More new features on the way!

Hey Everyone,

Glad to say that coding is again underway and some great new features and much needed tweaks are in progress. Without going into too much detail here's a taste of what is coming:

1) Improvements to the player - album lists for categorising tracks and reducing the number of tracks that appear in the player at a given time. An 'album' can be an album in the traditional sense or a grouping of your tracks by genre, age, theme etc. Included in this feature will be the ability to add album art so you will have more media rich experience.

2) Facebook player integration: visitors to your artist page will be able to 'like' individual tracks and have them appear on their Wall in a player with a link back to your artist page. This will open up your music to a much larger audience and should help the site to grow.

3) Genres - for a long time the site has been restricted in terms of the number of genres and sub genres it offers. This will soon be a thing of the past as we will be increasing the number of genres and sub genres to match the demands of our users.

4) Charts - in addition to the Top 100 we will have an annual billboard of the highest ranked tracks per genre.

5) Genre Charts - each genre will have it's own dynamic charts as well as an annual billboard.

6) Newsfeed Improvements - the artist newsfeed will be completely upgraded so that it features updates on any comments or reviews received as well as updates on artists you might be following (eg. BandABC has just released a new track called NEWTRACK). This will help users to keep up to speed on artists they like and will help tracks not to get lost. This will also allow users to see what the bands the like 'like' etc.

7) Latest Tracks - a major improvement is on the way for this that will restrict the number of tracks an artist can have appear in the latest uploads to one in a 24hr period. This will eliminate the problem of a new artist uploading 20 tracks and taking over the entire list. ALSO, we will be including a 'see more' function that will allow you to scroll through the latest uploads (maybe back 100 tracks).

8) Uploads - artists will have a check box that will allow them to choose whether a track appears in the latest tracks list or not. This same check box will be used to choose which track of multiple uploads is the one that appears in a 24hr period.

9) Following/Followed By - allow a 'see more' function that allows you to see all the artists on the lists.

10) Tracks Comments - you will be able to get email updates when comments are made on your track (if you want)

11) Newsletter - we'll be bringing out a new media rich newsletter than will include artist specific information such as the number of page views, comments received, votes on tracks, highest chart positions etc and information of any competitions or site news etc. This will be an opt-in/out monthly feature so those who don't want anything won't get it. The idea is to include as much information in it that is important to individual artists in the hope that we can keep new members on board and using the site.

12) Lot's on little bugs have been fixed over the past week or so but if you recognise anything that is still not working as it should please let us know!

There are other bits and pieces on the way too but they will be in the next phase (after this one). Some biggies in the pipeline include the reintroductoin of VIP memberships and new features that go with that (eg customisable artist pages etc). More on this after we get the current list of upgrades out of the way!

A

[MezzerUK (WAP)]

Real good ideas in there mate!! :-)

[Hydro Hellsing]

Originally Posted by Amadeus

8) Uploads - artists will have a check box that will allow them to choose whether a track appears in the latest tracks list or not. This same check box will be used to choose which track of multiple uploads is the one that appears in a 24hr period.

Can we have a "Remember Preference" feature so we don't have to tick the box each time?

[Amadeus]

The default setting will probably be 'include in latest uploads' so if you want to upload a WIP or something quietly you just have to uncheck the box. Otherwise we are dealing with cookies which could expire or be deleted and a track that someone didn't want to appear could end up appearing. Default to 'appear' should solve that problem.

[James Oakwood]

Is it possible to see previous weeks of charts other than the current week? If not can this be included in the to-do list. Also I'd really like to see the charts nomination/comment thing cleared up.

Maybe it's just me (don't bother wasting time telling me it is just me of course) but crucial to the continued success of this site is the believability of the charts. We can see the noms now but this has, to me, allowed more scrutiny of votes/noms etc. and, well I've said my piece on this.

A minor thing... Mark PMs as being unread so that the notification is still there in the top-right to remind you to go back to one which (say) you read at work but couldn't properly answer.

It would also help a lot if, when trying to play a song, it plays straight away after loading the comments BUT crucially before displaying pictures (which does seem to take time) on some folks pages.

Having lowered the vol control to play a track it would be good if it stayed at that lower level throughout your current visit.

Andy

[Amadeus]

One thing we are looking at is having an archive of all charts so that we can do interesting stuff like post up who was in the chart a year earlier. Just looking at ways to implement this but yes, a proper archive of charts etc is on the cards.
Re the voting, there is a feature in place now for Admin to be able to identify if self nominating using dupe accounts is going on. I can't speak about the past because this feature can't work retrospectively but I can say that everything in the current chart was voted fair and square.
Re the player, I'm wide open for suggestions on how to improve it. Everything workable will be taken on board Good point re the track volume btw - I'll see what can be done there.
Does anyone still experience tracks being cut off short? This was an old bug where some tracks would only load up a few seconds before skipping to the next song. It should be fixed, but if not let me know.
A

[James Oakwood]

When a track is put into a compo and you already have the track on your artist page it makes sense to me to "collect" all votes and comments onto your song on your artist page and those that accumulate on the compo page are either shown or disregarded.

Andy

[dawnsinclair]

As usual, I don't understand the new system re voting...there is a tick next to songs and if I want to rate it, I click the tick...is this a nomination? I have no idea...if not, where do I click to nominate? If so, how do I rate and NOT nominate....far as I can see, I am doing both with one click which means I am nominating everything I like which is a bit bizarre.

Sorry if I have upset anyone with my votes...I haven't bothered to ask before because I feel like I am the only one who just doesn't get all the new fandangled stuff.

[geiger167]

Hey Dawn The tick is to nominate the track into the chart, more ticks means it will place higher. Comments are just as they imply, your feeling towards the track. If you comment and don't tick, the track will not chart, so if you like a track and feel it deserves to chart, you need to tick
Andy The previous competition, when the time for votes was due, a new thread was made with a voting box, this is where the votes were counted, track votes on the page only count towards the chart placing, not the position it will get in the actual competition (this seems a bit confusing I agree, but that's how it was last time so just reporting what happened)
If any of this is wrong I'm sure someone will correct me

[Amadeus]

For now, until we can create an entirely new template and upload process for competitions we have to do it this way (which isn't ideal). The reason we create a separate thread for voting is because you can still vote multiple tracks to the charts from the artist page. A poll on the other hand only allows one vote per user.
Re the votes, you just click the thumbs up and it acts as a vote. It's still a working experiment but the idea was to simplify the voting procedure especially as it's not only VIP's who can nominate towards the charts. Traffic is up significantly on the main site (over 100% since the relaunch) so we will probably feel this out as we go along. Always open to suggestions though