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@thisismyjam
Hello Goodbye
Friends, this is it. A quick post to let you know that The Jam Archives have been published!
Check out the final This Is My Jam.
Thank you for all your love and support. It’s been pretty special reading all your messages. Your last jams were especially rad, so before we flipped the switch today we threw them into a Spotify playlist. Enjoy :)
Jam Preserves
Hello! Matt & Han here with an important message about Jam.
After nearly a year assessing many options, we’ve decided to stop operating This Is My Jam in its current form. Read on to learn about why the two of us have made this decision, but first:
1. Your jams are not going away
2. Thank you thank you for turning this crazy online music experiment into a community; good vibes and great tunes made every week worth it 💝
We hate it when projects we love go dark, so we’re taking a different approach and archiving Jam the best possible way we can manage. We want to preserve your jams, and we want to celebrate all 2+ million songs and the people who curated them between 2011–2015. We know this is no replacement for an operational Jam, but we’re making this archive as sweet as we can, and we’re actually kind of excited about trying to Preserve Things The Right Way online.
Wait So What’s Happening Exactly
This Is My Jam will become a read-only time capsule on September 26, 2015. This means you won’t be able to post anymore, but you’ll be able to browse a new archive version of the site.
You’ll be able to explore all the people and music that made Jam, and listen to everyone’s jams as Spotify playlists as well. Think of it as the best record collection you’ve ever walked through, like this, curated by some of the best tastemakers we know (aka you!).
Your profile data (jams, loves, etc) will also be exportable in a few formats, including text lists; the read-only API will stay online for developers who want to play; we’ll also be open sourcing as much code as we can on Github. And if you don’t want to take part, that’s cool, you can opt out or change what data you want to preserve in your settings. (More about data in the FAQ).
Why We’re Doing It
First and foremost, it feels like we’ve explored This Is My Jam’s original mission best we could. We're ready to free up our evenings and weekends for new ideas and projects, while hopefully doing good by the thing that made Jam great: the 200,000 of you who shared more than two million hand-picked songs over the last four years, week after week. Whew. It’s been a serious privilege discovering music with you all.
tl;dr product nerd edition:
We started Jam in 2011, and since then the online music landscape has shifted dramatically – both in terms of how people listen to music and the ecosystem it exists in. This created three challenges for us recently:
Fractures in the services we rely on. In 2014, with the site on stable tech footing, the two of us decided to take new gigs and work on an upgraded, sponsorable version of Jam as a side-project that could become self-sustaining. But keeping the jams flowing doesn’t just involve our own code; we interoperate with YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook, The Hype Machine, The Echo Nest, Amazon, and more. Over the last year, changes to those services have meant instead of working on Jam features, 100% of our time’s been spent updating years-old code libraries and hacking around deprecations just to keep the lights on. The trend is accelerating with more breaking/shutting off each month, soon exceeding our capacity to fix it.
Product fit in a changing ecosystem. We founded This Is My Jam at the height of the Music Hack Day era, a time when more and more services were starting to offer web-embeddable audio and video. Capitalizing on this trend, we helped unify these experiences to enable beautiful song sharing regardless of platform. But as these platforms matured and consolidated, streams moved from the web into apps, and more sophisticated licensing and geographic controls meant “sorry, this cannot be played here” messages became the norm rather than the exception. Online music habits change quickly, and our specific approach doesn’t suit today’s users very well.
Shift to mobile. Should be no big deal, right? Unfortunately, rules around mobile streaming are very different from web streaming, prohibitively so. We spent our initial funding on the web version of Jam, and felt doing mobile properly would require a total product reboot, something we weren’t in a position to do at the time. Since 2012 we’ve also watched nearly a dozen different companies attempt mobile single-song sharing apps. While none have taken off quite yet, we really hope that one of them will! It would be genuinely exciting to see a new player pick up the torch.
