Since we launched Showcases in June, most of what we've built is about what happens after you press send. Did anyone open the link? Did the music actually play? And what can you do when a link has gone further than you meant it to?
Here's what's new.
Analytics, rebuilt
The Analytics page now opens on five numbers for the range you pick: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or all time.
- Views: how many times a release page was opened. The same visitor counts once per release per day, however many times they open it.
- Plays: how many tracks were started. The same visitor counts once per track per day.
- Downloads: how many tracks were downloaded, one at a time or with Download All, counted the same way.
- Listeners: roughly how many different people showed up. It's worked out without cookies, so it's an estimate: one person on a phone and a laptop can count twice, and two people on the same home network can count once.
- Active shares: how many of your releases have a link that works right now: sharing is on, and the link hasn't expired or reached its play limit. The date range doesn't change it.
Each number has its definition printed right under it, so you don't have to guess what counts.
Below those numbers you'll find:
- A day-by-day chart of views, plays and downloads, which you can also open as a table.
- Your top five releases for the range, ranked by plays.
- A full list of your artists and releases that you can search and sort.
All dates are in UTC.
Export still works one release at a time, as a CSV or JSON file: a summary, plus a row for each day and each track with activity. It contains counts only, with nothing that identifies an individual listener.
If a range holds more activity than the Analytics page can total in one go, the figures are left out and you're asked to pick a shorter range. The page won't show you a total that quietly covers only part of the range.
Analytics are anonymous counts. They never show an email address or a location, and nothing on the page singles out one listener. The only listener addresses you see anywhere are ones people give you: an invited address that unlocks an invite-only release, someone asking for access, someone signing up for updates, or someone leaving feedback with their email.
An email the first time someone opens your link
The first time someone other than you opens one of your release links, we send you an email. It doesn't fire for:
- Link-preview fetchers, such as the ones WhatsApp and Slack use to build a card when a link is pasted.
- Other automated visits we can recognise.
- Anyone who is still at the password or invite screen.
It tells you a release page was opened, not who opened it or which release it was, and it points you to Analytics. It covers release links only; artist pages and showcases don't trigger it.
It's sent once per account, ever. If one of your links was already opened before this email existed, or you've opted out of product emails, you won't get it.
A warning when listeners can't play a track
Sometimes a listener presses play on your release link and the track won't load. The player reports an error, or nothing arrives within 15 seconds. Gatefolded now records when that happens.
If a track has failed for a listener in the last 7 days and nobody has played it successfully since, the release's page in your dashboard shows a warning above the track list: "Listeners couldn't play a track in the last 7 days". The warning names each track, how many failed plays it had, and the date of the first one in the last 7 days. Only the artist's owner sees it.
The usual cause is a missing or damaged audio file, and the fix is to re-upload the track's audio. The warning clears once someone plays the track successfully, or once its last failure is more than 7 days old.
Your own plays don't count, so playing the track yourself while you're signed in won't clear it.
Some limits:
- It covers release links. Showcases and artist pages don't report failures yet.
- It tells you a track failed, not why.
- There's no email. You see the warning when you open the release.
Sign everyone out
When someone enters the password or verifies their email on a protected release, they stay unlocked for up to seven days. That's convenient until a link travels further than you wanted.
On a release with a password or an invite list, Share settings now has a Sign everyone out control under Access Control. It ends every unlock on that release at once. Anyone who had got in has to enter the password or verify their email again before they can play anything else.
It doesn't change your password or your invite list, so the people you still want in can get straight back in. Only the artist's owner can use it; members can't.
Three other changes now end access, too:
- Changing the password signs out everyone who got in with the old one.
- Removing an address from the invite list ends that person's access, rather than letting their unlock run out.
- Turning sharing off and back on means everyone who had unlocked has to unlock again. While sharing is off, the link shows the same not-found page as a link that never existed.
Where it stops
Signing people out stops them at their next request: the next time their page loads, or the next time their player asks for a track. It can't pull back what their player already has.
- A track already loaded in someone's player, including the tracks it lined up on either side, can keep playing for up to an hour.
- A download that has already started will finish, and a download link someone was already given keeps working for a few minutes.
- Nothing can stop someone recording music they've already heard.
If a link has gone further than you wanted
- Invite-only release: remove the address that shouldn't have it.
- Password release: change the password, and send the new one only to the people who should have it.
- To start everyone over without changing anything else: use Sign everyone out.
- To shut it down for now: turn sharing off.
For more on what a protected release shows the people who aren't invited, read What a Private Release Looks Like to Everyone Who Isn't Invited.