This is getting to be a regular thing eh?

So of the remaining issues playcounts are mostly fixed, and are only missing data from a few days after our music launch. This data will also be restored in the next few days. Some people are still not able to see the player on their page, and this is due to the profile templates/styles you're using that are covering it. We're investigating to make sure the new player is not any different than the old, but it seems like this is mostly the same as it was before. If you really are dying to see your player, just get a new profile template. Try our new editor, btw. :-) Download links for free tracks are back today (if the artist allows them of course), and we're still populating the lyics & buy links. Song upload probs for bands should be fixed. We know there are still a few non-US users having trouble adding songs to the single song player like they used to. We are investigating that. And we know that bands can still not arrange their songs or set them to randomize. These are the only outstanding issues.

Everything else was explained in my earlier blogs. (Some people, of course are confused by the new UI, my last blog explained some of those issues.) We expect to have the remaining kinks worked out by next week. We are loading up the song database with the remaining tracks from Orchard (tons of indie music) and EMI (all the labels in the EMI family), so not all the songs are in the database yet. We're also working on deals with other indie label aggregators so you can get the full catalog (not just the songs they have now) of all the indie bands that want to participate. Remember not every band WILL want to participate, because they may prefer not to allow free streaming of their music. For those bands we have to respect their wishes and not include them in the free streaming offering. After all, it's their music and their livelihood!

What happens from here? Now that the basic service is in place, you can expect to see continual development and an awesome new service -- yes, of course you'll get to randomzie the songs on your player; yes, of course, you'll get to choose different player skins; and yes, of course, you'll get to share all your playlists and song history (not just the 10 song playlist in your profile) with your friends on MySpace. But more than that, you can expect an entirely new set of features to make MySpace the most enjoyable free online music service you've ever encountered. That is the goal. Stay tuned, and, as always, I'll be listening to your feedback to set the direction of the new features. We build this for you, so whatever it is you ask for is what we focus on. Thanks!

P.S. And the player will get faster. That's a top priority right now. :-)

Update on Friday's issues: 

1) We fixed the single song player issue. Everytime you have a 1 song playlist and add a second song, you'll be prompted whether you want to stay with the 1 song player or move to a playlist. The only place this is NOT true is when you add from within the 'my music' page. That will be changed soon so you have the option from there as well. Of course if you delete the 2nd song from within 'my music', you'll return to the 1 song player. Non-US users are still using only the 1 song player and there is no 'my music' section.

2) The bug with spaces in music search was fixed. Remember you can search from the top nav  on every myspace page (the search box up above, just select the music dropdown), or you can go to the music main page, then click 'my music' and search from within 'my music' song manager.  (This is available to US users only right now.) The latter is the best way to do a song search, because you can listen to and add songs immediately, without visiting a band's profiles.

3) Song counts are NOT fixed yet, but they will be. We have not lost any previous data and all plays are still being recorded. They are just not showing up yet. The restoration of old counts is taking longer than expected. Yes, we are even including the counts for your deleted songs, which means we will have your full total plays when it is all restored.

4) Players not showing up has been fixed. This was mostly due to people's profile layouts inadvertently covering the music players. This has been fixed as of last night.

5) Buy, Download and Lyric links are still not fixed yet. We are still working on populating all the data so that you can buy or download the appropriate song, and view lyrics for the songs that have them. Yes, you will still be able to download songs for free if the artist allows it. And yes, you'll still be able to view lyrics.

New issues not mentioned Friday:

6) Have you tried to add a song and you're told the feature is disabled? This is because you are trying to listen from within the US, but your culture setting is NOT set to USA. To correct this, click My Account, on the nav bar. Then click "Account" again and make sure your "Preferred Site & Language" is set to USA. Remember the country listed on your profile is NOT your culture setting. Your profile could say you live in Africa, but your culture setting could be set to something else. This should be fixed by tomorrow, however you should set your culture setting properly anyway, so you get the right features and content designed for US users.

7) Have you tried to add a song and the screen grays out and you don't see anything? Just scroll up. The window to accept the new feature & player is appearing off screen for some people (mostly IE6 and IE7). If you're on a musicians page where the player is down low and you click the button to add a song, you may need to scroll up to the top of the page the first time you add. This will be fixed by tomorrow.

8) Have you added a song or a playlist and it doesn't seem to be on your page? Click Music, then My Music, then click the "My Profile Playlist" link on the left. When looking at the profile playlist, make sure the box "Display on My Profile" is checked.

9) Autoplay not working? Do you want your song to start automatically on your profile? Make sure you have autoplay turned .. "My Account", then click "Miscelaneous" then make sure the "Auto-start my profile music player when visitors come to my profile" is checked.

10) Bands having trouble uploading & reordering songs. The upload bug seems to be a problem related to Firefox 3.0. Try using IE to upload your songs while we workout this bug. The reordering songs is temporarily disabled. This will be back soon!

