AMG to Update Interface

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The AllMusic Guide, one of the most useful and informative sites on the internet, the data provider to your music app of choice and without question my favorite website since the mid-1990s, will be adding a few features soon – and dramatically updating its interface. On surface it appears the site will become more, well, app-like. Power users will experience an adjustment period. The site is in beta this very minute, and I am about to fire off an email to Hollywood Steve Huey to make sure he is beta testing and sending bugs over to the Rovi QA department.

I’m a bit of a UX junkie. Give me an organization that knows it has a format that works, avoids frivolousness, and only chooses to update its face when it has truly useful, necessary features coupled with serious business justification. (Losanjealous by contrast has never, ever updated our interface after nearly seven years as a blog. We have also never added truly useful features. In fact, over the years we’ve gotten truly skilled at the opposite. I hereby challenge any organization to become more skilled at removing helpful features more quickly and effectively than Losanjealous LLC.)

Design aesthetics aside, here’s the AMG one-pager regarding what will change, and what will stay the same, on an encyclopaedic music website near you soon:

New Adventures in Hi-Fi

  • Full Track Streaming – Anywhere you see Spotify or Rdio logos you should be able to click through to that service and hear the whole song.
  • Improvements to Search – Type-ahead search, multi-content search, persistent search at the top of the page and other improvements.
  • Similar Albums – Recommendations for other albums to check out.
  • Sorting Discographies – You can now sort an artist’s discography (and other lists) by year, title and editorial rating.
  • The AllMusic Minute – Editorial video previews of this week’s new releases and discussions of music as presented by our staff of music experts

The Song Remains The Same

  • Reviews of upcoming, new release and classic albums.
  • In-Depth Information about your favorite albums, musicians, songs and musical styles.
  • Ratings and Picks of the recommended albums and songs within an artist’s discography or tracks on an album.
  • Editors’ Picks of the albums our staff are listening to.
  • Sound Samples to hear 30-second clips of music.