A few weeks ago we unveiled SoundUnwound's snazzy new look,
including a radically overhauled artist page, and we're delighted that so many
of you seemed to approve of the changes: either directly by telling us, or
indirectly by using the site more! We have another big exciting new feature
planned, but while that’s in longer-term development , we know we have to keep
tweaking and improving what we’ve got.
So let us tell you about a bunch of little changes which we
think collectively make a big difference to the SoundUnwound experience!
Firstly, we’ve introduced a couple of editing guideline
pages. There’s a basic
guide, which is quick to read and easy to digest for beginners wishing to
find out more about the editing process; and then there’s a much more detailed field-by-field guide
which explains just about everything for our more committed editors. We hope
these pages will help you understand the decisions our moderators make about
your edits, and ultimately that’ll mean more accepted edits and better quality
content.
Also, we’ve added MP3 players to our genre pages, so that
you can listen to examples of genres while you read about them and explore
similar artists. So, if you want to know what Industrial
sounds like, or Post-grunge,
or Progressive
Metal, you don’t have to just read about it and imagine – you can listen to
samples on the MP3 player in the top-right corner. And if you disagree with any
of the choices, you can help shape them by genre voting across the site.
We’ve also added an MP3 player to the homepage: when a
featured artist has MP3s available, you’ll be able to listen to them through
the player just below the photo. You might also have noticed we’ve added tabs
to our homepage news stories too, so you can select which one you want to read,
easily see when a new story has been posted, and even email any stories you
like to friends or family because they now have unique URLs (click on the name in blue and then copy the link from your address bar).
Elsewhere, we’ve made improvements to how we deal with ASINs, so that, for example, if you add an ASIN from France's Amazon store, Amazon.fr, we're now able to import their MP3 samples too. ASINs are the unique 10-digit codes Amazon gives to each product that allows SoundUnwound to import cover art, track listings, MP3 coverage and more. You can find the ASIN for any Amazon product in the address bar URL - music releases usually start with B00.
As ever, we’re always keen to hear your thoughts on
SoundUnwound, including any comments on the new design or any of the
improvements mentioned above - let us know your feedback!
Team SoundUnwound
