hey everybody!
 
the new music section has been getting more polished and usable every day.  i wanted to start a thread to explain the new direction it's taken, and how it can be useful to you... because i think most people here use re2 and not so much the online database (aka music section), but i think if you knew the power of the new music section you might be visiting it more
 
originally, the music section was meant to be a place where people could look up bpm and key information for songs, which came from all the re2 users.  hence, we could be sharing the results we were getting...  obviously, there's a lot more useful metadata that can be shared (such as styles, tags, beat intensity, similarities, etc)... the new music section has the goal of making vast amounts of useful music information at your fingertips.  it's way more than a database of keys/bpms now, however, you can still use it for that purpose too
 
the new database lets you browse and search info not just on songs, but on releases (albums), record labels and artists...  to give you an idea of how vast it, there is information on almost 1 million artists right now, over 90,000 record labels, almost 1 million releases, and over 5 million songs!  this information is constantly growing too...  the information in the music section does not solely come from re2 users any more.  information is used from sources such as discogs and lastfm as well (new sources will be added with time)...  so, it is essentially aggregating useful music info from across the net and making it available in a user friendly, web 2.0 experience!
 
with that bit of background info, i'd like to explain how to use this new site, and in doing so you'll hopefully see some usefulness
 
when searching, you will always be searching in one of the 4 categories: artists, labels, releases or songs.  this can be set in the "Type" combobox at the top of the search...
 
the "Quick Views" next to it changes the default sorting properties and columns.  the "Featured" view sorts all the items by score, "Highest Rated" sorts by the average rating, and "Charts" sorts by popularity... i plan to add a view to see recent music as well
 
for each type of item you can search, there are different columns you can choose to display.  you can customize which columns display by clicking the "columns" button in the top right.  for example, for artists/labels you could add the column "# releases", or for "songs" you could add "beat intensity".  clicking a column header in the search grid sorts it (so you could sort by release date, for example)... and the grid itself is very flexible, there are no longer any limits to the # of search results.  as you can see the initial views show all items, and if you wanted you could scroll down all 5 million songs
 
clicking any style on the left will filter the results to only those items of that style.  if you were viewing artists and clicked "downtempo", for example, then the results would show the "best" downtempo artists at the top (or most popular, or highested rated, depending on your view)... you can expand some styles and search more specific sub genres, such as "tech house".  this is one way of finding new things that you might like...
 
for more advanced search filters, you can click the "search options" tab in the bottom left.  the options you see will depend on which type of item you're searching.  searching songs offers the most type of filters, most of which are self explanitory... (i.e. search by artist, label, tags, bpm range, key, beat intensity!, release date, track length, and more).  if you search by label, for instance, you could see all the songs released by that label, with the best ones on top...
 
whenever you are searching, clicking a row in the search table will bring up the profile details.  the specific details vary for each type...
 
its worth noting that if you were viewing an artist's profile, for example, and then clicked the "releases" or "songs" tab, that not only is it showing you all releases or songs by that artist, but its sorting them by score and thereby showing you the artist's "best" songs at the top, taken from things like ratings and play count on lastfm and other metrics...  i've found that if i'm checking out a new artist it's nice to check out their better material first
 
i should also note that everything should be cross referenced, so you can navigate freely.  if you double click a similar item or a release, it will show you the details of that profile, and you can browse as such.
 
the most useful tab i think on each item is the "similar" tab...  the results of this tab attempt to utilize all the information available to show you the most similar items from the entire database.  hopefully as more information is assimilated, the results of this tab will get better...  however, the results are already promising!  by combining so many data sources i think mixshare will have a shot at making good recommendations...  so, have a favorite record label or artist?  go see what's similar and you might find something new...
 
anyway, expect more cool tabs to show up.  for example, i want to add a "compatible" and "mixouts" tab to song profiles, so you can see what's harmonically compatible and mixouts people might have added.  i've even thought about adding a tab to see where the releases/songs could be purchased and the prices at various stores (so if you found something new you might know where the best deal is for it)...  also possibly a tab for youtube videos
 
another really cool thing i haven't quite gotten to yet, is the ability to learn a user's musical preferences from their re2 library info, and then to be able to recommend new artists/labels/albums/songs that they will like...  i think there finally might be enough info to do this reasonably well, we'll see!  with the amount of music being released growing as fast as it is... having the ability to sift through the infinite sea of music to find stuff you'll love will be increasingly valuable...
 
whew, guess i talked about a lot!  feedback is welcome!
 
p.s. i'll add the ability to register online to use the music section, but your re2 username/password will work for now...

hey there,
 
sounds like you figured it out.  i might try to add progress bars in certain places.  for the main search, you will see "loading..." right below the grid whenever you start a search, and when the server responds you should see the # of results updated in that same line.  searches should only take a second or two at most.  if it hangs it might be because i'm restarting a server or something, since its still in heavy development  there are, however, a few places that are slow and still need some optimization... for instance, viewing similar songs and releases can take 5-10 seconds still, because mixshare does all the calculations at that point, but otherwise most places in the site respond pretty quickly to me...
 
and as i'm sure you've noticed, you should be able to see the bpm/key information directly in the search grid, without having to view a song's details...

fyi--added a "mixouts" tab to song profiles who have them...  will try add a "compatible" tab to view harmonically compatible/within bpm range songs like a key search as well, as soon as i figure out how to get it to perform well on 5 million songs

where are the key codes and bpm displayed?
Thats all I want/need and now I cant find them.