[albummaster]

Can't believe we are already approaching the end of Q1, a lot has already been accomplished in 2026 and there's one update left after this for this quarter which is now scheduled to land at the start of April. The site has accomplished most of what it set out to do in the Q1 roadmap, with the exception of dark mode (very close to completion) and the paid services.

Since last October (and the site's 20th anniversary), I’ve been working on the site full time on a three-weekly release cycle where two weeks are spent on dev and then a week on testing prior to each update. This gives a good balance of things being seen to change and allows bigger changes to be completed over multiple updates. I've probably fallen a little bit behind on the remaining changes in the Q1 roadmap due to the scale of some of the changes and the fact looking after the site at the same time as doing all the development is very time consuming (dealing with technical issues, end-user support, data admin, emails etc).

Despite all the hard work, it still feels like there’s a lot do on the site and been working without an income for six months and not expecting the site to help with that, but there's an urgency to get some of the remaining changes over the line to take a bit of the pressure off. At the same time, acutely aware that AI is the background waiting to mop up a lot of the traffic that BEA previously received when someone queries for the best albums. Some of the recent changes such as the activity streams (and previous visit deltas in the current site update) are partly meant to humanise the site and get ahead of the curve and act as a counter to AI for those people seeking a more social experience.

This update took a bit longer than expected with some of the changes bigger than they seemed before embarking on them. The biggest change is on the home page, where changes since your previous visit are now shown, so you can see at a glance what happened on BEA since you last visited. This will get tweaked a bit more over the next few days until it settles in.

Other changes:
- You can now be notified of reactions to your posts from your profile page (notifications disabled by default)
- BEAnniversaries are now listed instead of birthdays on the forum home page
- Comments on album and chart pages etc can now be made more quickly (no longer requiring a page load)
- Registration and profile pages improved by removing confirmation fields and replacing with inline assistance
- Login page improvements (spy button for passwords to assist mobile users).
- 'Add to Home Screen' prompt shown on mobile browsers to allow BEA to be installed as an 'app' on iOS and Android *
- Added help text if a release date is missing for an album
- Fixed bug where composition disappears when changing chart composition filter size

(* Q3/Q4 might see the introduction of a full BEA app to make BEA more visible outside of web searches as AI searches are now becoming more common (& not surfacing BEA directly). For now, BEA isn't available via an app store so this is an interim measure.)

The top 3,000 albums are now almost populated with release dates and the site nearly has year-round coverage for daily anniversaries without dipping down into the more obscure albums, so anniversary posts will begin very soon (probably as part of the next site update). In the background, the longer-term aim is for the top 10,000 albums to all have release dates to provide full coverage of the overall chart.

Enjoy the site & more soon
AM
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[jnmayles]

appreciate you

[spigelwii]

I hope we're able to directly donate to the site starting after the next update as well! BEA has been an invaluable resource for me discovering new music, and in these troubled times, voting with your wallet is more important than ever.
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music is good

[billyboy66]

I love this site and you are right, the social aspect is what makes the difference from BEA to AI. I am sure you have heard this before but the one thing that first time users do not see on their first page load is a lot of content but instead see those adverts. Don't get me wrong, we all know that money needs to come from somewhere, and as a former blogger I know how hard it is to convert ads of any kind. I bet you have a lot of expenses for hosting an time here.

I bet over the years I have come to your site more than a few times and saw the ads and hit the back button, but once I actually scrolled down one time and saw the awesomeness of love of music in the reviews and comments and ratings that people have made I knew I had found something really special and signed up right away. I am doing that 1001 albums you have to listen to thing and since I do not have any frame of reference for so many artists I have a morning routine of starting the new album for the day, hitting your site to see more about the bands albums, and then Wikipedia to learn more about the bands history.

What I am saying is that this site is one of the most important sites on the internet for me, which is amazing for something I did not really know a year ago.

I wish there were better ways for you to monetize, I know it must be tough but I really truly appreciate your work and everyone that adds their words to this precious site

Thanks - Bill

[albummaster]