Magnatune web site completely rewritten

Today you're seeing a completely rewritten-from-scratch new Magnatune.com web site. About a year of effort went into this, so I hope you'll find some things to like about it.

A few key new features are:

0) it's pretty! it uses javascript!

1) you can play albums directly from the home page, making it much faster to try music out

2) tabs on the home page let you quickly navigate between large numbers of new and popular albums in all our genres

3) the audio player is HTML5 based, with automatic use of Flash (and IE6) if you're using an older web browser. This means it takes much less CPU power than the old flash-based approach, songs start faster, and it works on every browser I tested (I tested IE6/8/10, Chrome, Safari and Opera, on Windows, Mac and Linux). The web site even works (with fewer features, though) if you have javascript disabled.

4) the entire web site is fully iPhone/iPad/Android compatible, with no features lost when you use one of those devices. With hopefully only a few exceptions, the things you need to "touch" are big and fat and so easy on the fingers.

5) you can click "hide this propaganda" on the home page, and all the annoying sales-text is removed, so you can focus on listening to music. Plus, "no propaganda" setting is remembered in a cookie, so you won't see any the next time you visit either.

Please send me an email or post a blog comment if you have any problems. There is a lot of new technology behind this, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are still some problems, despite our testing.

What's next? We have more features coming, but which will require yet more technology changes on our end, so we wanted to put this out first, with fewer major changes, and iron out the problems before causing yet more chaos.

Let me know what you think!

-john

Comments

[James]

How long until we can (a) submit login information over HTTPS, and (b) submit login information using something other than HTTP Basic?

[Winnie]

I already wrote you an e-mail, so let me make it short here: just plain awesome!

[Marc]

Hi, I really like the new layout, especially the new tabbed album info page and the bigger album covers in the genre lists. Nice!

Some notes:
- I'm using a screen resolution of 1280x1024, but still i get horizontal scrolling bars. The content of the page is displayed fully, but there is blank grayish space right and left of the content. This looks a little bit weird. It would be better if the outer spacing would be just as wide as it needs to be to fill the page without the need for horizontal scrolling.
- On the album info page, a volume slider would be nice.
- Also the possibility to fast forward through the songs would be needed, at least for longer songs.
- I think there should be a little more navigation possibilities: Let's say I'm on the new album list (http://download.magnatune.com/genres/new), then the only way to change to another list or genre is by clicking the magnatune logo and starting over from the start page. For a better overview, i would wish for some small navigation icons (or at least text links) to the genre lists and the new and popular album lists. Or a drop-down box in which all the lists are, well, listed and selectable.
- A minor graphical glitch when using Firefox: if I scroll down on long lists, after a while the background starts to repeat. This doesn't happen in Chromium.

[John from Magnatune]

re: How long until we can (a) submit login information over HTTPS, and (b) submit login information using something other than HTTP Basic?

A few months more to wait, but it it's the cards. We're switching to a different web server technology which will enable both, and that'll also bring ratings and user playlists to the table.

I didn't want to change all the tech at the same time, because that would likely cause too many problems at once.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: - On the album info page, a volume slider would be nice.

I agree, and this is coming in a few weeks. The volume will be saved in a cookie, so all of Magnatune will use it and it'll be remembered when you come back too.

. . .

re: - Also the possibility to fast forward through the songs would be needed, at least for longer songs.

I agree, and this is also coming in a few weeks. Currently, I'm thinking of a +30 button, to jump 30 seconds into the piece. Click it several times to jump more. That's a bit simpler to operate than a slider, and is similar to the "commercials skipper" that DVRs have.

. . .

re: - I'm using a screen resolution of 1280x1024, but still i get horizontal scrolling bars. The content of the page is displayed fully, but there is blank grayish space right and left of the content. This looks a little bit weird. It would be better if the outer spacing would be just as wide as it needs to be to fill the page without the need for horizontal scrolling.

Alas, designing for very wide screen is really hard to do well -- should we add more tabs on a wider screen, or make the existing tabs wider? and what about fixed width layouts like the albums page? Stretched wider, the layout doesn't look that great.

At least for now, the width of the page is fixed. In the future, I'll go back to this topic and definitely support even wider screens.

. . .

re: - I think there should be a little more navigation possibilities: Let's say I'm on the new album list (http://download.magnatune.com/genres/new), then the only way to change to another list or genre is by clicking the magnatune logo and starting over from the start page. For a better overview, i would wish for some small navigation icons (or at least text links) to the genre lists and the new and popular album lists. Or a drop-down box in which all the lists are, well, listed and selectable.

