The joy of Crucial Tracks
It's been almost three weeks since I launched the Crucial Tracks app, and my favorite thing so far is the slow, serendipitous nature of the Public Tracks feed. Limiting to one post per day gives you a chance to appreciate everyone's story and vulnerability. To appreciate the role music plays in our lives and memories.
It's even more clear now that music is one of the key things that links us – whether you are into rock, pop, punk, jazz, EDM, rap, ska, whatever (it amazes me the variety I see on the site even with a smallish number of users)... in the end each song has humanity and life experience behind it that we can all relate to, even if you don't "understand" the song.
I'm going to do my best to keep that feeling going, but I also understand we've all been trained over the last 20+ years for "engagement", through algorithms and just getting bombarded with information. The slowness might be hard to handle at first, but I want this site to be different. I just hope that feeling is enough to keep folks interested and coming back. It feels like a radical idea, so I'll have my fingers crossed.
I've certainly been getting feature requests and questions that have made me really think... like adding comments for example. My gut instinct was 'no' – comments tend to be the worst thing about many sites, but also have the potential to be the best. Not sure how I could implement them in a way that makes it valuable and not a slog.
I do kind of like that reading posts now just sparks thoughts – potentially influencing your next post or your opinion on a song. Or just the simple feeling of empathy. I do have some ideas that could help build community and connection, so we'll see what comes of them... I will be careful when adding big things like this, though.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who has checked out the site, posted, sent comments, boosted my posts... supported or participated in any way. These last few weeks have been amazing.
For those that haven't checked out the site yet: if a slow, thoughtful, meaningful anxiety-free music community sounds interesting, come join us! We are very interested in reading about the songs that made you, you.
In case you missed it
Jason
In addition to the basic features I launched with, I’ve been able to implement some more cool features and a lot of the tweaks requested by the community:
- Full Apple Music playlist integration - if you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can connect to the service and automatically add each day’s song to a playlist of your choosing. Perfect to build a playlist to represent your year!
- Social sharing: you can now automatically share each public entry on Mastodon and/or Bluesky when you post. (Example)
- Improved Daily Prompts: the earliest version of the site had just a few prompts randomly selected for the day. This caused many issues! Now there are more prompts in place and a system to make sure we rotate through all prompts before they are recycled.
- Public Tracks: a new view available when you are logged in to the app that shows that last 50 public posts on the site. Read other community member’s posts, find new music, and maybe even find an internet friend!
- Improved public profiles - you can now add a link to your Apple Music playlist (in addition to the social and blog links) and each entry now has it’s own page to help with RSS and sharing. (Example)
- More preferences: visit your profile settings to pick your date format and customize your shared entry title to your liking. (An example of someone with both customizations)
I’ve also added a Help and FAQs page and a change log here. (Be sure to check the FAQs if you are enabling Apple Music, Mastodon, or Bluesky. That will definitely help you set those features up correctly!)
❤️ Support The Trevor Project
I've created a limited edition set of stickers I am selling, with all proceeds going to The Trevor Project. With LGBTQ+ folks under attack in America, The Trevor Project provides crucial resources for young people – including suicide prevention and counseling. Things the current administration wants to defund.
Anyway, 4 stickers... $8 or more, if you can afford it. Shipping included.
Thank you for your support. And thanks to Revolting Printing in Buffalo, NY for printing them up. 😄
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