It's now almost a year since the site's 20th anniversary, and the list of changes added to BEA during that period is enormous. If you've not visited BEA for a while, the previous monthly announcements contain the detail and a site newsletter is about to be sent for the first time in 2026.
In this site update:
BBCode in chart and rank notes
BBCode is now supported in chart and rank notes (similar to album comments), so you can now use basic formatting within your charts. (The primary difference in functionality between BBCode in charts and comments is that 'Mentions' and 'Insert BEA link' are not available within charts).
Sort each chart randomly
A sort option has been added to allow the overall, year, decade and individual charts to be sorted in a random sequence. This might give a fresh view on things and help surface albums you wouldn't normally see. (Inspired by @Tap's randomizer.)
Chart feedback granularity
Another change that has been added (based on a PM received a while back) is for the 'allow feedback' option on charts to be split into ‘allow ratings’ and ‘allow comments’ because some people like comments on their charts, but not ratings. This change will hopefully encourage more qualitative feedback rather than users just receiving a blunt rating and not hearing anything else.
Data has been migrated, so that all charts with feedback previously enabled now have both comments and ratings enabled. If you'd like to take advantage of the new setting, please update your charts to adjust them to your preference.
BEA's 'Chart of the Day' will continue to require charts to meet the minimum rating criteria and have feedback enabled. As the previous 'allow feedback' setting has now been split in two, this means that both ratings and comments must be enabled for a chart to be eligible.
User activity summaries
User profile pages have now been enhanced with a graph showing a summary of each user's latest BEA activities.
Improved visibility of collection/listened etc on album pages
User feedback for a particular album (including collector's summary information) has now been moved to the top of each album page, following a suggestion from @Romanelli, to make it more obvious that an album is in your collection etc and to reduce scrolling (comments remain located at the bottom).
'Helpful' comments/comment reactions
The existing ‘Helpful?’ comment voting functionality has been slimmed down to allow comment reactions to be added separately in a forthcoming update (equivalent to the reactions on the forums). The Helpful comment voting system is anonymous in nature and has a different purpose from a reaction (allowing users to vote on comments that to be surfaced on aggregate charts, Album of the Day and prioritised in sorting algorithms). The two systems will therefore exist alongside each other.
Other changes this update
- Improved rendering of forum mentions on album pages (mentions now grouped by topic to prevent posts from a single topic flooding the results)
- Fixed year/decade chart where the top 100 composition could total more than 100 albums
- Added new top releases from previous month forum post to shine more light on new releases and music from the current year
- Improved rendering of comments (better respecting any formatting that may have been used)
- Fixed issue sorting user list compositions by artist
- Now show friendly device names in notification history for push notifications (e.g. Chrome on Windows)
- Fixed default sorting of charts so latest recognised charts from the current/previous year appear first
- Improved presentation of processed corrections/edits (& always show any corrections last)
- Fixed error sorting custom charts
- Improved account recovery process for email address changes (& registrations with incorrect email addresses)
- More Dark mode tweaks
What’s next?
BEA is continuing to work its way through the 2026 roadmap, prioritising features that improve human engagement.
Thanks for visiting the site and more soon.
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Last edited by albummaster on 4 days ago; edited 1 time in total
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