[albummaster]

2016 was another good year for BEA. Visits to the site were 3% up on the year before, but the lack of a redesign I think is probably a factor in growth being a bit flatter than in previous years. Over 40% of visits to BEA are now from a tablet, or from a mobile device, & this is despite the current version of BEA not being designed with mobile users in mind.

The average number of active users increased by 13% during 2016 (and on the forums down by 12%). The site now contains 18% more albums than at the end of last year (99,003 albums compared to 83,609 at the end of 2015), so the site is still growing although I recognise the need to make the forums more appealing and the site redesign will introduce a new mobile friendly forum design once it is implemented.

In terms of the features that were expected to be delivered in 2016, these didn't materialise in the way that I expected due to the extra work that I'm having to do in the background to keep a bigger site running. I also have a day job which gets in my way pays my bills as BEA does not contribute to those.

2016 was intended to see the introduction of a new mobile-friendly design, but my life away from BEA was mostly taken up by my day job so the new design remains only part-way complete (but has moved forward since last time I posted).

The re-design hasn't dropped off the radar in any way & remains very important to me, I just need to organise my time better to ensure it gets done. The number of outstanding (uncompleted) features on the 'to do' list is about 400 (2015: 550 items), so the 'to do' list is starting to go down, but most of the changes made to the site over the past year have been in the background to support the new design.

I'd like to thank here everyone that has helped out in 2016 with the site. So, a big thanks (particularly) to the moderators: Patman360, Puncture Repair, RockyRaccoon, Romanelli & ShaneSpear. I'd also like to thank the people that are helping in the background to moderate the data, particularly (again) to Romanelli, Pa & mostlymor (without these people, the site couldn't function half as well as it does) and thank you to everybody else on the site for their continued contributions, there's just not enough space here to mention everybody.

The community here are most of the reason that the site is running & there continue to be lots of new members that really help to make the site feel like home. 2017 should be worth looking forward to, so thank you to everybody for your continued support.

albummaster

[WayneMC]

I really enjoy this site. Well done....and thanks.

[jhuik]

Kudos. Long time member and I still love this site. Thanks for just keeping it going let alone working on updates.
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Top Canadian songs, keyless entry remotes, home care, whatever...

[corenfro]

Yeah this site is great! It's a great resource for the younger generation (like me) to explore music from different decades. The album medium is underrated and a resource like this allows me to appreciate it. Death to playlists and pandora machine learning algorithms. Long live the album (although one of my distant projects is to do a neural network to discover albums for me haha).

Great job with the site.

[Norman Bates]

Thanks AM, for everything.

[pa]

Am!! Thank u so much
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Not Talulah?
- Gosh!

[razvanc8]

Cheers for this website! It's an awesome resource for all music aficionados!!!

[mozzmozz]

Thanks, albummaster, for creating this.
I think for many people this is very useful resource ... but many people I'm sure do not appreciate the huge (unpaid) efforts by yourself and the other moderators .
I'm a new member here, but as soon as I get to know the ropes I'll add a few albums that I have that are not yet on your books.

Thanks again.
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There is a global map to find out where BEA members are ...
Put yourself on the map: Click here
(Go to Additions ... then Add Marker.)

[albummaster]

Thanks, much appreciated. There is indeed a lot of work behind the scenes just to keep the site running (more than most people will imagine), but there's also a great team of people here helping out with other aspects of the site (e.g. data moderation) so it really is a joint effort to keep things going as the site really couldn't function without them. Looking forward to your picks...