"Discover" page + extra stats in case of addition of "main page sound players"

[Anorax 29]

copypasta from another thread where I brought up this idea:

click here for original post

how about a "discover" page?

 

As you can see in my mock-up, it's a page that lets the user choose between viewing the "newest tracks" page, the "top tracks" page, and a "random!" page.

 

The random page could look like this (minus the fact that I was too lazy to rearrange the tracks from the above mock-up)

 

this way, the user can load up a list of multiple tracks chosen at random via the randomizer, as well as having a direct play button built into the page for each track.

 

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

EDIT:

quick little thing I think I'll post here, but

 

if there could be sound players set up on a main page (like the players on my Discover Random page above), how would the stats be monitored then? Views couldn't work, because a song's player could show up on a page and yet the song itself may not be played - this would skew the "page view" data.

 

Would the current stats system need to be rewritten? What about adding a "play count" statistic to augment and/or replace the Page View one?

Edited January 4, 2013 by Anorax

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

I love your concept of a "Discover" page, Anorax. It's very much going to be a necessary part of the site, and there are a myriad of ways the design and features of such a page could be approached.

 

What I really like about your idea is the concept of making the Discover page a playlist of sorts in itself. There's something very tempting about the idea of opening a page, pressing "play", and having Pony.fm choose 20 songs to present to you. The randomization algorithm could probably be adjusted to take your music listening history into account, reducing the likelihood of tracks you've already heard ending up in your randomized list.

 

Heck, I think a "20 tracks I've never heard before" page would be pretty great, actually. It does raise the question of what to do if a user exhausts all the music on Pony.fm, though.

 

 

Would the current stats system need to be rewritten? What about adding a "play count" statistic to augment and/or replace the Page View one?

 

 

No rewrite was necessary, but I did extend the statistical systems - per this feature request - to now treat views and downloads as two different actions, and added plays to it as a third loggable item.

---

 

Big Update: Let's get this discussion going again!

 

I've implemented the "20 Random Tracks" page and slightly modified the "Top 20 Tracks" page to feature a link to it. Not sure what to do about the "newest tracks" part, though, as the track index is already sorted in reverse chronological order. Should I add a pill for it to the discover pages? And/or a reciprocal link from the track index to the discover pages? 

 

I think a button or something going to these pages would be beneficial, though (beyond the "see top 20" button) on the homepage. The only idea I can think of is to turn the "Random track!" button into a "Discover" dropdown and put the links in there.

 

Moreover, you might notice that these pages are now namespaced to /discover. Now, we have a page at /discover/top and /discover/random, but nothing at /discover itself. While having different "venues" of music discovery is great, I feel there should be a central "discover" page of some kind that people can go to without needing to decide "how" they want to discover music. I'm a little lost for ideas on what kind of page to put together to that end, though.

[Anorax 29]

what if you move the "newest tracks" page to the /discover directory?

 

I dunno, a bit out of ideas right now.

 

EDIT: yeah, I think that might work. What if you move the /track page to the now-empty /discover directory and have /top and /random on top of that?

of course that returns directly to my original idea (which is kind of the point). However, as you said Feld0 there would need to be some additions to the /tracks page if it were to be moved to /discover, as well as a possible HTTP redirect script to bounce any lost souls that may stumble across the plain /tracks page over to the new /discover page.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Anorax

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

Got a major update here:

 

@@Anorax, I ended up pretty much going back to your original idea.

 

With the addition of the new track discovery engine, I eliminated every /discover URL in favour of using /tracks as the endpoint for all that. Pony.fm now has the following index pages at /tracks:

• /tracks -> discovery engine, sorted in reverse chronological order by default
• /tracks/random -> 20 random tracks
• /tracks/popular -> top 20 tracks of the day

 

A pill nav is available to switch between these three indexes. It looks eerily similar to your original mockup!

[Anorax 29]

ooh, new pill nav. Too bad there's no keyword search function.

 

Oh, what if you added a tag system for tracks that allow the artist to apply custom tags to their tracks? This way a keyword search can be added.

This can be used if someone wants to search for songs that have been tagged with "luna" or "twilight", or if they want to search for a keyword within a track title.

 

EDIT: Screenshot time!

Small mobile issue, it seems. Screenshot here, apparently I can't post as a straight image.

 

Android 2.2 Gingerbread, device is Samsung YP-G1. page is zoomed out as far as default browser will allow.

 

The dropdown menu of the various search criteria is clipped on the left page margin as shown here.

 

EDIT 2: It seems that this is not an issue on the iPhone. weird.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Anorax