Crucial Tracks is a music journal with a simple idea: share the important songs in your life. Every member gets one post per calendar day. Use a daily prompt or pick any subject you'd like!
What are crucial tracks? A crucial track is a song that changes the direction of your life or helps you see the world in a different way. The songs that represent relationships or trigger memories. The songs that make you, you.
One song per day means a stress-free, "slow social" music community: no endless feed to scroll, no fear of missing out, no unhealthy incentives. Just good music and connection through song.
Crucial Tracks is one of the most interesting web dinguses I've seen in a long time.
There needs to be more people on Crucial Tracks, full stop.
The fact that I am the only person posting about Childish Gambino, Outkast, Herbie Hancock, and The Sneaker Pimps feels like there are just not enough people that know about this amazing tool.
What are you waiting for?
I never thought I would love to keep a blog about music, but I do and I have done for a while now.
The prompts always make me dive into my catalogue of favourite songs, and I always find one that fits the prompt perfectly. Thinking about music like this makes me love my favourite songs and artists even more.
Post once per calendar day. No pressure, no stress. Join the slow web!
No ads, no algorithmic feeds, no infinite scrolling, and no fear of missing out — just thoughtful posts and good music. Serendipity reigns!
Music is a universal language. Empathy is a key part of experiencing music. No hate or mistreatment will be tolerated — everyone should feel safe sharing their stories.
Your public entries are visible to all on your page. Share your profile and visitors can subscribe via RSS or JSON. See Jason's profile.
Need inspiration? Daily prompts help spark memories and stories about the songs that shaped you.
Each week we post Community Tracks, a curated mixtape from the songs shared during the week. Browse mixtapes
Add a 30-second song preview from Apple Music to enhance your story. Subscribers can save daily tracks to a playlist.
Your entries have an RSS/JSON feed to use however you'd like. Export all your data in JSON format anytime.
Daily email reminders, profile badges, markdown posts, Song.link integration, a community webring, theme customization... to name just a few.
Click any screenshot for a closer look.
Dashboard Overview
Post Editor
Public Feed
Daily Prompts
Community Mixtapes
Mixtape Details
Song Explorer
Theme Customization
Integrations
Reminders & Settings
"Music is the art form that connects us as humans. Music also connects us to our memories."
Crucial Tracks gives us the ability to share our stories and appreciate the role music plays in our lives. Every song we share has humanity and life experience behind it, which is something we can all relate to, even if you don't "understand" or like the song.
I'm going to do my best to keep this feeling going, but I also understand we've been getting trained over the last 20+ years for "engagement", through algorithms and just getting bombarded with information, likes, views, and comments. The slowness might be hard to handle at first, but I want this site to be different. I just hope that feeling is enough to keep folks interested and coming back.
Ultimately, I think 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.)
It feels like a radical idea, so I'll have my fingers crossed. I hope you'll join us...
— 🤘 Jason
Yes — Crucial Tracks will always be free. I offer other ways to support the project, like purchasing merch.
Spotify or anything Meta/Elon Musk is a hard no. Apple Music isn't perfect, but Spotify are just bad faith actors in the music and entertainment industry. Elon Musk is a POS Nazi and Meta/Facebook have a long history of being a terrible, immoral company. No thanks. Create something like O.G. Rdio and I'll integrate that in a second.
A help/FAQ guide can be found here. A YouTube overview of the app is coming soon too!