All The Hugs
Okay, we need a lot of these! Jam wouldn’t have lifted off without the hard work and inventiveness of original developers Andreas and Ralph, and contributions from Ben and Aanand; IFTFOM for life. Thank you to The Echo Nest for giving us our start; Brian, Jim, and Dave, you guys are the very best (and Brian, sorry for stealing your domain). Love to Anthony and the Hype Machine crew for bouncing many ideas and a sweet integration that helped us get started. Props to Dermot, Mark, Van and Shannon at MTV for giving us work when we needed it the most bootstrapping Jam. Thanks to the friends and mentors who advised along the way; Fred, Anthony, Nat, and to the people who helped us get Proper Business done; Robin and Mia, Gregor and Sachin at Reed Smith, Bruce, Miles and Lou. And to those of you who helped us shape this plan and let us bounce ideas over a drink, you are the #realtalk; Kristen, Joanna, James, Matt, Matthew, Dan, Arkadiy and Sam. Last but not least, thank you to the friends and passionate music fans who have unconditionally jumped on board with all the music projects we’ve ever got involved with (yes even that one) and kicked the tires. There are too many of you to list, but we know who you are. The things we make wouldn’t be as fun or as good without your curiosity, passionate feedback and of course, bug reports ;-)
Onwards! Meet you back here for a final update in September when we’ve got an archive to show you. In the meantime, we’ll be answering any immediate questions that come up over in the FAQ. If you have one that we haven’t answered yet, hit us up on Twitter.
Love,
Matt & Han
Updated 08/27 to reflect September 26 archival date.
PS. Matt made a video inspired by the number of times we said “jam” in this post
Hello 2015 updates!
We have two new features from our upcoming release that we just couldn't wait to share, so they're live for you to play with early.
1. You've told us it's hard to quickly find the right jam, we're listening. The search screen is now learning from our song graph, which means: unless you're among the first to post a song or it's recently been taken offline, we can often suggest the best version of it on the web.
2. Wouldn't it be great if you knew what music your friends were discovering? With the new network tab alpha, you can! A mix of music from the Jambots (they try very hard to pick songs they think you'll like!) as well as music the people you follow are interacting with, our goal here is to give you a sense of the music in your jam scene.
Try these out and let us know what you think! We love hearing your honest feedback.
- Team Jam
Your Year in Jam
It’s December, which means one thing: the time of year-end lists is upon us.
We take our stewardship of your favorite songs very seriously, and 2014 is no exception. In years past, history features on This Is My Jam itself were limited. We resorted to building outer space and underwater vehicles to help you relive past hits.
“Why can’t I explore my past jams all year round?” many of you asked. So earlier this year we finally opened up full song histories on the site, adding playable screens for every song ever jammed.
Today that song history gains a new Year in Jam section! It recaps your top tunes of 2014 month by month, and pulls out highlights that deserve special mention.
See your 2014 Year in Jam here »
Many of you are creative/technical types with your own ideas for exploring a year’s worth of hits, so we've also added a new API call that gives developers their 2014 data in a single blast. If you build something cool, let us know and we’ll share it with the community!
It’s been a pleasure discovering music with you this year. I’m hard at work on a big site update, so see you all in 2015 with some tasty new stuff.
– Matt
What Exactly Is “Coming Out of Beta”? and What’s Next
Just over a year ago, we took Jam independent and embarked on a mission to find a sustainable future for the product.
The four of us all had to bring in money other ways, and we became a decentralized collective with Matt and I doing the heavy lifting. Andreas took his talents to the Echo Nest in Boston (and later Spotify in New York); Ralph did the same with GOV.UK; and Matt and I created a product design consultancy to pay our bills and bringing in revenue to bootstrap Jam while working on the next phase.
While freelancing, Matt and I worked through many different configurations and options for the future of Jam. It wasn’t easy, and in between cheering us on, there were a couple of times the jambots told us to get some sleep.
With things like this, the only way is through. Also, adrenaline ;-)
Coming out of beta
Our next phase as a mature product is a sustainable community. That is what “coming out of beta” means to us.
Matt and I are keeping Jam independent, and announced our plans for sponsorship a few weeks ago. We'll also soon be rolling out a product update that should not only be pretty cool for other companies that want an exclusive home inside Jam, but more importantly – the community.
This coming-out-of-beta update addresses many of the things you’ve been patiently writing us about, plus tasty new experience updates and a fresh look that will take Jam into the future. We hope you’ll like it as much as we do.
What’s next
While on 2014’s mission to create a path for the future, a pretty amazing opportunity came up for me to join a new team at Viacom Music Group to work on the future of music and entertainment. I’m excited to begin a new chapter of making things in New York (which you can read more about on my blog) and happy knowing that Jam is completing its evolution as I support it into its next phase.
