A Simple Streaming Music Sharing Page for Chorus

Jason Tate Jul 1, 2019

The music streaming service revolution has been one of the biggest, and most exciting, developments to the music and technology world in my lifetime. We went from driving to a store to buy music, often without ever hearing it beforehand, to having countless hours of music in our pockets with virtually no limits to what we could discover and listen to with the mere press of a button.

As someone that runs a music website, and now a weekly newsletter, that often includes recommendations about new music, I’ve long struggled with just how to share those recommendations with the most people. On this website, I often link to the YouTube video in the post itself for instant listening and then will link to Apple Music and Spotify when appropriate (or if the song isn’t on YouTube yet) since those are the two biggest streaming platforms. I like those short URLS that a lot of labels and PR people are using these days that aggregate all of the streaming platforms into one place for easy sharing; however, what I really wanted was something that I had a little more control over. What if I use a service like this and then it goes under, and all my links die? All of a sudden hours of meticulously linking music recommendations on this website or my newsletter could end up having dead links. So, after coming across the excellent Song.Link service and their API, I decided I would be best served in creating something for myself. That way I could easily create a place to share a song or album, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the URL going away in a few years or it not being updated as streaming services come and go.

The end result is a page that includes links to all the big streaming services, as well as a YouTube video for quick streaming if it exists, and links to purchase the music as well. For example:

Introducing the Chorus.fm Shop

Jason Tate Apr 8, 2019

One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a very long time is put together a merch store of some kind. I wanted to do this going back to the AbsolutePunk.net days but could never get the support needed to do it. I’ve played around with a few different options over the past three years, but when I saw Less Than Jake post up their Threadless shop last week, that was the kick-in-the-ass to make this a priority. I had a lot of fun putting this together last week, and I think it’s a good first step with a bunch of simple and classic designs. If you want to browse for yourself, you can check out our Threadless shop right here.

You’ll find the Chorus.fm logo in various designs, like a full color centered logo that looks great on darker clothing, the logo on the left breast, the logo in a monochrome white (centered, and breast), and a monochrome black logo (centered, and breast). All of the shirts come in various t-shirt weights and colors (I’m partial to the tri-blend). And there’s tanks, sweatshirts, hoodies, and longsleeve shirts as well for men, women, and kids. And there’s also various products like mugs, stickers, bags, and pillows available as well.

Along with the Chorus.fm merch, I’ve also finally realized my AP.net merchandise dream by putting the classic AP.net heart logo on merch as well. There’s the left breast version, a version with the logo and text that sat at the top of the website for years, and a fun “music mends broken hearts” shirt for if you want to remember the slogan that 16 year old me thought was amazing. These come in all the same colors and clothing options as the Chorus.fm logo.

I also tossed the Encore logo on some shirts as well, and the AP.net heart logo is available on other items like stickers, mugs, pillows, and things like that.

Take a look around, and if you see something you like, please grab it. I don’t make much per sale, but the little bit that I do will go right into keeping this website and community running. And when it shows up, please send me some photos so I can see it all out in the wild. I can’t wait for the first story of two people meeting in the wild in our little website’s shirts and giving a knowing nod.

All of the merchandise is digitally printed and processed via Threadless. They have product and sizing information on each product page and a 100% happiness guarantee (if you’re curious about the brand of t-shirts printed on, you can find that information here). If there’s an issue with your order you can email them and they’ll make sure it gets taken care of. I’ve ordered a couple of things off Threadless in the past and was happy with the quality. As I said, I love their tri-blend shirts. I even ordered three of these over the weekend. (Yes, I’m going to be the guy wearing shirts with both of my website’s logos on them.) I plan to add other designs and products to the shop in the future, and if you ever have an idea for a product or design, let me know!

The Third Anniversary of Chorus.fm

Jason Tate Apr 1, 2019

Today marks the official third anniversary of launching this website.

This year was another great one for the community. There were quite a few new features added to the website, and we saw good growth in pretty much every metric that matters to me. One of my goals for the year was to start writing a whole lot more, and that morphed into a weekly newsletter that is now regularly over 1,500 words a week. I didn’t podcast nearly as much as I wanted to, but the episodes we did release I’m really proud of. My goals for 2019 are to try and figure out a way to make regular podcasting a thing I can do again, continue my weekly Liner Notes, add some new features to the forums that have been on my to-do list for a while now, and start re-thinking what a redesign of the main website could look like and what it would take to write that code and implement it.

I’m able to do these things because of the support of so many of you. I can’t thank those of you have become supporting members of the website enough. That this number, specifically, keeps increasing is why I know I can keep doing this website for another year. It’s because of your support that this website can exist and I can work on it each day. If you’re not a supporting member yet but enjoy visiting and reading, I’d love if you’d think about signing up. We’re getting so very close to this being the only job I have to have, and I’m getting excited thinking about the possibility of diving into a significant code re-write and re-design and not having to worry about needing to stop and take a freelance job in the middle.

I always find it fun to look back on the past year and evaluate everything that has taken place, over the past twelve months we’ve seen:

3,684 new articles posted on the main site. (13,086 total)
1,912,545 words have been published all time.1
802,906 new forum posts were made. (2,700,066 total)
11,381 new registered accounts. (93,338 total)
1,367,965 likes given out since last April.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that visits this website each day. It’s been an incredible journey from AbsolutePunk.net to Chorus.fm and beyond. I feel extremely lucky that I get to do something I love and care about each day and it’s a true pleasure to be able to talk about music, pop-culture, entertainment, and technology with so many of you.

1,053,621 written by me.↩

The Second Anniversary of Chorus.fm

Jason Tate Apr 1, 2018

Today marks the second anniversary of Chorus.fm. Sometimes it feels like the world is stuck in slow motion with so much news and chaos surrounding us and the days making the weeks feel like months. But then I also can’t figure out where the last two years went. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was saying goodbye to AbsolutePunk.net, and hoping that some readers would follow me here to Chorus. I want to thank all of you that have been reading the website the past two years. I’m finally coming to the point where I don’t feel like everything I’ve done has been defined by AP.net, and where what I’m doing now, this website, this community, can be something that at the very least fulfills me in a way that AbsolutePunk never really could. It’s like looking at pictures of what you wore in high-school and wanting to yell through time to buy clothes that fit. Chorus.fm feels like it fits me. And every day I feel lucky that it’s something that I get to do. So, thank you, all of you. Especially those that have become supporters and helped make this website everything that it is.

Here’s a run down some of the numbers from the last 12 months:

4,257 new articles posted on the main site. (9,402 total.)
1,420,222 words have been published on Chorus.1
1,002,023 new forum posts. (1,897,160 total.)
47,191 new registered accounts. (81,957 total.)
1,779,477 likes given out since last April.
5,106 private message sent per month (average).

I’ve got a lot of things planned for this year. The goal is to improve the website and try some new things. As always, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, email, or in the forums with thoughts, ideas, or concerns about the website. And if you like what we’re doing, please give our supporter options a look. If you can swing $3 a month to help us out, it would mean the world to me. It’s with the support of readers like you that we’re able to keep publishing and stay online.

I’m using a new tool to calculate the number of words published this year. It should be more accurate going forward. 730,299 of these words were written by me.↩