End on End

For the last four years I have been doing something I call a “music journal” or song-a-day playlist on Apple Music. The basic premise of the idea is to add one meaningful song to my playlist each day.

It could be a song I listened to during the day, a new band I “discovered” that day, a song to represent something that i did (like going to a concert), or a song that was meaningful for other reasons (like my mom’s favorite song; she passed away in 2022.) There are no limits, really…

The best part of this is listening to the playlists later. It could be on long car trips or just throwing one on while you make dinner or clean the house… the memories come flooding back when each song plays. It’s pretty awesome.

This process, along with a blog series I did during the early days of COVID, helped build the idea for my Crucial Tracks blog and interview series. These interviews take a deeper look into the impact of music on some really amazing people. The whole process of thinking about music – how it helped create who you are today, how it influences memories and feelings, is fascinating. I love it… and everyone I’ve done interviews with so far really enjoyed participating.

There are points in your life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed the direction of your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs represent relationships. Songs trigger memories. These are all crucial tracks.

So that got me thinking — what if I combined these ideas with my love of blogging and created an app where anyone can share their Crucial Tracks with the world? And the Crucial Tracks app was born.

After some fits and starts with attempting to make an iOS app, I took a step back and decided to focus on building a web app instead. Some pros to that approach: no operating system lock in, I’m more familiar with developing for the web, and ultimately I could get something done quicker.

Quicker ended up being an understatement, as I stumbled upon an article (around the same time) on using AI to quickly build out app ideas. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I put on my business analyst hat and worked through a set of requirements I could use to build the prompts for the Github Copilot agent mode.

It wasn’t perfect and took some debugging (and multiple attempts) for some features, but it was ridiculously fast and helped me get a fairly stable initial version out in only 7 days. I’ve built a couple of Ruby on Rails apps and a couple PHP apps over the years and none have taken less than a month or two to get right… and none even close to as polished as this first version. It’s astonishing, really.

Design choices

Even with AI assistance there are a lot of design choices to be made and influence you can have on the actual application. I had a few goals:

• I didn’t want to create another social network or place where you have to follow someone, comment, like, or whatever. That shit can be tiring and there are enough services already.
• I also didn’t want to create another high speed firehose type site where there’s constantly something new for you to view. Crucial Tracks will be SLOW and that will take some getting used to (me included!)
• I wanted to support RSS from day one. I truly believe that RSS is one of the best web inventions, because it allows you to do so much with just a simple feed… you can follow other users (and news sites, blogs, etc), you can send your posts anywhere using services like IFTTT or services like micro.blog that support inbound RSS. (For example, my entries get posted to my blog on micro.blog automatically and then get sent to Mastodon and Bluesky with no action on my part.)
• I wanted to integrate with Apple Music. (No Spotify, ever, sorry. Apple Music isn’t perfect, but Spotify are just bad faith actors in the music and entertainment industry. Actually, I’m not sorry.)
• Same goes for integration with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, etc. No algorithmic, centralized, corporate-owned social media, ever. It’s time to get off those sites for good. You can do whatever you want with the RSS feed, but that’s as much as you will get from me. Again, not sorry.

That’s a lot of NO, so I will finish up with what I DID want to create. I wanted to create a simple, focused blogging service that helps you think about the role music plays in your life… and share those thoughts with the world in whatever way you want. Version one does that already and I’ve got some other ideas to help build off that going forward.

Ultimately, the internet needs more weird, focused small communities. That’s what made the web so exciting when I first got access in the early/mid 90s and I hope my little project helps bring that feeling back in some way. (And maybe, just maybe, it will be a gateway for more folks to get their own site and blog.)

TL;DR

To sum it up, Crucial Tracks is a music journal that allows you to easily share meaningful songs with the world. The songs that make you, you.

Sign up today, for free!

PS - See my public profile page for an example of what you’ll get. And feel free to hit that RSS Feed button to add me to your reader. 😄

I’m quite possibly working on Crucial Tracks the app… a music journal that basically combines Crucial Tracks, blogging, and my song-a-day playlist project.

