Howdy folks,

Many of you may have noticed that our beloved Yahoo! Music site, though rich in content, has become a bit outdated in look and feel. Ok, I’ll admit it: the site looks like something out of 2001. That’s because we haven’t changed it much since, well, 2001.

We’ve finally decided to change that. Today we’re launching our new Homepage in beta, with a new feature set that we hope you’ll love as much as we do. Some of the new goodies include:

• What’s New Today: the top module on the page will bring you the best picks from our editorial team, served up twice daily. Ranging from the popular to the brand new and from beloved to the bizarre, we’ll be showcasing the most interesting stuff the Music world has to offer.
• Personalization: If you’re like me and the editorial selections will seldom appeal to your off-beat tastes (ok, Lyndsey has promised to feature the new Chemical Brothers album this week! It’s pretty great, I highly recommend it), never fear! One of the most exciting features in my opinion is the new Personalized Recommendations module, which will provide recommendations of music videos, songs, albums and artists to check out, all based on your ratings. If you haven’t rated any music with us, now would be a great time to start.
• Charts: Everyone wants to know what’s popular, right? We’ve expanded our charts to include songs and albums, in addition to videos. If you click on ‘View All Charts’, you can drill down and see charts by genre, so you can dig in and check out the most popular indie rock songs, jazz albums or blues videos (yes, we really do have blues videos. Who knew?!)
• Blogs: We’re marching boldly into 2006 by embracing this whole blogging thing. I think it might be big. Seriously, I’m very excited that our editorial team has pulled together some great writers who will be taking on different beats, talking about everything from the week’s best new releases to the hip-hop scene to music from your favorite reality TV shows. We’re going to be adding more bloggers in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
• Concerts: Ok, this is one of my personal favorites. We’ve done a mashup with Upcoming, a user-generated events site that Yahoo! owns, to bring you listings of concerts happening in your local area. The Concerts page also includes a handy map. If you know a show is happening but can’t find it, just go to upcoming.yahoo.com and add it.
• My Radio: This is a preview of things to come, but we’ll be giving you persistent access to your personalized radio station throughout the new pages. This is something we’ll be rolling out across the rest of the site.

This re-launch of our new homepage is only the first step in our efforts to bring our site up to date and provide you with a much better user experience. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be revamping our entire site, adding new features, changing the look & feel, improving performance and adding fresh content. We hope you like it. If you want to make sure you see the brand new Homepage, just go to music.yahoo.com/beta. Please check it out and click on the ‘feedback’ link on the page to send us your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

One more thing: I want to publicly thank our very talented design, development and QA teams who make this all possible. It’s really a pleasure to work with smart, creative, energetic and passionate people. You guys really make it all possible. Thank you.

Go check it out!

Cheers,
Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music