For my birthday, I gifted myself a quiet weekend to get some Crownnote work done. Read ahead for a list of new features available to you, details on performance improvements, and other updates.
Chart imports no longer require a Chart ID
Since Crownnote was first created, you've needed to add a Chart ID to your chart that also appears in your spreadsheet before importing it, in order for the import to connect your data to the chart the data belongs with. However, considering you're always running that import from the chart that's meant to the destination, the connection between the data and the chart is already there.
Now, when creating a chart, you don't need to set a Chart ID. After saving, you'll still see the option to upload a CSV (or XSPF—see below) file. Your file doesn't need to have a Chart ID included; the data will just import to the chart you're uploading it to. (If you have a spreadsheet template that still has the Chart ID, it doesn't need to be updated; that line will just be ignored going forward.)
Chart imports now support the XSPF format
I recently learned about the XSPF format, a file format specifically meant for playlists. Charts are effectively playlists as well, so I quietly introduced XSPF exports for charts a few weeks ago alongside the existing CSV and text-based exports. (XSPF exports are nice for services like Soundiiz that can turn that file into a playlist on streaming services like Spotify—that's something I'd like Crownnote to be able to do natively in the future.) Since they can export in that format, it only made sense to introduce an importer for that format as well.
If you're managing chart data in other formats and would like imports for those, let me know and I can look into them. (I'd eventually like to offer imports directly from streaming/scrobbling services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Last.fm, but ever-changing API restrictions and oddly formatted titles on Last.fm make me unsure how feasible that will be.)
Duplicate songs are being cleaned up (finally!)
For years, Crownnote has had the ability to flag songs as duplicates, which many of you have done despite them often sitting unchanged after that. At last, I built myself a tool to quickly clean up duplicates based on those flags. Thank you to everyone who has flagged songs as duplicates in the past, and please continue to do so! It will take me a while to get through the backlog, but I hope to do so soon. (I may also open this up to other users as well; let me know if you're interested.)
For You now includes song and user recommendations
The For You page has never had much going on, save for a list of the latest charts by users you follow. Now, the page includes a list of song recommendations based on songs that haven't appeared on your charts but are prominent on the charts of the users you follow. It also recommends new users to follow who have music tastes that most closely align with yours.
What else would you like to see on this page? Let me know in the comments!
Set your default chart item appearance from your account
Charts have a toggle so you can switch into a "compact" view of their chart items, shrinking the artwork and the text in each row. If you want that to be set by default across all charts you view, you can do so by editing the site preferences in your account.
New URL to quickly access your latest chart
Have you ever wanted to share a quick link to your latest chart, or include it in a social media bio or forum signature? Now you can: add /latest to your account link (for example, https://www.crownnote.com/users/KurtTrowbridge/latest) to have it automatically load your latest chart. The link will stay up to date as you create new charts in the future.
Coming soon: Bluesky metadata improvements and user subdomains
You can now add your Bluesky handle to your profile, under the Personal Information tab. It doesn't do much at the moment, but I may add it alongside other social media profiles and allow those to be displayed on profile pages in the near future. Longer-term, I'm exploring the potential for better metadata handling on Bluesky and the rest of the AT Protocol platform using Standard.site, which the ATProto community seems to be gathering behind, and the opportunity for those of you with Bluesky accounts to have your own crownnote.com handles (like this). That's one of a few things I'm thinking about introducing as a possible paid feature in the future. (Enough of you have asked for a paid tier over the years that I'm finally considering it.)
Other minor updates
- Leaderboards and charts should be loading more quickly than they were previously. I continually look for more opportunities to improve those.
- Charts (including Album Charts and the Crown 100) now use the artwork of their #1 song in metadata, so you'll see it when sharing to social media.
- If you create a song with "featuring" (or an abbreviation like "ft." or "feat.") in the title, you'll now see a warning that you likely meant to put features in the Featured Artists field. It doesn't block that entry entirely, to still allow cases like Charli xcx's "Girl, so confusing featuring lorde" (though if the music industry could please not adopt that format, I would appreciate it).
- You can no longer add script tags in chart details and other content. If that's breaking a legitimate use of the tag, please let me know; otherwise, this avoids the use of harmful scripts that could introduce security vulnerabilities.
- The Charts landing page used to list newest charts first, but some users have charts posted far into the future. Far be it from me to ask why, but the page now only lists charts dated one week into the future.
- Crownnote's Bluesky account is now linked in the footer, replacing
TwitterX, which is no longer being checked regularly. - CSV and XSPF exports are now discouraged from indexing, so they'll be less likely to appear in search results.