You will be able to post one song per day with a little (or a lot of) detail on why you picked the song. Additional features:

• Public profile with RSS feed
• Additional publishing to mastodon, Bluesky, and probably micro.blog
• Creation of an Apple Music playlist from your song selections
• Crucial Tracks interview prompts for days you need help coming up with something
• Private entries

Will be a web app, so no OS lock-in.

Open to feature ideas and feedback!

I was tagged for this challenge and you know I like to write about music, so here we go:

What are five of your favorite albums?

I currently have over 4,600 albums saved to my library, so this is going to be hard. There are too many favorites to ever limit to five, without leaving something really good off the list… but here are the five I think shows both who I am and albums everyone should listen to:

• Fugazi - In on the Kill Taker (1993) - Listen
• Sharon Van Etten - Are We There (2014) - Listen
• Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (2002) - Listen
• Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight (2008) - Listen
• A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory (1991) - Listen

What are five of your favorite songs?

I’m going to go with the five most influential songs in my life - elementary school through college (see Crucial Tracks 001 for more)

• “It’s Tricky” by Run-DMC — off Raising Hell (1986)
• “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour — off Vivid (1988)
• “Smells Like Teen Spirit“ by Nirvana — off Nevermind (1991)
• “Omission” by Quicksand — off Slip (1993)
• “Truckers Atlas” by Modest Mouse — off The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)

Favorite instrument(s)?

• Guitar
• Bass
• Drums

These three can make up everything I like, from rock to hip hop…folk and jazz and everything in between.

What song or album are you currently listening to?

My current obsession (for this week) is Bambi by Anxious. (Listen)

From one of my latest Crucial Tracks posts:

It’s everything I like about the (emo) genre, combining the best parts of bands like Fiddlehead, Samiam, Jimmy Eat World, and many other late 90s/early 2000s emo bands. There are a bunch of bands that have tried and are trying to replicate that era and Anxious just does it better than all of them. And to top it off, they are a great live band.

Do you listen to the radio? If so, how often?

Not really, only occasionally in the car driving kids around… usually when they have friends in the car. Sometimes sports talk radio too. (Go Bills!) Usually Apple Music, though.

How often do you listen to music?

Daily! I work from home so there’s a good chance music is playing during the day.

How often do you discover music? And how do you discover music?

Weekly for Crucial Tracks. Each week I seem to find a group or individual that is new to me. I think 1/5 of the releases in my Best of 2024 list on Album Whale were new in that sense last year.

As far as how, I’m working on a post for Crucial Tracks that details all that, since I know I’m far from normal. 😄 I will be sure to share, once that’s done.

What’s a song or album that you enjoy that you wish had more recognition?

I think about underrated bands all the time…and how a lot of them would be huge, if they were new to the world today.

I’m not sure this band would be huge, but I think their second album is severely underrated: Knocking the Skill Level by Garden Variety

It has disappeared from streaming, so I’m hoping that means there is a re-issue coming soon. For now you can hear it on YouTube:

What’s your favorite song of all time?

Another tough one. Right now, I will go with “I Love You But I’m Lost” by Sharon Van Etten. It’s beautiful and hit me at the right time in my life.

You read the answers by the shadows on the wall // We could be great // Drive myself crazy with mistakes // You know I’m better every day // Tell me there’s something I can change // Recall I know what a sanctuary is // Help me deserve you sing me praise // You love me, but you’ll change

Has your taste in music evolved over the years?

I’m definitely open to more, like I really got into alt folk (and even alt country) last year and enjoy that a ton now. I don’t think I will ever not like hip hop and hardcore adjacent groups, but as I get older and “force” myself to listen to more new music for Crucial Tracks, I think I am opening up to more styles and sounds that I definitely wouldn’t have liked when I was younger. What’s that quote? “When you are young, you know what you hate, and when you are old, you know what you love.”

Turns out, I really love music.

(And be sure to check out Crucial Tracks!)