Tag Archives: Mavrix update

Mavrix Monthly Update November 2012

A quick note on what we shipped last month:

  1. Filters: All pages that have album or song listings, now have filters. For example, if you are browsing the list of albums released in 2012, and you want to see the films for which Pritam composed the music that year, Click on Filter, enter Pritam as Music Director and click Filter to see the filtered list. You can filter album listings using a combination of Label, Music Director and Lyricist and song listings using a combination of Year, Genre, Singer, Music Director and Lyricist. As with any listing page, you can also sort the filtered list.
  2. Associated With: When you are on the page of an artist who’s associated with other artists on MySwar, we show you the information right there. This includes well known associations likeVishal Dadlani’s with Vishal – Shekhar, as well as some that are not so well known, like lyricist Shellee’s association with Agnee.
  3. Keyboard friendly playlists: When you’re on a playlist, you can navigate to the next/previous song using the right/left arrow keys.
  4. The usual bug fixes and minor improvements.

Mavrix Monthly Update October 2012

A quick note on what we shipped last month:

  1. Prompt for search box. This is a small thing but people were typing all kinds of things in the search box (like “download please”), so we thought a prompt might help. Just to clarify – you can search for albums, songs or artists.
  2. Sorting. Now you can sort album and song listing pages based on a number of parameters.
    1. Song listings can be sorted on Song , Album, Year or Rating
    2. Album listings can be sorted on Album, Year or Rating
    3. A bunch of minor bug fixes and improvements

We haven’t posted a many updates in the last couple of months but that’s only because, we’re working on some big ones that should be rolled out by year-end. Stay tuned!

Playlists – Now on MySwar!

We have playlists on MySwar now! To save you the trouble of individually picking songs for the playlists, we’re rolling out a bunch of pre-packaged ones. You can find the Playlist button all over our website. Here is a list of the types of playlists we have for you:

Album playlist – Playlist button on the album page.

Similar songs playlist – Playlist button on the song page in “Songs like this” section

Year playlist – On the browse year page.

Popular songs of the year playlist – One the popular songs of the year page

Genre playlist – On the browse genre page

Popular songs of the genre playlist – On the popular songs of the genre page

New release playlist – Playlist button on the new release page

Popular new release playlist – Playlist button on popular new release page

Award winning playlist by award – Playlist button on Award page

Award winning playlist by year – Playlist button on award by year page

Singer playlist – Playlist button on singer listing page

Lyricist playlist – Playlist button on lyricist listing page

Music director playlist – Playlist button on music director listing page

Popular songs of artist playlist – Playlist button on popular songs of artist page

MySwar playlist (requires login) – Playlist button on discover page

Advanced playlist – Playlist button on advanced search results page

We’re kicked about this feature and we do hope you like it. Try it out and let us know what you think. And spread the word, please.

Mavrix Monthly Update August 2012

Here’s what we shipped this month on MySwar:

  1. Added Facebook Like and Google + buttons for artists, albums and songs.
  2. Personalize recommendations – If you have subscribed for the new release mailer, you’ll start seeing personalized song recommendations from the newly released albums based on your ratings. The more songs you rate, the better our recommendations.
  3. Artist aliases – We have spent a lot of effort standardizing artist names (lndeevar/Indivar) so when you go to the artist page, you are looking at the complete discography for that artist. However, till now we didn’t have an approach to present a complete discography for artists who have been credited with different names in different songs/albums. For example, Poornima and Sushma Shreshtha used to go to different artist pages and therefore different discographies, even though they are the same person. We’ve addressed this issue by tying up artists credited under different names. At the album/song level, you’ll see the artist name as credited but when you search for an artist or click on an artist link you’ll see consolidated information that includes all name variations. Here are the name variations we know of and that we addressed in this release. If you know of other variations, please let us know.

Mavrix Monthly Update June 2012

Here’s what we shipped this month:

  1. Advanced search URLs – You can now share advanced search results through a URL. Here is a list of song sung by Lata Mangeshkar, composed by R.D. Burman and written by Gulzar.
  2. Popular songs by Genre and Year – The genre and year listing can be pretty heavy. To give you an easy way to explore those listings, we’ve replaced the Popular Songs list on the right sidebar, with a refined list relevant for the page you’re on. For example, if you’re browsing the album listing for 2011, the right sidebar will show you the most popular Hindi film songs (as rated by MySwar users) in 2011.  Similarly, if you are on the Rock genre page, the right sidebar will show the most popular Rock influenced Hindi film songs.
  3. Brand new backend – No change for users of MySwar, except that you will see new albums/updates sooner.