Watch for an update from Matt soon on the features to come!
- Han
We Should Get Together
Last week we signed up our 200,000th member. Soon we’ll reach 2 million jams – that’s 2 million moments from people who love music, hand-picking a song that matters to them.
But numbers only tell half the tale: people have been using Jam to share great stories (like the time Pete got the Bee Gees to record his answering machine greeting); to make new friends; to debut new tracks; to share secrets; and even to fall in love and get married (congrats, Natalia and Paul!).
Since we took Jam independent a year ago, the community has continued to excite us with its richness in emotional, human connections through music. Sustaining that community is our priority.
And we’re not the only ones who are excited. Every month, companies and brands we respect and admire email us, asking if there’s a way they can get involved.
Today, you can. We’re announcing the Jam Sponsorship Program!
True to our product's values and design-centric approach, we’re creating a purpose-built program that’s beautiful, tasteful and effective. Not an addition, but a native part of the platform, from the creators of Jam.
Just like jams, the opportunity is one-at-a-time – meaning that sponsors get exclusivity in helping power the Jam experience and community.
We’ll be officially launching sponsorship soon, in conjunction with coming out of beta.
Want to be a launch partner? Write to us at [email protected]. We’re still shaping things, so it’s a good time to get together.
– Matt
‘Young Blood’ by Mapaga First track from @jamesyuill's new MAPAGA project, direct from the man himself!
All Your Jams Light up the Song Graph
It started with a request many of you have emailed us about – wanting to browse all the jams someone has posted.
Today, you can! Check out your own, or some of our favorites like garage_xplosion’s fuzzed-out guitars, ChampagneMami’s sizzling RnB party, or sarahbadr’s up-and-coming electronics.
Now these aren’t simply jams anymore – they’re history – and with that history there’s too much rich cultural context to not take this one step further…
Introducing songs
All the ‘song badges’ on your history screen link through to song screens. These are something of a club – a place where you can see and get to know everyone who loves that song. This was another frequent request: "how do I see the other people who are into the music I like?"
Beyond connecting you to other people with song screens, we also wanted to make them a conduit for the flavor of the song – like a home for that song, wrapped in all the emotional cultural context that Jam is full of. Compare Taylor Swift’s recent “Shake It Off” with the soon-to-be-big Silk Rhodes’ first release on Stones Throw, “Pains”.
While sifting through the half-million best songs of all time, we couldn't help noticing that our top tracks data is different than other music services, so we threw together some fledgling artist pages at the last minute. Check out the best Drake, Fleetwood Mac or Caribou.
The Song Graph
So why are these songs so special? For the last two years, we’ve been collecting very special, notable data on songs. A jam isn’t just any song – it’s the one you love, so that piece of data is “worth” more. When we looked at this pile of data, the best songs of all time, it ended up being about half a million songs. In online music, that’s not a very large catalogue, but Jam is about quality, not quantity.
There’s a lot of music out there and when we talk to people about it, they are often overwhelmed for choice. We’re trying to cut through that with the song graph. Our small-but-all-hits catalogue is a bit like Top 40 radio, but personalized and reimagined for today. And we do it all with one simple question: “what’s your favorite song right now?”
– Han
‘Saccharin Disco (Vol. 1)’ by JAZ These two mixes from @JAZ kept us going this weekend while we were putting the finishing touches on the latest site update.
‘Snakehips’ by OOFJ Not Safe For Monday
‘Can't Do Without You’ by Caribou Wow! This new Caribou track is dominating today's jam chart, and for good reason...
‘Emmenez-Moi’ by Charles Aznavour Happy 90th birthday, Charles Aznavour!
‘Kuar (Henrik Schwarz Remix)’ by Emmanuel Jal Rain or shine, this should get your Thursday moving.
‘The Coffee Cola Song’ by Francis Bebey Surprising and wonderful.
‘Babylon (feat. Kendrick Lamar)’ by SZA Mega SZA this week.
Loving these pix on the Guardian: "From Pink Floyd to PJ Harvey, our Street View specialist Halley Docherty shows us the world's cities through the lens of famous album covers"
‘Ritual’ by Nico Gomez & His African Percussion Inc. Hello, #FunkyFriday!