Staff News Including Album Tips

For those who followed along last year, 2023 was highly productive as we released several new features, expanded our reach, and constantly improved every facet of our platform. We're still on a creative roll, so expect even more activity in 2024.

Please read on as I have some important news to share including a few tips:

Album Tips

• When adding album information, ALWAYS select a leader. Sometimes there are co-leaders, but please pick one. This is particularly important when we present album information on our new pages (see below).
• Enter all musicians in the personnel box, even if they only play on one track. AAJ is an interconnected database and the overflow personnel box is a free-form text field that's essentially useless beyond your album review page.
• You can change album information by going to your album review page, clicking the EDIT button, then clicking the orange CHANGE ALBUM INFORMATION button.

Your New Album Pages

We created two new album pages to present your year-end picks and reviews. We kept the article archive page which will remain accessible from your member page, but we added these two:

• Year-End Picks Page. Example: Chris May's Year End picks page. You can build out your page by revisiting your old album reviews and checking the "year end consideration" box from the article update form. If you need a hand with this, contact me.
• Album Reviews Page. Example: Jack Bowers' Album Review page. 2,604 reviews covering 93 pages. Incredible!

Big Questions

If you're inclined, please post a comment to our latest questions:

• Why Is Jazz A Big Deal Everywhere... Except In The US?
• Which jazz records in your collection are most sentimental to you and why?

Speaking of Big Questions, if you have a question to present to our readers, please pitch it to me.

Worth Noting...

• We improved your member page bringing certain pieces of information up closer to the header. View your own page for the changes and new links.
• Album review submissions are up slightly so we are returning to three published album reviews a day.

Our Surveys

Please take a few seconds and participate in all four of our one-question surveys. Seriously, seconds is all it takes and your feedback is important. We're using the surveys to learn more about staff and reader preferences. We'll use everyone's feedback to make informed decisions about AAJ's future.

The Numbers

We made several navigational and search engine improvements to AAJ over the last six months resulting in an increase of 3,000 more daily readers. We also doubled our Jazz Near You traffic.

Lastly, though the redesign project is taking longer than expected, we are making progress and we hope to wrap it all up over the next two months.

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Posted to Publisher's Desk IN THE All About Jazz GROUP
Read more posts by Michael Ricci