an ad-less tango youtube player + a bunch of random experiments
a listening tool? an ad-less tango youtube player? idk? you build a setlist of tandas and then you listen to them, share them, and get feedback from others.
it pulls videos from youtube so you can hear the actual recordings. the whole point is that you get to listen.
(apart from the fact that i got into a rabbit hole when i should've been working)
i had an apple music playlist i wanted to share with my students. sharing a youtube playlist sounded easier than sending people files, but i didn't want to manually search up every song.
so, to save time (spoiler: she did not save time), i wrote a script that goes through my playlist and searches youtube for each song automatically. i ended up with a list of youtube urls that was actually kinda reliable.
"what if i just render them in a youtube iframe? and structure everything as tandas?"
youtube's api has strict limits you can't get around without paying, so building a real playlist was out. but i had the urls, so i thought: what if i just render them in an iframe? i'll build a quick little player, people can listen, done. and since i controlled the whole thing, i could structure everything as tandas instead of a flat list of songs.
over time i filled the database with recordings that already have youtube urls attached. now when you create a tanda, the recordings just show up. most of them, anyway. and if something's missing, you can add it yourself.
i kept having the same conversations about the musical properties of tango, orchestras, singers, what to listen for, how things feel different. i'm genuinely obsessed with that stuff and kept collecting little examples in my head with nowhere to put them.
then it clicked: i already have all these youtube links, and youtube lets you set a start and end time. so i can make targeted little snippets, exact moments in specific recordings that show a concept, with a loop button so you can sit with a sample and really hear it. it turned into a small encyclopedia of tango music and movement, all in one place.
i also added a way to compare the same tango recorded by different orchestras, side by side, so you can just listen to how they each approach it. that's the kind of thing i want in here.
this is not for djing
i want to be really clear about this, and i designed it this way on purpose:
if you want to dj, buy the music and support the labels that preserve these recordings. but if you want to learn, to sit with it, to start recognizing orchestras, to develop your ear, that's what this is for.
how it works
why i keep building this
otherwise i'd be broke trying to collect every recording on earth, even ones i'd never play. this way i get to "catch them all" muahahaha
i test dev stuff on it because it's fun to work on something with no rules, where i can do whatever i want. it looks messy and inconsistent in some places but that's the beauty of it
it started in feb 2026, and it's been so cool to have one consistent thing to keep coming back to. every feature taught me something i didn't know when i started.
and look what falls out of it: data, examples, timestamps. i'm a nerd who loves putting unrelated ideas together and seeing what they make.
group songs into tandas, name the set, send someone a link. the whole point.
the same tango, side by side, so you can hear how di sarli and pugliese disagree.
concepts, singers, orchestras, each pinned to a real moment you can loop.
guess the orchestra, the singer, the decade. train your ear by getting it wrong a lot.
lyrics, big, in time. sing along at 2am, nobody's watching.
follow the words as the recording moves. good for actually learning a song.
each line lights up in time with the recording.
words on screen while it plays. started simple.
keep the ones you love. i'm a completionist, this scratches the itch.
this is very much a work in progress. if something looks weird or broken, it's probably because i haven't gotten to it yet. any feedback or feature requests are super appreciated!
drop me a message. feature requests, feedback, complaints, whatever. it all helps.