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soundtrackingblog:

We’re excited to announce some big news on how you enjoy music using SoundTracking! Many of you told us that you love being able to discover and share new music on SoundTracking, but wished for more ways to listen to an entire song beyond the clip.  Well, we’ve been working on a simple and fluid way that lets you enjoy the best-matching music videos and full-length versions of songs you find on SoundTracking!  

Today, we’re happy to share with you our new Smart Play feature which is now available in the latest version of SoundTracking: 

• A new Smart Play button on the top right corner of every music moment which instantly matches the best music video and full-song audio track available

• Watch music videos and play full-length tracks using one of your favorite music services such as YouTube, Spotify, and Rdio*, in addition to iTunes.

• Browse and share directly from your music library when creating a music moment

*All SoundTracking app users will be able to view YouTube music videos inside their app. To use Spotify and Rdio options, install the music service app for iOS or Android to your mobile device.

We hope you like our new Smart Play button!  Please try it out and let us know product feedback or suggestions at our Twitter or Facebook.

Yours Truly,

The SoundTracking Team

soundtrackingblog:

One of the biggest nights in music, The 55th Grammy Awards happens this Sunday! As you saw in our SoundTracking Year In Review data, Fun., Gotye, The Black Keys, and more were shared throughout the year by our community.  So we decided to have a look at the nominees and determine who would win… If The SoundTracking Community Chose The Grammys! 

Album of the Year

» The Black Keys - El Camino
» Fun. - Some Nights
» Mumford & Sons - Babel
» Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
» Jack White - Blunderbuss

Community Winner: Fun.- Some Nights 
Not only was Fun.’s smash hit “We Are Young” the #4 most shared song on SoundTracking, regionally it was #3 in New York, and #8 in Los Angeles. The follow-up single, “Some Nights,” also made it to the SoundTracking charts, clocking in at #18.  It’s possible they’re gonna have a busy night on Sunday…

Runner Up: The Black Keys- El Camino 
Rooting for the underdog, The Black Keys were the #7 artist shared on SoundTracking in Los Angeles.  And hey, isn’t that where the Grammys happen?

Record of the Year

» The Black Keys - “Lonely Boy”
» Kelly Clarkson - “Stronger”
» Fun. feat. Janelle Monae - “We Are Young”
» Gotye feat. Kimbra - “Somebody That I Used to Know” 
» Frank Ocean - “Thinkin Bout You”
» Taylor Swift - “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

Community Winner: Gotye feat. Kimbra- “Somebody That I Used to Know” 
You used to know somebody that hadn’t heard this song.  Not anymore!  Gotye and Kimbra’s infectious break-up hit was the #3 song shared on SoundTracking and reached #1 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York! 

Runner Up: Fun. feat. Janelle Monae- “We Are Young” 
Didn’t we say they’d have a busy night?  If Grammy voters are ‘Gotye’d out’, “We Are Young” is poised to win.

Best New Artist

» The Alabama Shakes
» Fun. 
» Hunter Hayes
» The Lumineers
» Frank Ocean

Community Winner: Fun.
Sensing a pattern? Fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff better set his DVR to record ‘Girls’ on Sunday, cuz he ain’t getting home in time to snuggle up and watch with girlfriend Lena Dunham.

Runner Up: The Lumineers
Their single “Ho Hey” was #6 in Los Angeles, #8 in San Francisco and made us actually consider using something other than Google with this awesome Bing ad! 

Song of the Year

» Ed Sheeran - “The A Team” 
» Miguel - “Adorn” 
» Carly Rae Jepsen - “Call Me Maybe” 
» Kelly Clarkson - “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” 
» Fun. - “We Are Young”

Community Winner: Carly Rae Jepsen- “Call Me Maybe”
Oh-so-catchy! Carly Rae’s pop-genius “Call Me Maybe” was the #5 most shared song on all of SoundTracking in 2012.  It also made our Top 5 in New York (#2) and San Francisco (#3). How about we just call her “winner”?

Runner Up: Fun.- “We Are Young”
Because… why not?

