Nov 11, 2025 App

App Updates for November

Announcing design updates, challenges to earn badges, new merch, and recapping the blog.

Hey there, fellow Crucial Tracker! Hmm. That needs some help. 😂

Before we jump in to the November details, I realized I only sent the October update via email and did not publish it to the site (oops!), so if you missed those updates, head over here.

Lots have happened since October too! We're now up to 214 users and over 3100 tracks posted since April. Pretty cool. As always, thank you for being a part of it... this is all beyond my wildest dreams.

If you are curious and want to see the top artists and songs for the year (the most crucial tracks), head over to the Community Tracks page. (You'll find our weekly playlists there as well...)

New Features

As far as new features go, here's a run down of the latest updates to the site:

New dashboard design! Added some color, a bit more focus on the prompt, and re-worked some widgets to make them more of a quick glance.

The dashboard prompt widget has customizable themes for the background color. See the Settings > Appearance page for options. Gradients and solid colors!
Bandcamp URLs now grab and save the album artwork to use around the site. Future Bandcamp entries will have an updated embed (no artwork shown) and the song embed will show up in place of the Apple Music contents..
Moved the site to have top navigation to give the main part of the page more space... more design improvements coming to pages soon! (Dashboard was the first major re-design.)
Updated the Create Entry page, moving some form fields to a sidebar to better take advantage of the extra space.
Welcome emails for new users! (embarrassed this wasn't a thing before...) – these emails give a good overview of what to do first on the site.
Added My Profile Page link to new dashboard - was in user menu, but wanted to make it more prominent.
Added 2 new badge types to earn: 'Streaks' and '# of Posts in a Date Range'. More on badges below!
Built a REST API - my plan is to build a native iOS app with this, but it can be used for other purposes as well. More details coming in the future.

See the full changelog for more.

Challenges & Badges

my profile page with some of the badges I've earned

Speaking of challenges and earning badges, here are the current ways you can earn one for yourself:

NovembEAR - post every day in November to earn this special challenge badge. Hat tip to Robert Birming for the idea!
Streaks - are set to 7, 14, 30, 60, 100, 200, and 365 days for now. Once you earn a badge it's yours to keep. Your profile page will show your longest streak badge. Beat the streak and earn the next level!
Core - this badge is given out when you complete the core Crucial Tracks interview questions as prompts. See the Prompt Explorer and filter for the Core badge to see the prompts and which ones you've completed.
Decades - this badge is given out when you complete the prompts that begin with "A song from the 1970s/80s/etc..." See the Prompt Explorer and filter for the Decades badge to see the prompts and which ones you've completed.
Number of posts - this badge is set for 10, 30, 60, 100, 150, 200, and 365 Tracks. Earn these badges as you use the site!

Hope these add a little fun and challenge to the site... as always, I'm open to ideas, so if you have a challenge you'd like to see, let me know!

Merch Update

I've got some new t-shirt designs available in the merch shop! The first three designs are a hand drawn homage to some of my favorite records: Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and Living Colour.

I received samples of each and they all look really great. SO, if you are interested in supporting Crucial Tracks, head over to the merch shop today!

MERCH PARTY 🎉
The Crucial Tracks merch store is live! We have shirts, hoodies, hats, sealed new vinyl, and much more for sale. EVERY purchase goes to paying the hosting bills to keep Crucial Tracks going...

Shop Now

With the holidays coming up, I am going to pause the fast paced additions and focus on my year end wrap up and planning out 2026. I also have a few Crucial Tracks interviews coming into the queue, so that's very exciting! If you aren't subscribed to the "new music" portion of the newsletter, head over to your settings page and add that newsletter to your subscription. 😄

In terms of a preview for that newsletter, here are links to the latest issues: