MusicBrainz Web Home Page Mock Ups

[PierPiero]

@aerozol

I would enlarge the search function.

+1 on this: search is a fundamental feature, but nothing on how to browse information, type categories of genres and so on?

[aerozol]

@PierPiero

nothing on how to browse information, type categories of genres and so on?

I know @akshaaatt is already looking at options to improve search, asking the other devs on irc

Since search is going to be on the layout no matter what I’m sure we’re going to dig into the details eventually. I know I have some thoughts but it was already getting lengthy…

I do wonder if it will take a lot of dev effort to make it as good as we can dream it to be, which I’m not sure is on the table with a home page ‘redesign’. Fingers crossed!!

[PierPiero]

@aerozol

I do wonder if it will take a lot of dev effort to make it as good as we can dream it to be, which I’m not sure is on the table with a home page ‘redesign’.

You are right, also because there is a lot of job to do also on the data to complete them with all the useful information to be browsed by genre, country, year and so on.
Maybe, in the homepage could be published projects to improve the dataset like “categorize the music you like” …

[Bitmap]

@aerozol

Let’s see if we can get some stats on current user behaviour to see if that influences how the hierarchy should be! If @Bitmap has any luck digging something out

I checked our nginx logs (excluding the beta site) from Aug. 26 through Sep. 1 (don’t think we have any older data), and extracted URLs that had our homepage as the referrer, with a little bit of cleanup (mainly stripping query parameters, replacing usernames with <name>, and release mbids with <mbid> – the latter would be clicks on recent cover art additions).

Edit: We don’t host the blog but I checked the stats panel on WordPress. 98 clicks to the blog came from musicbrainz.org in the past week (so probably somewhere between /doc/How_to_Contribute and /release/add).

17231 - /search
10176 - /user/<name>
4538 - /
2487 - /doc/MusicBrainz_Database
2061 - /release/<mbid>
887 - /login
524 - /user/<name>/edits/open
510 - /register
217 - /doc/Mp3tag
185 - /user/<name>/collections
178 - /user/<name>/edits
164 - /doc/Beginners_Guide
153 - /doc/AudioRanger
113 - /set-language
106 - /doc/How_to_Contribute
94 - /release/add
84 - /doc/Yate_Music_Tagger
81 - /artist/create
77 - /doc/Frequently_Asked_Questions
73 - /edit/notes-received
68 - /doc/Developer_Resources
66 - /tags
63 - /doc/About
55 - /user/<name>/subscriptions/artist
51 - /doc/About/Data_License
50 - /doc/MusicBrainz_Identifier
47 - /account/applications
44 - /doc/MusicBrainz_API
42 - /doc/Style
41 - /doc/MusicBrainz_Server
38 - /edit/subscribed
37 - /logout
34 - /vote
32 - /doc/How_to_Add_an_Artist
28 - /doc/MusicBrainz_for_Android
27 - /cdstub/browse
27 - /release/<mbid>/cover-art
25 - /doc/How_To
23 - /doc/How_to_Add_a_Release
23 - /doc/MusicBrainz_Documentation
21 - /oauth2/authorize
18 - /doc/Development
16 - /statistics
16 - /set-beta-preference
15 - /doc/Communication/IRC
13 - /doc/How_Editing_Works
13 - /instruments
12 - /edit/subscribed_editors
12 - /genres
11 - /relationships
10 - /label/create
10 - /doc/Live_Data_Feed
10 - /statistics/timeline

[Billy_Yank]

I have a suggestion for the tooltip that appears on the recently added albums. Instead of just the album and artist, also call out the editor:

“Greatest Hits by The Generic Band, added 10 minutes ago by EditorDude”

[UltimateRiff]

I quite like that mockup, aerozol!

My only comment is it seems odd to have two search bars right at the top of the page… I’ve seen on some other website were you scroll down and stuff moves into the top bar, maybe we could do something like that, idk… Not that big a deal…

@aerozol

Could we have a user type in a tag here and have it cycle through the most recent releases related to that tag?

