AOL Music Team Blog

Now that the nominees are in, what better time to reveal our new Grammys page! Read all about the nominees, watch exclusive videos and more all on our new page.



Interested in the latest news on the nominees? Our 'Real-Time Awards Show News' module has all the latest stories from across the web.

When the team initially sat down to discuss our site redesign, we all believed the main goal of the new site should be easier navigation. We chose a few core ways to go about this:

1. Simple pages (less is more)
2. Fast load times
3. Improved Header
4. Improved Search

Search is very important because no matter how good we make our user interface for browsing, we have so much content and data on our site that it is impossible to reveal it all just through a browsing interface. Music is classically long-tail and search and long-tail were made for each other.

The most obvious improvement we made was to switch to a more classic layout of results. Our old page presented results grouped by category. While this aided in finding the type of asset you were searching for (song, video, picture, etc,) it did not put the best result up top. If you were searching for a video, you had to scroll past artists, albums and songs to get to videos. The new page displays the best results -- regardless of content type -- descending from the top.

The second improvement we made was to include our editorial and news results on the page. The old page only displayed results from music.aol.com for artists, videos, etc. The new page searches our entire network of sites including Spinner, The Boot, The Boombox and more. This unlocks all the original content we have along side all the results we previously displayed.

The third improvement was speed. Results now display a lot faster than they ever did.

We hope the new search page allows you to quickly and easily find the content you want. We are not done yet improving this page but felt like we reached a level with it that was such an improvement on the previous page that it was worth releasing now. We will continue to tweak the page based on feedback we receive from you. Please let us know what you think.

Not sure what to search for? Here is a search to get you started - http://music.aol.com/search/?query=jack+johnson

Continuing our series of redesign posts, we are now going to talk about the new header. It could be argued that a header is more important than any single page. The header appears on all pages and is the main way to navigate a site. As was the case with our new homepage (and our overall redesign policy), our goal with the header was to make our site simpler and easier to navigate.

We started the process by asking "what could be removed"? After looking over the click data, we saw that very few people were using the search tabs. People were here for music, and wanted to only search within music results. Since we believe that less is more, we removed all search tabs.

The next issue we tackled was account-based. The old header showed you when you were logged-in by displaying your name with a drop-down to go to your profile and sign-out. It also had links to edit your profile and your profile settings. These were extraneous since people do not edit their profiles very often. It was also slightly hard to find the sign-out link. The new header shows you when you are logged-in with a quick link to your profile, playlists and sign-out. Much cleaner.

The final thing we changed was the biggest. In the past, we had 10 main navigation links. This posed a problem since we have a lot more than 10 pages. We decided to go with drop-downs on the main links to allow for quicker access to more content. We grouped our pages by type (videos, songs, etc) with tool-tip descriptions. We believe this will be a huge help in navigating our site.

Moving forward, we will put the new header across all our sites. We have a lot of work ahead of us, so things might seem a little weird as we continue to push this out. We also hope to add dynamic content to the drop-downs which will personalize the site according to the music you listen to and the news you read. Please let us know what you think. Your feedback is what drives us. Thanks!

When we sat down to redesign our site, the page everyone wanted to do first was the home page. We've felt for a while that our home page doesn't fully reflect all of the content and features that we have. Everyday we receive feedback asking us about particular features and where they can be found. Our main goal with the new home page was to make things simpler so you can find what you want. We also wanted to highlight some of our features and technology that you may not know about.

One of those features is CD Listening Party. Every week we feature 10-20 new albums that you can listen to for free. On our current homepage, this is buried low on the page. Even so, it is one of the most clicked parts of the page. For the redesign, we raised this much higher on the page. We also gave it some more breathing room.



Right below CD Listening Party is our new 'Real Time Music News' module. Here at AOL Music, we write tons of articles every day about artists, songs and everything else in music. Even though we cover a lot, we can't cover it all! There are many music news sources out there -- and since this is the Web -- we figured that linking to them would be pretty easy. The new News module will show the latest music news with up-to-the-minute updates. The best part is that it is customizable. You can now track news just from your favorite artists if you want.



Another new feature is the ability to see what other people on AOL Music are listening to -- in real time! Anyone with a public profile will be visible on this module. It is a great way to see what music is hot and sample it for yourself. You will also be able to see the last three songs you've listened to, plus a link to see more.



If you are logged in, you can also see what other people on your AIM buddy list are listening to now.



As we stated in our previous post about our redesign, our aim was to make our site simpler to navigate while highlighting our best experiences. We feel confident we have done this with the new home page. Look for it in the next few days. Of course our work is never done. We want to hear your thoughts -- tell us what you think.

