[Changelog] March 1, 2024

It's been a busy two weeks for me, but somehow I feel like I haven't gotten much done. Hopefully writing everything down in this changelog will change that feeling :)

Oh, and in case you forgot, we're all gonna be at SXSW this year. Maybe we'll see you there?

Spotify Data

I've been working on something called the Playlist Checker on and off for a little while now. This week I added a few features:

• Breakdown of listeners by position
• Breakdown of SubmitHub shares by position

To accomplish this I had to start collecting information about the position of each song in a Spotify playlist. Since February 8th I've saved 37 million data points, which might be a little bit excessive 😆. I'm gonna have to think about how that data plays out in the long run, but the plus side is that I can now share some pretty interesting information.

The share % numbers for each playlist are based on the first week or two of a track's lifespan in that playlist. So, if a song gets added to the top, but quickly ends up being pushed down by other tracks, the idea is to reflect that position that it "settles" rather than the position it started in.

The below numbers are for POP NEWS by Unique Playlists. They aren't perfect, but I do expect them to get quite a bit better as the position data improves.

ISRC codes

On the subject of Spotify, I also worked with IndieFolkCentral to figure out how to handle duplicate uploads to Spotify. In his example, he creates compilation albums, re-uploading the same songs, but attributing them to the same ISRC code. The system on my side was unable to put 2 and 2 together, which led to some wonky stats. Going forward, I think I've mostly fixed this.

Translations

I've translated the website to:

• Czech
• Indonesian
• Ukrainian
• Slovak
• Korean
• Mandarin
• Hungarian

Do I speak these languages? Nope. I used a Natural Language translation service to convert them over, and then started the process of using ChatGPT to verify whether the translations were valid or not.

Tilly has done a great job going through ChatGPT's suggested corrections for Czech and Slovak. I'm going through Spanish and might try French as well.

Miscellaneous

Lots of little tasks accomplished:

• Improved the loading speed of Similar Artists and added a little loader to the UI so that you know it's update (it's a little spinner next to the title, which this image only sorta kinda captures)
• In the Marketplace, album/EP reviews now come with a in-line preview track so that specialists don't have to chase Dropbox links or download from WeTransfer in order to get an idea of whether they'll like a release or not
• Fixed a bug with YouTube playlists being saved in the system as YouTube videos, rather than playlists (which gave misleading stream numbers)
• With SubmitHub Links, those advertising a playlist will now be able to match up playlist growth with clicks
• On the subject of SubmitHub Links, the note on a curator's profile about using links to promote their profile will only appear if they're actually growing their playlist as well
• Had a chat with the team at MongoDB Atlas (who host SubmitHub's database) and spent a couple days optimizing and restructuring databases to get some speed improvements

Next week

On the agenda for next week is... mostly getting ready for SXSW. I also plan to continue working on the Playlist Checker and might even do a livestream about it. The main thing I want to do there is get a badge in place about whether it's botted / suspicious / legit / verified. I also need to take the playlist position stuff I've been collecting and try factor that into the overall averages for each playlist.

The overall todo list is currently at ~50 items 🥴