The reason for this is that I tried really hard to "dial back" the visual complexity with this rewrite of Magnatune. The previous web site had way too much on the screen.

There are also many more genres than the ones on the home page.

These are now implemented as "tags" which appear on artist and album pages, for example for Jami Sieber:
Tagged as: New Age, Ambient, Cello, Ethereal, Massage.

all of which are linked.

Historically, our web server logs showed that people use use the "all new albums" page tend to live our web site, so I've de-prioritized that page, and increased the visibility of narrower genres.

. . .

re: - A minor graphical glitch when using Firefox: if I scroll down on long lists, after a while the background starts to repeat. This doesn't happen in Chromium.

This should be fixed now. Sorry about that!

-john

[Garfunkel]

Hi John, I'm a small videogame developer looking for music. So I've been going through some tracks on magnatune. Now with the site revamp I can no longer see which albums I've listened to. (The browser would simply color previously clicked links differently, and that worked perfectly). It's pretty horrible for me because I'm very picky and fished out a handful of tracks from hundreds of albums.
Now the site looks great but the overview or management/control of the music listening experience has decreased.

I would love it if you could find a way to take advantage of the browser history once again. Hopefully still without having to create a user account, that's just another barrier to entry.

Also your "send me an email" webpage looks scary. I see only a "submit your email address" button and nothing else. To me it comes of as "Would you like some spam today?". So maybe a basic submit form where you can type your message first (invest) and then have to fill in your email address in order to be able to send your message. (barrier)

Also I agree with Marc that it would be nice to go any point in the song by clicking on a bar like in the old player.
Right now if I want to start a song over and click on another track and then back to the song I wanted to start over, it resumes play from the same position :) Which might be a feature, but I haven't figured out how to restart a song yet. I might just be missing something obvious.

Sorry if all this comes of as too negative, I do appreciate the difficulties of a good user interface and so far I've had a positive experience using magnatune to dig for music at my own pace.

Thanks,
Garfunkel

[John from Magnatune]

re: Hi John, I'm a small videogame developer looking for music. So I've been going through some tracks on magnatune.

Garfunkel, you should be using our web site http://ilicensemusic.com if you are looking for music to reuse. That site has a number of features geared for your kinds of use, such as playlists, ratings, the old flash player (so you can jump around in a song) and most importantly, you get a license that is valid for that use. If you're a magnatune user, we don't allow our music to be used for commercial purposes w/o a license, which you need to get from iLicenseMusic.com.

re: Also your "send me an email" webpage looks scary. I see only a "submit your email address" button and nothing else. To me it comes of as "Would you like some spam today?". So maybe a basic submit form where you can type your message first (invest) and then have to fill in your email address in order to be able to send your message. (barrier)

Thanks for the suggestion -- I've added a "we will not spam you" disclaimer at the bottom of that page now.

re: Also I agree with Marc that it would be nice to go any point in the song by clicking on a bar like in the old player.

Agree, and that's coming soon.

re: I haven't figured out how to restart a song yet.

Restart is now the default when you stop/start a song.

re: Sorry if all this comes of as too negative, I do appreciate the difficulties of a good user interface and so far I've had a positive experience using magnatune to dig for music at my own pace.

No worries, there's a lot of change to digest, and if there are things I can do to the site to make it more useable, I want to do that!

-john

[Mark Stosberg]

John,

You mis-read the comment about horizontal scrolling above. The issue is not that your design is too narrow-- it is so wide that is causes horizontal scroll bars to appear. I use a vertically oriented monitor. The old design fit on it fine, but the new front-page design is not "responsive" or "fluid", so in the face of a monitor that is narrower than the target, only part of the design is visible, and horizontal scrollbar appears. Even when a window that is 1000px wide, I get horizontal scrollbars.

Beyond that, the refreshed design looks nice.

[RyczBrnz]

I really miss the ability to play a random mix by genre or grab a podcast by genre that was in the old website- is that coming to the new website soon?