It has been a couple of years since we last redesigned our site. Back then, things were a lot different. Our site was built for dial-up users with low-resolution monitors. Our goal was to modernize it by expanding the width and adding a bunch of new features, including streaming audio and video. We introduced a lot of things. Some things worked, others did not. Through it all, you responded with invaluable feedback. We have taken all of that feedback and thought hard about how we can take our site to the next level.

First and foremost, we hope the new design allows you to more easily navigate our site. Our main purpose was to showcase our best features -- features that you have told us you enjoy the most. We have done that by adding more prominent placements of key features. We have also done that by removing extraneous features that were not often used. If we removed something you liked, please let us know. While we have tried hard to keep everything, we understand that anything we remove will probably upset some people.

Starting soon, we will roll out the new design, page by page. The first pages to receive a makeover will be the home page, Artist Main, Albums and a new News page. We will also be rolling out a new header across all our pages. Things may seem a little weird as certain pages will look new and others look the same. Please bear with us. We have a large site! In the coming days, we will write about the new pages with screen shots. As always, we would love to hear what you think.

Update - Check out screen-shots of our new homepage.
Update 2 - Check out screen-shots of our new header.

--AOL Music Team

We are pleased to announce the latest addition to our family - Where It's At. Where It's At is the ultimate pop culture treasure map. Have you ever wanted to know where the hospital from Grey's Anatomy is really located? How about the real Hotel California? You can find all these historical pop culture spots and more on Where It's At.



Know something we don't? You can submit spots to us and get on the map.



Go ahead and explore. Have fun! We bet you'll find a spot you never knew existed.

We just pushed some new features live on Streampad - full screen mode and real time buddylist.

Full Screen Mode

Let's say you are having a party. You have lots of friends over and you are all grooving out to a Streampad playlist. It would be really cool if you could show off that playlist on your monitor or big screen tv. Well, now you can! On the bottom right of Streampad, you should see a new full screen button. Click that and you will be taken into full screen mode. You can use your mouse to advance through tracks, pause or adjust the volume. Hit ESC or the close button on the upper right to exit full screen mode. You can also use keyboard shortcuts:

Play/Pause - SPACEBAR
Next Track - RIGHT ARROW
Previous Track - LEFT ARROW
Volume Up - UP ARROW
Volume Down - DOWN ARROW





Real Time Buddylist

Streampad now can show you who on your buddylist is listening to music - in real time! If you open up the 'Profile' drawer, in addition to seeing a 'HISTORY' tab, you will now see a 'BUDDIES' one as well. Clicking on it will show you who on your AIM buddylist is listening to music at that exact moment. You will see buddies that are listening in Streampad (as long as they have enabled the 'Update AIM status with current song') as well as buddies who have set their AIM status to show their current song on Winamp or iTunes with their AIM client.

Yesterday we introduced a new and exciting product on The Boot. It is called Socialthing and allows you to connect with other people on the site as well as your buddylist. It sits unobtrusively at the bottom of the page, and offers features such as chat, IM and site updates.



Once you sign in, you will get access to your entire buddylist. You can send and receieve instand messages as well as easily send your buddies a link to the page you are on.



There is also a chat feature will will allow you to chat with other people that are on the site the same time as you. This is a great way to connect with other country music fans.



In addition, when you leave comments on the site, you will have the opportunity to share those comments with your buddylist. You can optionally send your comments to your buddy feed. This feed shows up in AIM for your buddies to see.

We hope you enjoy Socialthing and all the new features it brings to The Boot. We'd love to hear what you think about it.

We are pleased to announce that you can now upload, crop and save your profile picture from your profile page. Your profile picture is your AIM icon. Previously, you could change your picture only through the AIM client application. Starting today, you can do it straight from the browser.

To get started, visit your profile page at http://music.aol.com/profile
Make sure you are logged in.

Right under your profile picture will be a link to "Edit Icon". After clicking that, a window will pop up which will allow you to select an image from your computer, crop it and then set it as your new profile picture. In addition to your profile picture, this will replace your AIM icon as well.



Please note that Flash 10 is required for this.

We are very excited to announce two new major features for listening to music on our site.

Listening History

You are now able to keep track of what you listened to across AOL Music. Whether it be on CD Listening Party, Spinner Mp3 of the Day or anywhere else. On the bottom right of the Streampad player is a little profile button. Click it and you will see your history. You have to be signed in to access this feature.



Your History also appears on your profile page. You can make this public if you want and share what you listened to with the world.

Check out my profile - http://music.aol.com/profile/DanielKantor07/



AIM

In addition, we also added the ability to update your AIM status with what you are listening to. Just check the box "Update AIM status with current song" within Streampad and you will be able to show your entire buddylist what you are listening to.