It’s been about two weeks since I launched the first version of Crucial Tracks and 10 days since I started sharing the project and my plans. Achieving 100 community posts in that time exceeded my expectations — blew past them really. Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!

In addition to the basic journaling tools, dashboard, and public profile page I launched with, I’ve been able to implement more of my initial ideas and the tweaks requested by the community:

  • Full Apple Music playlist integration - if you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can connect to the service and automatically add each day’s song to a playlist of your choosing. Perfect to build a playlist to represent your year!
  • Social sharing: you can now automatically share each public entry on Mastodon and/or Bluesky when you post. (Example)
  • Improved Daily Prompts: the earliest version of the site had just a few prompts randomly selected for the day. This caused many issues! Now there are more prompts in place and a system to make sure we rotate through all prompts before they are recycled.
  • Public Tracks: a new view available when you are logged in to the app that shows that last 50 public posts on the site. Read other community member’s posts, find new music, and maybe even find an internet friend!
  • Improved public profiles - you can now add a link to your Apple Music playlist (in addition to the social and blog links) and each entry now has it’s own page to help with RSS and sharing. (Example)
  • More preferences: visit your profile settings to pick your date format and customize your shared entry title to your liking. (An example of someone with both customizations)

I’ve also added a Help and FAQs page and a change log here. (Be sure to check the FAQs if you are enabling Apple Music, Mastodon, or Bluesky. That will definitely help you set those features up correctly!)

I’m so excited about this community and what the app can do – it’s everything I hoped for and more. It’s just you, your favorite songs, and your words. (And a lite touch of social discovery.)

SO, if a slow, thoughtful, meaningful anxiety-free music community sounds interesting, come join us! We are very interested in reading about the songs that made you, you.