Crucial Tracks, the app

First off, I want to apologize for going dark this month on new music. I'm hoping to get a catch up post out this weekend! There is a good reason for the lack of posting, though. I've been busy building an app for the Crucial Tracks community.

If you've been following this site (or my music writing in general) for a bit of time, you'll know I have been doing a “music journal” or song-a-day playlist on Apple Music for the last four years. The basic premise of that 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 this site and the Crucial Tracks interview series. As you've read, 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.

The app is a simple, focused blogging service (music journal) that helps you think about the role music plays in your life… and allows you to easily share your thoughts and these meaningful songs with the world. The songs that make you, you.

The basic features so far:

• the ability to post once per day (you can write about any song or use one of the built-in prompts)
• search Apple Music to add a 30 second song preview to your post so others can listen along
• every entry defaults to Private, but Public posts show on your profile page, complete with an RSS feed to hook up wherever you like. See my profile as an example. (There's also a setting to default all to public too!)
• members can view the Public Tracks feed to see the latest posts from the community - find new songs and interesting people to follow via RSS or social media

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.)

If this sounds interesting, sign up today for free!

The reception has been amazing so far and I'm so glad others seem as excited about the idea as I am. I hope you join us!

--Jason

Into the weeds

As with every site, there are design choices to be made and goals set. Here are some of my guiding principles for this app:

• 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.