[Aaron]

Hi John, I think the new website looks great and I find it easier to browse through the genres I am interested in. One piece of feedback (and it could just be me) is that it took me a while to work out how to access the artist bios on the new site (i.e. by clicking on the artist's name). The text didn't look like a link (at least on Firefox). Anyway keep up the great work! Best wishes, Aaron

[John from Magnatune]

re: One piece of feedback (and it could just be me) is that it took me a while to work out how to access the artist bios on the new site (i.e. by clicking on the artist's name). The text didn't look like a link (at least on Firefox). Anyway keep up the great work!

Hi Aaron -- you can get to the artist page two ways:

1) click on the artist name (you already discovered that)
2) click on the photo of the artist on the top right of the album page

It's true that it's not obvious, so let me think a bit about what else might work to indicate a link w/o creating too much visual noise.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: The issue is not that your design is too narrow-- it is so wide that is causes horizontal scroll bars to appear. I use a vertically oriented monitor. The old design fit on it fine, but the new front-page design is not "responsive" or "fluid", so in the face of a monitor that is narrower than the target, only part of the design is visible, and horizontal scrollbar appears. Even when a window that is 1000px wide, I get horizontal scrollbars.

Ah, I understand now. Yes, the page is quite wide, with bands on the right and left.

However, there is javascript on the page so that each page load automatically centers the page, so that the bands aren't a problem. You still see a horizontal scroll bar, though.

I will give a bit of a think on how to design this otherwise. I think we can use a CENTER html tag to get rid of this way of doing things.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: I really miss the ability to play a random mix by genre or grab a podcast by genre that was in the old website- is that coming to the new website soon?

Yes, absolutely, that feature is coming soon, in the next two weeks.

-john

[David modica]

absolutely fantastic!.... LOVE IT!.... great job!

[Thomas Steinseifer]

at the first view: THIS IS REALLY GREAT! Thanks a lot for much much working!

[Tom Jenkins]

Hi John,
Firstly, can't believe I missed that you were speaking in the city where I live just a few days ago! Darn it.

Secondly, I really appreciate the testing on Linux, not many would have bothered. However, the player still seems to be trying to use the flash method, and fails to play audio whatsoever (latest Chrome and Firefox on Ubuntu). I have flash installed and don't usually have problems playing HTML5 audio.

Thanks again - I love Magnatune.

Tom

[infirit]

Like the new layout, much more modern. However you destroyed the way I used the website ;-).

What I did was click on the new album page and look through the list of new albums to see if I already listened to it. I could see by clicked link (different colour) and by looking at the date.

Now I have no way to see which albums are new, no date and no coloured links. The easiest solution is to provide an rss feed.

[John from Magnatune]

re: Like the new layout, much more modern. However you destroyed the way I used the website ;-). What I did was click on the new album page and look through the list of new albums to see if I already listened to it. I could see by clicked link (different colour) and by looking at the date. Now I have no way to see which albums are new, no date and no coloured links. The easiest solution is to provide an rss feed.

One idea I've had is to add a "listened 9/1/2013" text under each new/popular albums that you have listened to. That would like the changing link color, but a bit more informative.

The plan, though, is to have a rating system, so you can listen to things and 1 to 5 rate each album you've listened to, and thus keep up to date and get a list of things you like.

-john

[panzi]

Awesome new website!

You say it's completely rewritten? I wonder, why do you use deprecated font tags, spacer GIFs and tables for formatting instead of CSS? That's awfully 90ies web and hellish inflexible (the 90ies are gone for more than a decade now!). The rewrite would have been an opportunity to use modern HTML/CSS (at least HTML/CSS for IE8+). If you want to change fonts now you have to change all the font tags instead a single declaration in a single CSS file.

Hint about froms: Put label tags around input elements and their labels (or if they aren't adjacent in the source use for="INPUT_ID" on the label element). This way I don't have to hit the tiny radio button with my mouse but can click anywhere on the label. For text input elements clicking the label selects the input element. I'm always annoyed when I website does not do this (I don't understand why one would not do this). It probably also improves accessibility.

Also the source of the new website actually contains less meta data than the old one. The old one had certain rel/attribution meta data. Why don't you add meta data like shown here?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1623047

This way search engines like Google can understand that it's about a music album and they can show the appropriate information in the search results! Adding these meta data should be very easy.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

[panzi]

PS: You should really use h1, h2, h3, ... for headlines and not font tags! You shouldn't use any font tags. And if you want to use HTML5 (and thus invoke the HTML5 parsing algorithm) you should use . Currently you don't have *any* doctype! And you should really use UTF-8 instead of ISO-8859-1. You have artists with names from non-latin (or non-ASCII) locales.