Did you know that you can watch the Presidential Debates LIVE on MySpace? The first one is tonight at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET. Check it out at www.myspace.com/MyDebates. MySpace partnered with Comission on Presidential Debates to be the online partner for the debates. That's pretty amazing.. never dreamed of something like that when we started 4 years ago!

We created a really fun tool that lets you express your opinions on the issue, show who your voting for, and its even educational as well. (!!) Check it out on the MySpace blog. You can see if your friends are liberal commies or conservative pigs... I suppose I'm a little of both.

Use this tool and post it post it on your profile – after each debate, your scorecard will update with video clips on issues you care about most. And, starting today, you can submit questions for the candidates – Tom Brokaw might ask your question during the Town Hall debate on Oct 7!

MyDebates is just one of many ways MySpace is empowering you to make an informed choice in this important election!

Update on the new music playlists!

1) Single Song Player. I know some of you want to keep a single song playlist. Rest assured, you do have this option. It may just be hard to figure out at first. When you add a new song, just make sure you go to "my music" and delete your old song. Then you'll have a 1 song player that is the same size as your old one. To get to "my music" click "music" from the main menu / navigation or click "manage your playlist" on the bottom of your profile player. We will be changing the way it works so you have this choice and dont have to go back and delete your old song each time.

2) My Music search. We introduced a bug this morning where typing a two word search will result in no results. i.e. "Taylor" would work, but "Taylor Swift" will not. To get around this, a temporary solution is to use the music search in the nav bar up above on every page. Go to the search box, choose the music drop down and search there instead of within the 'my music' setion. We should have a fix for this by tonight!

3) Song counts. This one is more for artists than regular users. We know your playcounts are inaccurate. This is because we're migrating the old numbers to the new system. You will not lose your playcounts, and all current counts are being recorded. It'll just take a few days for all the data to synch up and for playcounts to be normal again.

4) Players not appearing. There is a bug where certain profile styles hide the new players. We are working on this right now, and expect to have a fix soon (by tonight). So if you've made a playlist or if you are a band and your player is not showing up, don't fear. We know about the issue and are working to correct it. We also know the new players are loading slower than they should. Speed improvement are in the works!

5) Buy and Download links. We are gradually populating all the buy and download links. If a band offers the track as a free download then you will be able to do that. If they don't, then it's only for streaming. The same goes for buying. The links are not all there yet, but they're gradually being populated with the right choices. 

The team has been hard at work on this project for months and months. Of course we try to anticipate and find all bugs before things launch, but inevitably some creep through. We are working around the clock to fix these as fast as we can... most of us haven't slept, but we're all very excited to get the new music players & search working flawlessly. Thanks for your support & patience! You may wonder how you get to hear all this music for free? Well it's because Toyota has sponsored the ads that you see around the player. So thanks again to our launch sponsor, Toyota.

Thanks for your patience during the transition to the new nav bar and home page. I know there are some problems and we are working on them as I write this. Some are real bugs, and some are just people being confused by the new system.

First off, there's been some slowness on login and in page loading.  Rest assured the new look will load faster than the old once the transition is complete.

Lots of people have asked me where the mail "inbox" link is. All you have to do now is click "mail" on the main nav. In other words, the first link in the drop menu is clickable, which I guess is not that clear to people. We need to go back to the drawing board and make that a little more obvious! Try it out - each of the drop down commands (Mail, Friends, Profile, and More) can be clicked on. The "More" page leads to Events, Chatrooms, Polls and all the features that are not on the main nav. Friends leads to your friends page. Profile shows your profile and Mail, as mentioned, goes to your inbox.

Some users are having trouble logging in from mobile phones and Sidekicks. We are working on a fix for this right now.

The "remember me" check box on the login page is not working yet. Coming soon!

The new profile editor doesn't load for users who have used "hide codes." That bug should be fixed by Friday.

The Nav doesn't look right on some customized profiles. We will be tweaking the code to minimize the problems it creates on certain profile styles.

Finally, search seems like its limited to 18 - 68 years old. That's not the case, however. When you do a regular search, you are searching all ages. That's just a UI bug that will be fixed shortly.

Lastly, the search will have the blog preffered list option, or we will provide you with a new method for picking preferred lists for your blogs.

We are rolling out some fixes Thursday morning and some more on Friday. Thanks for hanging in there!

You may have noticed a warning page when clicking a link to a non-MySpace website. There is nothing to be alarmed about. The warning does not mean the website is unsafe. The warning is simply there to tell you that you are indeed clicking a link that is taking you to a new website, not another page on MySpace. We hope this will prevent  you from typing your email & password into a fake MySpace login page (a phishing page).

Displaying this warning is something I wanted to try as an experiment to see how much it could reduce phishing (and thus Spam). We turned it on briefly last week for a test and it seemed to work, so I'm going to leave it on for awhile. If you haven't seen it yet, the warning looks like this:

Right now we've whitelisted the most popular sites people click on (such as RockYou, Slide, YouTube). We know these sites are not hosting Phishing pages, so we don't need to show you the warning page. We will gradually add more & more sites to the whitelist so you won't be bothered as much.
 
