Frequently Asked Questions

 

Overview

 

What is Swift.fm?

A new, free service that allows users to discover and share music through Twitter.  

What can you do with Swift.fm?

 

1. Sign into Swift.fm with your existing Twitter login, and upload, link or search for tracks you want your followers to discover through Twitter
2. Assemble an endlessly streaming station of all the music your friends are ‘Swifting’.
3. Create a profile containing all the music you love.  To share or view all the songs you’ve ‘Swifted’, just visit http://swift.fm/yourusername

 

Since we are built on top of Twitter, there is no need to recreate your network, send invites or search for your friends - everyone you’re following on Twitter who is using Swift.fm is already here!

We are still in beta and adding features every day. If there is something you’d like to see, send us a note at info@swift.fm

 

How is Swift.FM different?  

We are completely focused on:

 

• helping musicians, independent artists, record labels and music media sources promote new music and gain new fans
• helping people discover new music through their personal networks and providing a simple and easy way to purchase music that they love
• giving music fans direct access to their friends, favorite artists and really anyone’s personal music tastes

 

 

We allow uploads to encourage independent, up and coming and obscure acts to have a stage to the whole world. This means our catalog is as endless, up-to-date and diverse as those using our service.

We use Twitter as a platform so users don’t need to rebuild an entire new network, install anything, or remember another password.  Using Twitter’s API, the first time a user logs in, we match up their “following” list with our service and provide users a whole slew of music from people they’re already following. 

We are the only service to combine flexible linking, uploading and search with personalized playlist creation (oh yeah, we are the only ones to offer community curated channels as well!).

 

Adding Music to Swift.FM

 

How do I share a song on Swift.FM?

Swift.FM has several ways to help you share the music you love with your friends. You can:

 

Upload – Start with audio file on your hard drive (uploads are limited to 15MBs) that you want others to discover:

·      Click the upload tab 

·      Select the file from your hard drive  

·      Fill in the ‘description’ box with a note to your followers or provide a link to the band’s page

·      Click ‘Swift it!’1

 

Search – Browse for songs to share:

·      Click the Search tab and enter the song or band name into the search box

·      Click search

·      Once the list of results has loaded, click any song title to hear a preview of the song

·      If you haven’t found the song you were looking, please re-try your search (Search is currently in beta and not provided by Swift.fm. We are working with our partners to use the best search function available)

·      Click ‘Swift it’!

·      Fill in the ‘description’ box with a note to your followers or provide a link to the band’s page.  (Note that, when using Swift.fm’s search service, we autofill the .mp3 link and the @swiftfm tag - so all you have to do is type a song description into the box)

·      Click ‘Swift it!’

 

Link – Link to an MP3 through a different search engine, blog posting or upload from somewhere else:

·      Click the link tab

·      Paste the address of the song (we currently only support files in the MP3 format. Sorry, but that means no YouTube links, or pages that end in .html .php, etc.) into the ‘paste link here’ bar

·      Click the ‘shorten link’ button

·      Fill in the ‘description’ box with a note to your followers or provide a link to the band’s page

·      Click ‘Swift it!’

 

Tweet – Ok, so this isn’t really about sharing tunes, but if you’ve got something to say while on Swift, you can post to your twitter account here!

 

 

What is “Share my Profile”?

We keep track of all the songs you share on Swift.fm to create a profile of your favorite music (located at http://swift.fm/username).

You can share this profile with your followers by clicking the ‘Share my profile’ button on the right hand side of your swiftlist. Click the confirmation button and we’ll post it for everyone to see!

 

What if I am not at the Swift.FM webpage? Can I share music from anywhere else?

If you would like to share from tweetie, tweetdeck, etc. just create a tweet with the following three pieces, in this order:

1. a short description of the song

2. the "@swiftfm" tag

3. a link to an MP3.

For example: "Check out the new Decemberists! @swiftfm http://decemberists.com/newsong.mp3"

Just make sure those three pieces of information are in that specific order, and you can quickly add a song to your profile from any Twitter application. 

 

Discovering Music on Swift.FM

 

Favoriting

Love the song you just listened to? Click the heart directly to the left of the song’s listing to add it to your favorites. Once you have added songs to you favorites, you can listen to them all by clicking the ‘My Favorites’ button on the right navigation.

Your friends will be able to view your favorites list as well... so be careful publicly loving things that are actually very lame.

 

Retweeting

Sometime a song is so great you need to send it to all of your followers. Click the arrow directly to the left of the song’s listing to bring up the retweet menu.

Once you click the button, we will auto-fill the retweet dialog box with the text your friend included as well as the mandatory link and ‘@swiftfm’. You can change any of the dialog before the @swiftfm to say whatever you would like, but you will need to leave the ‘@swiftfm http://bit.ly/etc’ in place for it to work.

 

Channels – NEW FEATURE

We’re excited to add Channels to our list of awesome things happening at Swift.fm.

Channels are an easy way for the community on Swift.fm to organize and discover music outside of your personal followers by creating lists of music on specific genres, from artists or exciting topics.

Anyone can create a channel or add to one by adding a hashtag (a word preceded by a ‘#’ sign) to the description of any swift.

You can view the complete list of channels at http://swift.fm/channels

In the meantime you can view channels by clicking them when called out within users’ swifts or search for them in by following the convention http://swift.fm/channel/name.  For a current example, check out http://swift.fm/channel/dubstep

 

Swift.FM Lists

My Swiftlist

My Swiftlist is an auto-playing list of all the songs the people you follow have swifted. The list plays through all of the music they have shared automatically like a radio station or any other passive-listening web music service.

It is updated live and is the best place to stay on top of the music that interests the people you follow. If you aren’t following many users, your Swiftlist may be empty or only contain the @SwiftFM feed. Ask your users to share their music via Swift.FM to ‘Listen to your friends’.

 

My Favorites

Once you have clicked the heart next to songs in your Swiftlist we will add them all together into one easy to listen to list. Click the ‘My Favorites’ button and sit back relax and listen to a playlist of your favorite songs.

 

My Mentions

If you are awesome, chances are a lot of people are going to be interested in you specifically hearing their music. ‘My Mentions’ allows you to only listen to music that is sent directly to you (or where you are mentioned with the @username tag in the description).

 

My Profile

‘My Profile’ is the listing of all of the songs you have swifted. You can share it at any time by clicking the ‘Tweet my profile’ button on the right hand navigation.

 

Troubleshooting

 

My song isn't playing, why not?

Great question. We’re in beta and are still working out the kinks so it may be us! BUT, if it isn’t our fault chances are the link was wrong. It has to be a working MP3 link. Sometimes MediaFire and Yousendit links can work, but they usually break stuff.

We would recommend downloading the file from whatever site you found it at and reloading it to Swift *IF* you own the copyright.

 

Helpful tips and tricks:

·       While in beta we don’t have the ability to delete tweets or swifts. To help things play smoothly, double check to make sure you have the format and link correct.

·       Ensure you are linking to a real MP3 and not a website. No pages whose addresses end in .html .php or anything other than .mp3.

·       Send us an email. If you are having problems we are very happy to help! help@swift.fm

 

 

Hey, thats my music!

If you are a copyright holder and are excited to see your music reach one of the internets largest communities (Twitter, not Swift.FM (yet!)) we would like to help you even more. Please drop us a line at info@swift.fm

If you are a copyright holder and are unhappy that your music is on Swift.FM – we are fully compliant with the DCMA and would be happy to help you. Please see our terms section for DCMA takedown requests.