[panzi]

PPS: If you would add a single link element to the head of your website like described here: https://github.com/itteco/iframely#quick-api-response-intro then other websites could transform any links to Magnatune albums to embedded album players!

[panzi]

Also, the cover images on album pages have two alt attributes.

[John from Magnatune]

re: the cover images on album pages have two alt attributes.

Whoops, will fix.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: PPS: If you would add a single link element to the head of your website like described here: https://github.com/itteco/iframely#quick-api-response-intro then other websites could transform any links to Magnatune albums to embedded album players!

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, and the link you provided doesn't really tell me what you want on the web site.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: I wonder, why do you use deprecated font tags, spacer GIFs and tables for formatting instead of CSS? That's awfully 90ies web and hellish inflexible (the 90ies are gone for more than a decade now!). The rewrite would have been an opportunity to use modern HTML/CSS (at least HTML/CSS for IE8+). If you want to change fonts now you have to change all the font tags instead a single declaration in a single CSS file.

All fonts tags are defined in a very few javascript functions, so it's easy for me to change the look of the site. By not using CSS, I achieved greater backward compatibility, as I've been testing all way back to IE6, and many browsers long had CSS bugs, which wasn't the case with the FONT command.

Spacers are there because I can make tables with graphics that look right in all browsers. When I tried not using spacers, I found browsers rendered the pages differently, which caused subtle display anomalies. Getting IE and Firefox to render the pages the same way was not easy.

re: Hint about froms: Put label tags around input elements and their labels (or if they aren't adjacent in the source use for="INPUT_ID" on the label element). This way I don't have to hit the tiny radio button with my mouse but can click anywhere on the label. For text input elements clicking the label selects the input element. I'm always annoyed when I website does not do this (I don't understand why one would not do this). It probably also improves accessibility.

I agree, that's a good tip, but where do we have radio buttons on the site? I'm not saying we don't, but nothing I use frequently immediately comes to mind.

re: Also the source of the new website actually contains less meta data than the old one. The old one had certain rel/attribution meta data. Why don't you add meta data like shown here?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1623047

Good point, will do, though actually the site is heavily optimised for non-javascript browsing, which is what the google indexer uses, so the non-javascript version is where the tags should appear.

-john

[panzi]

but where do we have radio buttons on the site?

In the share tab for albums are check boxes and for the embed code there are radio buttons.

OT: What tags are supported in these comments? It seems to strip blockquote tags and it stripped my doctype example.

The HTML5 doctype is simply this:
<!DOCTYPE html>

I don't think supporting IE6 is a worthwhile goal. Even XP has IE8. How many of your users are still using Windows 98? My guess is that the tables might confuse screen readers and spacer GIFs definitely add confusion. At least you give them empty alt tags (which should hide them from screen readers). I don't know what browser vendors are planning, but my guess would be that sooner or later things like font tags and bgcolor and valign attributes etc. will stop to be supported. E.g. support for the blink tag was already removed. You should at least really use h1/h2/... tags. The way the web site is currently written responsive design is basically impossible.

Magnatune is the only web page I noticed in a long time that still uses spacer GIFs and such. (And also one of few that still use Apache instead of nginx after a rewrite.)

And you should always properly %-encode urls and encode & as &amp;. Everything else is broken HTML that browsers have to guess-fix.

Meta tags
There are a bunch of competing meta tag definitions. You should probably add all of them. It's easy. Using them will enable other web pages to automatically detect information about albums and even embed the flash player widget.

I'll include examples for this album:
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/

General meta tags
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#link-type-author
These days only name="description" is relevant (used by Google). And there is NO reason not to use UTF-8 on the web EVER. Maybe the description text should be more concise and less context depending.

<link href="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/" rel="canonical"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="description" content="With his previous release, The Piano, reaching #19 on iTunes Classical and selling out on Amazon 4 times in less than 2 weeks, independent artist Chad Lawson had grown tired of the "pretty sounding piano" recordings as of late. So, one afternoon, Lawson sat down and write The Space Between in one complete setting. The only exceptions were 'Heart in Hand' (composed for upcoming film) and 'A Love is Born' (written for an automobile commercial)."/>
<-- I'm not sure who's copyright is most appropriate to declare here -->
<meta name="Copyright" content="2013 © Chad Lawson"/>
<meta name="author" content="Chad Lawson"/>
<link rel="author" title="Chad Lawson" href="http://magnatune.com/artists/chad_lawson"/>

Open Graph
http://ogp.me/ and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/music/
This is what facebook uses (and many other sites).