Mavrix Monthly Update May 2012

Not many updates this month except that we have shipped a lot of new features. Check them out and let us know what you think:

  1. Ability to watch song videos. From Tadbeer Se Bigdi Hui to Pareshaan.
  2. Forgiving search – Addresses transliteration variations and common typos. Searching for “nakab” will return results containing “naqab” and “naqaab” as well.
  3. Improved rating UX – Improved rating image and behaviour; Ability to rate albums and songs from almost everywhere on the website
  4. Improved sorting of popular songs
  5. Easy-to-follow prompt for newly registered users to rate songs
  6. Standardized look and feel of pages
  7. Ability to recover username in case users forget it
  8. Most popular songs at artist level. This is only available for artists for whom we have sufficient number of song ratings. Like Kishore Kumar.
  9. Added Facebook like box on right sidebar to make it easy for you to like us (*nudge*).
  10. Minor UI improvements
  11. Bug fixes

Mavrix Monthly Update March 2012

  • Song listing for the 1950s went live on MySwar. You can find song listings for films like Baiju Bawra, Mughal-e-Azam, Adalat, Paying Guest, Pyaasa,  Anarkali and Naagin here.
  • Bug/fixes cleanups implemented:
    • Breadcrumbs – These are now implemented across the website. Good for navigation, good for SEO!
    • Login issues – Fixed bug related to case-sensitive username – username is not case sensitive anymore. Also, the “Remember me” feature was not working – it works now.
  • Infrastructure related work – We’ve been doing some backend work. The outcome of this work will not be visible to you but it will help us run the website a lot more efficiently.
  • We’re hiring! Please check out our Jobs page or our LinkedIn job posting for details.

Mavrix Monthly Update February 2012

Listing for the 60s went live on MySwar in Feb. You can find them here.  

New features.Other than some bug fixes and a few UI/UX related changes, we added these features this month:

  • Categorized search suggestions – As you type in the Search box, we provide suggestions categorized as Albums, Songs and Artists to make it easier for you to find the item you are looking for.
  • Advanced search – Available as a sub-menu on hovering over the existing Search menu, Advanced Search lets you find songs by specifying the singer, music director, lyricist, period and genre. This works great when you want to see a listing of all R.D. Burman songs sung by Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle and penned by Gulzar. Or Kumar Sanu’s songs from the early 1990s. Or Lata’s ghazals for Madan Mohan. For now, this is an AND search. In other words, songs matching all the criteria specified by you are shown. I like this feature the best!
  • Browse awards – All the award-winning songs and artists are now available easily.
  • Trivia of the day – There is a lot of trivia on MySwar and we’re making it easier for you to uncover them by picking one every day and putting it on the home page. The trivia will also be tweeted out three times a day from our Twitter account. Follow us now if you are a trivia buff!
  • Ability to change ratings – This is for the registered users. If you have rated songs or albums and wanted to change them, this feature is for you. In the MyAccount page on the My Ratings tab, you can go ahead and change your ratings and also delete them if you want.

While we have a long list of features we want to implement, this list was prioritized based on feedback from many of you.

Do tell us what you think of these features.

60s Hindi Film Music – Newly Added On MySwar

The first page I went to after the 60s upload was through? Phoolon Ke Rang Se – one of my all-time favorites and the first song on the first cassette I ever owned!

Check out your favourite albums from that decade. Would it be Guide, Kashmir Ki Kali or Aradhana? Or your favorite song – Kehna Hai, Yeh Sham Mastani or Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar?

Or explore the “Songs like this” feature to discover underrated gems like this beautiful song called Aaj Ki Raat listed on the second page of recommendations based on Phoolon Ke Rang Se.

Hindi film music of the 60s bridges several generations of music lovers because it has the best traits of the 50s and 70s – the melody of the 50s and the rhythm and the modern influences that represents the 70s.

Check out the new listings and tell us what you checked out first.

Mavrix Monthly Update January 2012

MySwar.in opens up to public. We started the new year with a bang by opening up the MySwar beta for public on Jan 10. Thanks to all those who have used the website! Many of you have given us valuable feedback and we will be addressing them in future releases. Meanwhile, if you like what we have built please tell your friends about us by liking our Facebook page.

 

60s music coming up soon. Many of our users have asked us when the music from 60s would be listed on our website. The answer– Early next week! We spent most of January reviewing and cleaning up the 60s data. Sidenote: Here’s one of my favorite trivia from the music of the 60s:

Koi Humdun Na Raha is a direct lift, both musically and lyrically, of a song composed by Saraswati Devi, written by Jamuna Swarup Kashyap and sung by Kishore Kumar’s elder brother Ashok Kumar for the 1936 movie, Jeevan Naiya. None of the original artists were credited for the Jhumroo version of the songs.

Check out the original song here:

 

What next? Here is a partial list of things we’re working on now:

  • Analysis of the 50s music
  • Data cleanup – We know there are missing songs, albums, typos, etc. Some of you have helped us find these out and we’re chipping away at fixing these data issues. Please keep sending your inputs our way.
  • Categorized search suggestions – We suggest albums, songs and artists as you type in the Search box. We’re working at categorizing these suggestions as Albums, Songs and Artists to make it easier for you to find the item you are looking for.
  • Advanced search option – Our current search is rather basic. With the advanced search option you’ll be able to specify more search criteria and therefore the exact set of songs you were looking for.
  • Browse awards – An easy way to look at all award-winning albums and songs.
  • Many more…. Stay tuned…