Record Bird
Builder’s Update #2 // June 2015
Today, we’d love to give you another update of new features which we have launched lately, as well as a brief outlook on further improvements that you can expect in the upcoming days!
Re-Issues
We’ve listened closely to your feedback from the last couple of weeks and recognised your call for a clearer visual distinction between first time releases and re-issues. Furthermore, we’re happy to provide you with the option to filter your entire feeds from re-issues. As we don’t have a definite source for this kind of information and therefore solely rely on our algorithms for tagging each type of record (New vs. Re-Issue), your feedback is crucial here! Give it a try and please tell us in case we wrongly tag a new record as re-issue or vice versa.
Performance Improvements & Login 2.0
…turned out to be a real focus throughout the last couple of days and I am very proud of what our technical team achieved here. We’ve managed to minimise the loading time of releases by 10–15x. We actually are so fast now, that we have decided to remove our loading bar when you scroll down the feed. Give it a try, it’s amazing! :-)
On top, also our login is on steroids now. It didn’t only get a boost in speed but also in accuracy when importing your likes from Facebook, all providing a better login/signup experience.
Search
After announcing it in our last builder’s update, we’ve launched our much anticipated, (sur)real-time, in-app search. You can now search for all artists as well as upcoming/recent releases and follow or unfollow acts without leaving the search interface. On top, we’ve already released several updates which improved the search ranking as well as the handling of typos in search requests, while offering suggestions in case no results can be returned.
Furthermore, we consider making an artist’s entire back catalogue searchable. Please let us know if you’d find this feature helpful, interesting or rather confusing.
My Artists
You can now manage all artists you follow from a single place within the application. We’re still working on various improvements like search, re-follow and infinity scrolling. Nevertheless, we’re confident we provide you with a great, first overview of all artists you currently follow, while offering an easy interface to manage them efficiently.
Please don’t hesitate to share any suggestions for improvement and any other ideas with us! We really try our best to understand how you can get the most value out of this functionality.
Navigation 2.0
Probably the update which grabbed your attention the most. We’ve now split our navigation into two distinct parts:
- The sticky, main navigation allows you to actually navigate through the application: from Upcoming to Released, from All Records to My Favourites.
- The top navigation on the other hand is for interaction mostly, where you can manage your artists or submit a new release.
‘Search’ allows you to interact, but also navigate to detail or artist screens in the near future, giving it a raison d’être in both, top and main navigation.
On mobile, the separation is less obvious but the objective remains the same: Main Navigation is for actually navigating the site and therefore more prominent, while interaction elements are accessible through the top-right menu.
CLICK TO TEST OUR NEW NAVIGATION
Finally
As already stressed in Builder’s Update #1, we’ve placed another great deal of attention on both data quality and -quantity. Such work will be a fixture in the weeks, months and years to come, so we will not include this in every single blog update, except for drastic changes / improvements. We recognise data as the most crucial aspect of Record Bird, which — at the end of the day — will decide between success and failure. Be assured though, the latter is not an option! :)
Good to have you with us,
let’s make this bird fly!
Andreas // Founder & CEO
Record Bird notifies you about new an upcoming records from your favourite bands and musicians before they are released. We’re currently in closed beta and keep continuously adding users. Sign up now: recordbird.com