<!-- Required tags -->
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Magnatune"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="The Space Between"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="music.album"/>
<!-- canonical album page url (helps search engines to resolve ambiguous urls, e.g. if they can ignore the query part or the last /): -->
<meta property="og:url" content="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://he3.magnatune.com/music/Chad%20Lawson/The%20Space%20Between/cover_400.jpg"/>

<!-- Optional tags -->
<!-- the order between og:image and og:image:* is relevant, because there can be more than one image (same for any other type) -->
<meta property="og:image:type" content="image/jpeg" />
<meta property="og:image:width" content="400" />
<meta property="og:image:height" content="400" />

<meta property="music:release_date" content="2013-09-15"/>
<meta property="music:musician" content="http://magnatune.com/artists/chad_lawson"/>

<!-- if there where pages for each track (if if it's just via #hash) on could describe each track like so: -->
<meta property="music:song" content="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/#track1">
<meta property="music:song:disc" content="1"/>
<meta property="music:song:track" content="1"/>
...

<!-- The flash embed -->
<!-- Actually I'm not sure if you simple can combine music.album and video like this or if you'd need to chose one of the to and set og:type to video.other for the flash embed. But I think it's fine to combine them. -->
<!-- a video musst be either flash or mp4 (maybe also webm?) -->
<meta property="og:video" content="http://embed.magnatune.com/img/magnatune_player_embedded.swf?playlist_url=http://embed.magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/hifi.xspf&amp;autoload=true&amp;autoplay=&amp;playlist_title=The%20Space%20Between"/>
<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
<meta property="og:video:width" content="350"/>
<meta property="og:video:height" content="160"/>

Twitter
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards/types/player-card

<meta name="twitter:card" content="player"/>
<meta name="twitter:title" content="The Space Between"/>
<meta name="twitter:description" content="With his previous release, ..."/>
<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://he3.magnatune.com/music/Chad%20Lawson/The%20Space%20Between/cover_400.jpg"/>
<!-- this will be embedded as an iframe, so it must send a correct Content-Type, especially if it's falsh -->
<meta name="twitter:player" content="http://embed.magnatune.com/img/magnatune_player_embedded.swf?playlist_url=http://embed.magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/hifi.xspf&amp;autoload=true&amp;autoplay=&amp;playlist_title=The%20Space%20Between"/>
<meta name="twitter:player:width" content="350"/>
<meta name="twitter:player:height" content="160"/>

oEmbed
http://oembed.com/
For this you need an oEmbed endpoint that returns XML or JSON. Then you have to announce the endpoint in your page like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/json+oembed"
href="http://api.magnatune.com/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmagnatune.com%2Fartists%2Falbums%2Fchadlawson-spacebetween%2F&amp;format=json"
title="The Space Between" />
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml+oembed"
href="http://api.magnatune.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmagnatune.com%2Fartists%2Falbums%2Fchadlawson-spacebetween%2F&amp;format=xml"
title="The Space Between" />

These endpoints then may return something like this (I only provide the JSON format, the XML format is completely analogous):

{
"version": "1.0",
"type": "rich",
"provider_name": "Magnatune",
"provider_url": "http://magnatune.com/",
"width": 350,
"height": 160,
"title": "The Space Between",
"author_name": "Chad Lawson",
"author_url": "http://magnatune.com/artists/chad_lawson",
"html": "<object ...</object>"
}

If you use this and register with http://embed.ly/ a LOT of web sites will support embedding widgets for Magnatune album links.

Iframely / oEmbed 2
https://github.com/itteco/iframely
http://iframely.com/debug
This isn't really affiliated with oEmbed 1, they just call it oEmbed 2 (I don't know if they still do, actually). Because oEmbed 1 provides HTML code for the embed Iframely thought of something else. Embedding HTML code from a 3rd party can be a big security issue (cross site scripting). With these link tags you can describe your embed in a safe manner (it will be embedded using an iframe or an img tag, if it's just an image):