Do you agree? Share your 2013 Grammy predictions on SoundTracking!

Don’t forget to follow The Grammys on SoundTracking and listen to the full Grammy playlist on Spotify! 

soundtrackingblog:

One of the biggest music festivals in California has just announced it’s 2013 line-up. Drum roll please… Coachella! People and performers from around the world have migrated to this spring concert held in Indio, California and this year will be no different! Make sure to bring some sunscreen and sunglasses because this festival has warm weather and a hot line up! 

See any of your favorites on the line up? Check out these soundtrackers sharing their excitement for the three day music-filled festival!

Are you going to Coachella this year?  Share who you’re excited to see with a post to SoundTracking! 

We’ve been thinking about you.  

You’ve been busy.  Studying at school, going to work, getting life’s errands done, spending time with family, hanging out with friends, and listening to your favorite music all the while. 

In the past year, we’ve seen you not only share the serendipity of music in your daily life, we’ve also seen you share honest emotions through music.  On weekends, you enjoyed getting your dance on around town, playing the latest Kanye banger or Calvin Harris remix.  We felt your sadness when musical heroes passed away and you dedicated songs to them (RIP Amy, Whitney, and MCA).  Touching were the quieter moments you shared with friends and family. Including, lazy indie rock afternoons in a park, and late at night with your slow jams on.

We want to make it even more fun and beautiful to share and discover these emotional, meaningful music moments.  

Thank you for inspiring us.  We’re very excited to present to you the new and redesigned SoundTracking for iOS, optimized for the iPhone 5:

Visual music feeds and timeline

In our old music feeds and timelines we focused on showing you the song title, artist name and caption so that you could see as many posts as possible.  We realized a few things though after watching you use that feature and tell us your thoughts.  You wanted to see the photo or album cover in large, rich visual display as well.  We rethought how to present the posts and activity feeds and music timelines for you and all the places you discover in SoundTracking.  Now you’re able to browse music moments visually by images and easily view and play people’s posts in a more fluid way, almost as if you’re crossfading between songs in a mix or playlist.  You can scroll effortlessly through music moments seeing the whole vivid photo or album cover and can play, like, love and comment quickly as you move through different soundtracks.

Song dedications & mentions

Whether dedicating a slow jam to someone special, enjoying a rock concert with buddies, or sending a birthday song to a friend, you can now tag your friends in SoundTracking posts.   What’s better than simply tagging your friends on SoundTracking?  We created a “smart tagging” feature, so if you tag a friend and share your music moment to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, then your friend will automatically be tagged and notified through that service as well.

Trending Nearby

We’ve seen a ton a cool activity on the Trending screen and and love all of the interesting music, photos and conversations happening around the world. But, we also noticed you tagging your neighborhoods and cities in your posts and connecting to people close to you, even in real life.  We created a new filter for your Trending screen that allows you to see all the SoundTracking posts trending nearby!  The “Trending Nearby” tab lets you see, in real-time, all of the music moments that have been shared from your current neighborhood or city, based upon your geo-location.  Try using this feature when you’re out and about to find local music lovers like you! 

Fan recommendations

We think that one of the most fun things about a social network for music lovers is the ability to make friends with common interest in a sound, genre or artist.  We wanted to make it much easier for you to find and meet other music lovers like you. So why not tell you who also loved each song you just shared with everyone?  Now, when you share a music moment, you’ll receive recommendations from us about other people who also love that particular song.  You can go directly to their profile and see what they’re about! 

Verified SoundTrackers

Sometimes, it’s hard to know who to follow.  Well, we’ve made that easier, too!  DJs, Artists, and other well-known people have some interesting knowledge and tastes in music. So, we’ve created a Verified SoundTrackers feature to help you find some really cool music influencers to follow.  Artist, DJs and other celebrities can automatically receive Verified SoundTracker status and a gold record badge by connecting to the app using their verified Twitter account.  

