December 2019 site update

[albummaster]

Just another quick update as we begin to enter the busy end of year period with many publications now starting to release their 2019 (year) and 2010s (decade) charts and these help to form part of BEA's own rankings.

Improvements to BEA continue to be rolled out on a weekly basis. The latest improvements include an updated latest releases page, additional ratings metrics on each album/artist/chart/track page (including the standard deviation and overall 'ratings' percentile rank for each item). There have also been dozens of smaller improvements (too many to list) including a dynamic composition for custom charts, improved rendering on iOS, and a more prominent presence on Twitter and Facebook (daily posts to both).

In the background, lots of work has also been happening to improve the speed of the site. Page load time has halved in the last six months due to incremental improvements to the back-end, and serving newer image formats to those browsers that support them. The site now feels a lot snappier to use, and mobile users should notice this especially.

A user survey will be conducted shortly to collect feedback on BEA and harvest any ideas to improve, or widen the scope of the site. The last survey was conducted about five years ago and yielded some great ideas (many of which have now been implemented), so if anything is bothering you about the site, or you have any ideas to change things, this will be a great chance to let us know.

Enjoy the site & more soon.

AM