Upcoming plans
I'd like to continue this weekend's momentum into building more features and improvements soon. If any particular pain points or feature requests are on your mind, now is a great time to share them. Currently on my radar are these items in particular:
- Getting album charts to be as fully featured as song charts throughout the site (more inclusion on user profiles, chart histories on album pages, leaderboards, etc.)
- A Crown 100 equivalent for albums
- Restoration of line graphs and other-users histories on song and album pages
- PDF versions of charts (possibly another feature that might fall into the paid tier if I go that route)
- The ability to embed your charts on other websites
- Automated imports of charts from other sources (think Spotify charts, the Billboard Hot 100, radio station playlists, etc.) that wouldn't count toward the Crown 100, but could be followed for more song recommendations and personalized leaderboards)
27 Comments
Line graphs should be coming back soon for sure. Last I'd looked at those, I was considering trying a different graph library that'd let me do more with them (allowing them to be expanded full-screen, improving their labels, etc.), so hopefully they'll come back better than they were before.
Most of the infrastructure is there for it already, so I think I just need to wrap up the rest of it and pull the trigger at some point. Maybe I'll pick a week soon and announce it a few weeks in advance to encourage people to post album charts in time for them to be counted.
One of the biggest things for me is when using the search tool, either when adding songs to a chart or adding an album to a song, if a title is too broad the list of potential entries becomes very long and usually cuts off before finding the title I'm actually looking for. Being able to add another indicator to the search like artist name or album name would be very helpful.
I'm glad you mentioned this! It has sat in my backlog for years because I hadn't been able to figure out a good way to handle it, but I was able to get something new in place tonight. If you edit your profile and enable access to beta features, you'll now see improvements in how results appear, how they're sorted, and how you can filter against them. A couple random examples:
- Searching "sucker" now returns the Jonas Brothers song first, because it has the most points of the multiple songs called "Sucker"
- If I want the new Sara Bareilles song called "Home," searching "home" usually doesn't turn it up, but now "home sara" will because it'll search against artist and album titles as well
- Order doesn't necessarily matter, so for the example above, "sara home" should also work
Let me know how that works for you!
Hi,
Does it work the same way when adding a new song to the site and attaching it to an album? For example, I added a song by Ashley McBryde called "Bottle Tells Me So," which is off of her newest album Wild. Since Wild is a rather common album name, it doesn't show up in the list of options. I have beta features turned on and tried the technique you said above but the album still does not show up in the list. I know the album is on here because I have another song from it currently charting.
I just created my new chart Jun 18. I first got those red errors when i created and submitted. I looked at the chart. It was all there. But when I scroll down to below the Top 10, all songs are shown as "Drop Out". When I look at my personal song history and a song that is now listed as "Drop Out" it no longer shows its true chart position like #12, #13 and so on. I deleted my chart and re-submitted it. No Red errors but still shows all songs below the top 10 as "Drop Outs". Can we look into this? Will I need to delete and resubmit? anyone else having this issue?
I'm wondering if the upload got interrupted, considering it's acting as if your top ten is on the chart and the rest are missing. You don't have to fully delete the chart, but could you try editing it, clicking the "Clear chart items" button (so all songs are removed from it), saving, then reuploading your CSV? Let me know if that doesn't end up as expected and I'll try to dig further.
Its really weird. Cause when I went to edit the chart only the top 10 showed. When you look at the box on the right that says "A Chart By" then user name, date number of songs. Mine said 10. I uploaded it as I always did. I did delete and try again. this time it worked. All 50. Thanks for a quick reply!
Hi, just tried making a chart and the new song selector thing is so slow it takes forever, it works fine for the first 20-ish song and then times out and doesn't load, and then the website times out and I lose all my progress. Is there anyway I can go back to the old one at all?
Two more suggestions:
- I think the Crown 100 page (https://www.crownnote.com/crown-100) could be a bit more dynamic and detailed. For example, it would be nice if the charts were organized by year, just like they are on each user's profile page. In addition, each year could have its own Leaderboard/Year-End Chart, ranking the songs that performed the best on the Crown 100 during that specific year, similar to how each user's annual leaderboard works. I hope my explanation wasn't too confusing!
- I also think it would be interesting to add a Chart Stats tab to each user's profile. It could include statistics such as:
- Songs with the most weeks at #1;
- Songs with the most weeks on the chart;
- Artists/albums with the most #1 songs;
- Artists/albums with the most total weeks at #1;
- And other similar chart-related stats.
Hi! You should be able to use the Google Sheets template in Excel as well—once you have it open, go to File > Download and select the Microsoft Excel format.
Happy birthday Kurt! I’m glad to see the site is still progressing
As for suggestions, I’d love to see the song’s line graphs return. that feature was sooo good, I used to spend a lot of time looking at them. also, I’d love to see the option to view other users song chart histories come back