@aerozol

My dream would be to have an element on the homepage that is more playful, as alluded to with #4. Something where people can put in an artist and see how it relates to something else/all its connections, or have a interlinked data web you can click through or something like that… MB is MADE for that kind of thing and it would be so cool to let people interact with the data in a more ‘real’ way right on the home page. Just a little dream

@PierPiero

Maybe, in the homepage could be published projects to improve the dataset like “categorize the music you like” …

I second the idea of having more “data toys” like these on (or prominently linked from) the homepage, like your Bandcamp example or last.fm’s homepage (if you’re not signed in). I think it could really show people what you can actually do with the data we’ve got, besides just tagging your music with Picard…

[akshaaatt]

Thanks a lot, @aerozol for this. Love it and really appreciate the efforts put into this!

1. The uniform search bar is completely valid, however, we would need to provide two boxes, one for the query and the other for selecting the entity type as of now which covers a good portion of the navbar making it look untidy. I am still trying to overcome that and yeah the uniformity would be great, however.

2. Since we are proposing two search bars on the same page, we could reduce it by keeping the search bar with the entity somewhere around the end of the page where it fits comfortably and in the background, we add the recent additions to keep the page lively. Otherwise, we would have to settle for a static background which would grow boring with time.

3. I love the third point and we should surely include the history of MusicBrainz.

4. This sounds cool and we could look to implement that but as said, these are the only great visuals we have which is why I would love to house them at the top. But let’s explore more I guess.

5. Makes sense. I really like that.

6. Cool.

7,8,9) Right.

For a revised mockup:

1. Search + Recent Additions + Blog (Slip screen with a 70 30 ratio for RA and Blogs with a vertical section for the search bar somewhere at the bottom in the blogs bar, maybe, on mobile it could be stacked like recent additions with search covering the homepage and the next page for blogs).

2. What MB is + important links

3. Contribute/join pathways

4. Other MB projects

5. Sponsors

6. The rest

Great, we could work with that!

[aerozol]

Awesome, can’t wait to see how it develops!

I would look to arrange everything in order of most use > least use and then focus on how to make those elements dynamic or look nice after. Function then form. Particularly for MB tbh.

According to Bitmaps list:
search > user profile* > ‘what is MB’ doc > release > login > user open edits* > register > mp3tag (?) > user collections* > user edits*

I would do another wireframe now that we have those stats (though you might be past that stage and keen to get going).

Search is by far the main use, and then the ‘what is MB’ doc. Then I assume ‘release’ is clicks on the ‘recent additions’ pics, which is cool. Maybe because that is the most direct pathway to see what is actually in MB if you’re not looking for something specific? I wonder what would happen if you put a ‘random release’ button on the home page! Then login and register (great), then mp3tag… maybe someone can shed more light on that but I’m guessing a substantial amount of users end up at MB looking to tag their files, get overwhelmed, and just click on the bit that they recognise (something with ‘mp3’ in it). I hope Picard gets more hits but we don’t have the stats because it isn’t a musicbrainz.org/ address.

*There are a bunch of clicks to users and user sub-pages which is interesting, I guess this is logged in users going through the ‘my data’ dropdown in the header? So we can separate that out into a specific ‘type’ of user.

There’s a bunch of interesting stuff further down the list that’s worth looking at too, very interesting.

p.s. I just saw that RYM has a little ‘x releases…’ text part on their home page. But I always go straight to search there so it never registered, but for new users it could motivate them to use rym. It’s not that pretty though tbh.

[akshaaatt]

Thanks for sharing this data @Bitmap, it is really helpful!

[akshaaatt]

Thanks for the comment @Billy_Yank, sounds valid!

[akshaaatt]

Thanks @UltimateRiff for the comments! We can look into all the possibilities

[Beckfield]

Re: “The Fun Part”:

I’m fine with showing the totals of how many artists, releases, recordings, users, etc., MB has, but that doesn’t make MB unique. Discogs, for one, touts “More than 598,000 people have contributed some piece of knowledge, to build up a catalog of more than 14,385,824 recordings and 7,727,914 artists.”

Only the “Recordings” number is lower than what MB claims (which kinda doesn’t make sense, but…). Like I said, I’m fine with publishing these stats, but I’d suggest putting them under some other heading. They are not what make MB unique.

[aerozol]

I think any heading is probably redundant