<link rel="iframely player" title="The Space Between"
media="(min-width: 150px) and (min-height: 140px) and (max-width: 600px) and (max-height: 600px)"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
href="http://embed.magnatune.com/img/magnatune_player_embedded.swf?playlist_url=http://embed.magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/hifi.xspf&amp;autoload=true&amp;autoplay=&amp;playlist_title=The%20Space%20Between" />
<link rel="thumbnail" title="The Space Between"
media="(width: 400px) and (height: 400px)"
type="image/jpeg"
href="http://he3.magnatune.com/music/Chad%20Lawson/The%20Space%20Between/cover_400.jpg"/>
<!-- you might want to provide more resolutions of the thumbnail -->

The value of the media attribute is a CSS media query. You can define min-/max-width/-height or fixed width/height and an aspect-ratio and you can select different media types (screen, print, ...). But don't assume that more than size and aspect-ratio constraints are supported.

If you use this iframely should automatically support you. But you can also manually register here: http://iframely.com/qa/request
The iframely software is open source, but they also provide a web service like embedly that costs money. They also maintain a embed provider white-list that costs money.

Microdata
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1623047
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
http://www.schema.org/MusicRecording
http://www.schema.org/MusicAlbum
This isn't part of the HTML head but instead enriches the document with meta data.

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/MusicAlbum">
<h1>
<a itemprop="byArtist" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/MusicGroup"
href="/artists/chad_lawson"><span itemprop="name">Chad Lawson</span></a>:
<span itemprop="name">The Space Between</span>
</h1>
<!-- ... -->
<h2>Songs:</h2>
<ol>
<li itemprop="track" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/MusicRecording">
<a itemprop="audio"
href="http://he3.magnatune.com/music/Chad%20Lawson/The%20Space%20Between/01-I%20Know%20a%20Love%20So%20True%20and%20Fair-Chad%20Lawson_spoken.mp3">
<span itemprop="name">I Know a Love So True and Fair</span></a>
<meta itemprop="duration" content="PT5M57S"/>(5:57)
</li>
<!-- ... -->
</ol>
</div>

The link with the itemprop="audio" attribute should probably not directly link the mp3 file, but instead a web page where the file is played. E.g. something like href="http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/chadlawson-spacebetween/?playtrack=1".

My Recommendation
Use the general meta tags, Iframely/oEmbed 2, Microdata and either Open Graph or Twitter cards (or both).

On http://crowdranking.com/ we use the general meta tags, oEmbed 1, Iframely/oEmbed 2 and Open Graph. There is no microdata for our domain specified (we plan to specify one ourselfs - we have an unpublished draft). And when someone adds a link to a Magnatune album on Crowdranking I convert it to an embed (currently broken because of the new design of Magnatune - I have more important things on my TODO list before I can fix this). For this I have to parse the album page. If you would use just any of these meta tags it would be a great help. It would make parsing the page much more stable against changes of the HTML source.

-panzi

[panzi]

PS: Example what it looks like if Iframely understands you:
http://iframely.com/debug?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcrowdranking.com%2Fcrowdrankings%2Ft89g0

Example what it looks like if embedly understands you:
http://embed.ly/docs/explore/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDf-uemc-e3w&maxwidth=500

That's what Iframely can currently extract from Magnatune:
http://iframely.com/debug?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmagnatune.com%2Fartists%2Falbums%2Fchadlawson-spacebetween%2F

However, embedly seems to have better meta data guessing if there is none provided:
http://embed.ly/docs/explore/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmagnatune.com%2Fartists%2Falbums%2Fchadlawson-spacebetween%2F

Still, no flash embed and the title is not nice.

[panzi]

There are some wrong links in the Download tab: The PNG links actually also link the JPEG covers!

[panzi]

I just noticed, it's completely broken HTML. There is no </head> tag and there's a script element between </body> and </html>. If you would at least add a </head> tag iframely can speed up parsing artist pages (it would stop parsing AND receiving data after it finds </head>, because it does not need anything from the body).

Also, I remember you had open graph meta data at one point. Why did you drop it?

[John from Magnatune]

re: There are some wrong links in the Download tab: The PNG links actually also link the JPEG covers!

Thanks for catching that, I've now fixed the javascript that caused that bug.

-john

[John from Magnatune]

re: I just noticed, it's completely broken HTML. There is no tag and there's a script element between and . If you would at least add a tag iframely can speed up parsing artist pages (it would stop parsing AND receiving data after it finds , because it does not need anything from the body).

Will fix, thanks.

re: Also, I remember you had open graph meta data at one point. Why did you drop it?

An oversight -- I'll bring them back.

-john