Adding Music to your Twitter

Most of you love sharing your soundtrack to your Twitter feed.  Now when sharing to Twitter, followers can view and play your music moment right inside of the tweet through our new Twitter Card integration.  Whether it’s The Glitch Mob sharing deep electronic cuts, MNDR walking us through the pop and hiphop that moves her, or those animated rastafarians known as Major Lazer, everyone on Twitter can experience SoundTracking tweets from right inside Twitter.  If they like what they see and hear, they’ll open SoundTracking and give you some love and a follow.

There are many other changes to the UI design and many new features, but we’ll let you discover them in the app…

Nothing drives us more at the SoundTracking HQ than helping you express yourself through the music that you’re passionate about.  When you’re delighted with how you feel using SoundTracking, we’re stoked.  Let us know your thoughts and feedback through Twitter at @soundtracking, Facebook, or via email.

We hope you enjoy this new and redesigned version of SoundTracking, and there’ll be more to come!

Happy New Year,

Steve and the SoundTracking team

soundtrackingblog:

We are super excited to announce our all-new SoundTracking 2.0 for Android.  We’ve redesigned SoundTracking for Android to make it easier and faster to share, to add the fun and excitement of music video to our discovery, and increase real-life social connections and serendipity.  Please enjoy!

We’ve redesigned the sharing of music moments

For people who love music, sharing songs you’re enjoying in the moment is fun, but it still takes too many steps and that just pulls you out of the actual music you’re listening to.  First, we created a Widget for your locked homescreen which allows you to identify songs playing, search by artist name or song title, or receive “currently playing on device” notifications quietly and then share with one tap from the Widget.  This means you don’t have to unlock your phone and then find and open the app, if you want to just identify or share a song with your friends in the moment.  Second, we created a snappier, lightweight set of fly-out buttons from a persistent action bar, that allows you to ID and share songs from within the app on any screen.  Third, our new super-fast song search engine offers instant “as-you-type” search by artist name and/or song title, and searches against over 26 million tracks in our database.

SoundTracking x Youtube Music Videos 

One of the things we wanted to do is open up the beautiful, fun and weird world of Youtube music videos to the SoundTracking community. When our users share music moments, many of the songs at the center of these moments have cool music videos that add to the meaning or enjoyment of that track.  This really became obvious when we saw many users sharing Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song with still images of themselves dancing or of Psy.  The real awesomeness of that song is the music video, not just the audio. We’ve integrated Youtube music videos into SoundTracking so you can play the videos inside the app seamlessly, rather than having to leave SoundTracking and get passed into the Youtube app.

Social in the Real World

Thinking about how people connect with each other through music, we wanted to create connections in real-life as much as possible.  We created a couple new features for you:

• Song dedications and Name Tagging.  Now you can dedicate songs to your friends and this action not only displays and notifies your ST friends, but also automatically tags and notifies them in other social networks to which the music moment is shared.

• “Trending Nearby”.   In the Trending screen, we now show you popular posts and music from your local neighborhood and city.  Many of our posts come from venues such as coffee shops, bars and concert venues so we’re excited to see when people in our community meet up and enjoy music in real life.  We’re hoping this feature helps encourage that serendipity and real-world connection for all of you.

The New Features:

• Available now for 7” Android tablets
• Discover and play music videos with friends - When listening to someone’s shared music moment, you can now view the song’s Youtube music video inside the SoundTracking app (not sending the user outside to the Youtube app)
• Widget for your phone’s home screen - Quickly identify and share what song you’re listening to, right from your locked homescreen. 
• Song dedications and tagging -  Whether you’re dedicating a song to a friend or you’re listening to a song with them, you can tag your friends and they’ll receive an automatic notification about it.  (Hint: Birthdays!)
• Trending Nearby - Discover new music and soundtrackers right in your own city and neighborhood using the Nearby view in the Trending section.
• Faster music identification with improved album cover images.
• Powerful new music search engine - Search over 26 million tracks by song title or artist name and get instant results as you type.
• Social Networks integrated with our Android app: Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare
• Music services now integrated with our Android app: Youtube, Spotify and RDIO