To learn more about phishing, read the blog I posted last week.

UPDATE: This measure has greatly reduced phishing on the site, so we're going to leave it on by default.  However, we have now made the exit warning box optional. If you don't like seeing it, and you're sure you can tell a phishing page from the real myspace login page, click the checkbox to hide the exit warning, and you'll never see it again.

Here's Part II of my Nav updated ! (Go back and read yesterday's post if you haven't!) So everyone reacted very positively to the new nav, that's great news. Since the new nav has a lot of the standard commands in the drop downs (Compose, Inbox, Sent Mail, Friend Requests), that means we can take certain commands off the home page, and make the home page simpler. I've made a series of small modifications to the home page. Take a look here (click the pic to see a bigger version):

Here's a description of the small changes. I have notations on the pic above so you can follow along:

1. Note the new Nav up above. It will not show the "mood/status update" while you're on the homepage, since you can already update from home.

2. In the top right we've moved the date up and removed the "View my" links. Most of the items in "View my:" are now in the Profile menu drop down, but all of them can now be found under your user picture near position 3.

3. Near this area we have removed the graphic "control panel" and simplified the commands. This section, I think, was quite confusing before. It even took me some time to remember what some of the former links did. Now, the mail links and addressbook links in the control panel are moved under the Mail dropdown in the Nav. The Friend Requests link is now under Friends in the Nav.  Edit profile and Account Settings are now in the Nav. (Edit profile is also up top near your URL.) We've left the photo & video links under the user picture, and the manage calendar and blog links. Again the "view my" drop down covers everything you associated with your account from bulletin posts, to groups, to schools, to favorites. It's a catch all spot for all the things associated with your profile. The Nav "Profile" menu section contains only the key / popular ones like comments and pics.

4. There's a new application module (this is already on your homepage, but I've never mentioned it before). Apps let's you search for all the things you can add to your profile. People have been adding stuff to MySpace since we began, but we've never given you a way to search for them or automatically post them on your profile. That's changed with apps. Apps can also be designed for your home page, not just your profile. Which brings us to number 5.

5. Here's an example of an app on the home page profile. Apps are special features & utilities designed for MySpace and will depend on all the companies and developers that want to make them. This app "cities I've visited" lets you pick which cities you've been to, and read reviews about them from other users.

6. Because the home page can now be filled with various apps, we allow you to move them around and pick the order of the different modules & apps you want for your home page. Being able to move the modules is already live, though not many people have noticed it. It's a bit bare-bones right now. You can only open & close items and move them up and down. As the home page evolves, you'll be able to remove sections entirely, as well as move them to any of the three columns on the page. You won't be able to move the ads on the top right. We gotta pay the bills!

If you'd like to see what it looks like without the notations, here's the same home page in a clean version:

A lot to read and explain, but if you take the time to take a look, I think it's actually pretty simple. It makes the home page a lot more intuitive for new users and cleans up some of the bad choices I made when we made the new home page (sorry!!)  I know users don't like things to keep changing, but I think these changes make sense and will stick for a long time. Also, there will be more & more home page themes coming that you can apply to this page, to change the colors and graphics. Let me know what you think!

Hey Folks -

We've been working on a new, simplified navigation bar for MySpace. The new nav only has seven main links: Home, Mail, Profile, Friends, Music, MySpaceTV, and More. It also has two sub-links to the far right: My Account and SignOut. Take a look at it here:

The Profile and Friends links give you easy access to your own profile and your list of friends. In "More" you'll find most of the things that used to be in the Nav (Forums, Groups, Classifieds, for example). All the features moved into "More" were not clicked on too often, so they've been de-emphasized in the menu.

Some of the menu items (mail, profile, friends and more) have drop down menus (indicated by the arrows).   The drop downs contain new links that weren't in the menu before - such as "Compose a Message" or "Who's Online" under Friends. We moved "My Account" to the nav because there are very important commands there that people tend to not know about, such as spam protections and notification settings.

Probably the biggest change is putting the status & mood into the header. This allows you to update your status & mood at any point while on the site. I'm considering making this one optional - i.e. you could set in your account settings whether you want to have your status updates available in the nav. Note the status updates would NOT show up in the nav when you are viewing other people's profile pages, or when you're on your homepage, since you can already change the status & mood from your home.The search bar remains so that you can search for friends and content on MySpace from any page.

Here is a screenshot of the new nav with the ad on top, and with a page on the site below it:

One last word, here's the commands that are in the submenus:

   Mail: Compose, Sent Mail, Saved Mail, Address Book
Profile: Edit Profile, My Comments, My Photos, My Videos, My Blogs, My Schools, My Favorites
Friends: Online Friends, Friend Requests, Friend Updates, Mood/Status, Favorites, Browse Friends, Find Friends (Search), Invite Friends
   More: Forums, Groups, Classifieds, Events, Top Blogs, IM, Mobile, Comedy, Film, Games

Let me know what you think. I'm eager to hear your feedback.