \o/.

I hope you understand that this is nothing personal, it's just the true everything-is-a-remix mentality that's prevalent among music makers on forums, SoundCloud and the like. If that's the crowd you'd eventually like to attract, that's the mindset you'll have to get accustomed to and support with beatlab's features.

Please feel free. Every mixed down track on the site comes with a download button, but that may not be clear. I still don't provide a way to download individual samples, but that's not because I'm philosophically opposed to it. Lot's of people just "right click, inspect element" and that's fine.

I agree regarding facebook. I plan on offering soundcloud and google logins as well.

Hey Jon. Just to let you know your site doesn't work at all on mobile. The page will load and then redirect me into a page telling me I need flash. I just want to read a blog post an not interact with your site. At least not til I get home

Let me know if/when you'll be looking for a designer, this looks like something I'd be interested in contributing to.

Definitely. Send me a note. jon@beatlab.com

Hey Jonathon,

What kind of projects are you looking to have people work on? And/or what skill sets of are looking for?

I'm primarily looking for design and coding skills. Over the next year I'm going to be evolving beatlab to allow for the composition of full length production quality songs. I'd also like to involve more artists and producers along the way.

Many hit hip-hop and electronica songs could have been composed on something similar to beatlab. The amount of additional complexity required is minimal.

For example, one project is to create another area of the site for laying down vocals over a beat. The grid is a poor metaphor for these kinds of things. The vocals will by recorded separately, and then independently synced up with any other grid on the site.

Another project is to allow for the arrangement of grids into a basic song structure. For example, there should be the intro grid, the chorus grid, etc..

++ if you can, you should work with Jon. He's great to work with and you'll learn a lot.

Thanks! That's very kind.