2023 was a huge year for us here on planet Musixmatch, as we saw our community and catalogue both grow to new dimensions in size and quality. It was such a great year, in fact, that we couldn’t wait to rewind through it, and celebrate some of its highlights with you all! Buckle up, and get ready to travel back through a year that brought us new faces, new features, and a lot of new music and lyrics!

January

We started the year on the right foot, as we welcomed our new Head of Community Santi! He joined us with a strong passion for music, a clear vision, and a dedication to strengthen community connections. We also saw the official launch of the new and beautified Academy, which proved hugely successful in walking new users through our guidelines and safeguarding the quality of our catalogue.

February

This was a big month for bug fixes. Those of you who were with us last year may remember some infamous issues in terms of website stability (shudders with Error 400 flashbacks). February was the month where we managed to squash these bugs, while we worked on long-term plans to keep them away (more on that coming later!)It was also a month that saw a brand new feature, the Performer Tagging tool! It allows music lovers to assign lyrics to the artists who perform them, removing any doubt about who sings that line that hits you every time!

March

March saw the birth of the first draft of our ‘Guide to Catalogue Issue Reports’, which helped our community report problems, and helped our staff fix them! We’ve seen a great improvement this year in the speed of catalogue solutions and it’s thanks to the streamlined reports coming from our community. Good job folks!

April

Firmly into 2023, we thought April a good time to check in with our community and hear your Musixmatch inspired thoughts and stories. Your response was touching and overwhelmingly positive; you can see the highlights in this word map, summing up your responses to the question, ‘What do you love about Musixmatch?’

May

In May we welcome our new Product Manager Cansu, and the internal Community got together under her leadership to set our plans and establish our projects in anticipation of the second half of the year. The creation of a new Beta Website (the long-term website fix I mentioned earlier!) and stronger measures to control the quality of our lyrics catalogue were the main events and we left the session with a strong desire to deliver strong improvements!

June

We had yet another addition to the team in June, as our Community Intern Maral joined the squad. Her positivity, creativity, and fresh outlook on content and engagement made a huge difference and we were thrilled to have her with us. You’ll have probably noticed her providing support on Slack, and curating community-driven articles here on Connected. While her internship ends with the end of the year, her legacy will live on without doubt!

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July

July saw some awesome additions to our Insights pages, which provide our passionate contributors with deep-dive analysis into the Writing Guidelines. The Yoruba and Hausa pages were published thanks to Specialists Gbémilékè F. and Mukhtar A. respectively, while Andreks enriched the existing Spanish Insights with a localized slang glossary with the help of the other Spanish Specialists. And it wasn’t just July that saw movement in these pages! Many other Curators and Specialists helped optimize this resource over the year, to the extent that we now have 14 localized language versions. That’s an insight worth sharing, great job team!

August

This was a month for enhancing community connections. Maral, alongside Specialist Abbas, held a video call bootcamp with the Persian Curator Community in order to discuss key topics surrounding the language. In particular, a bug surrounding the font that was being used to present Persian content was uncovered and, as a result of this meeting, we were able to create a bug ticket and work towards a solution. August also saw the introduction of our ‘Frames’ which celebrate exemplary community support, particularly within the Slack channels. The Frames help strengthen the connection between moderators and the community by empowering the most dedicated and passionate contributors to help each other. We’re immensely proud of our Framed moderators, and grateful for the support they give the community.

September

True to our word, September saw us hosting another video-call bootcamp, this time with the Spanish Specialist team, led by Pablo, which we enjoyed just as much as the Persian one! We also made a tweak to the content push request form, in order to make it easier for you, our community, to use and easier for us to work through, resulting in bigger and better pushes delivered to the mission. Finally, September saw the birth of our ‘Forever Lyrics’ Twitter page, which you all helped name!

October

October was a time for putting faces and personalities to names! We were blessed with the visit of Nico and Sara, two of our Italian Specialists, to our office headquarters in Bologna. You can read all about the day in this Connected Article; it was such a lovely experience that we’re keen to replicate with other Musixmatchers in the future.

November

November not only saw the addition of 4 more Framed users taking our total to 7 (Đức Lực, Vivien, Marcin Pilarski, Nicolas, Peter H., Brayan Gutiérrez and KittenInACave), and another Insights page, this time in the Akan language thanks to Curator Caleb, but also the birth of the Extended Guidelines as developed by English Specialist Martyn. As if that wasn’t already a lot, November also gave us Canvases for the Slack channels, which several of you were keen to set up. We want to give a special thank you to all of you for your support in developing resources like this which are of huge benefit to the whole community.

December

In the final month of the year, we saw a tentative return of the Translation mission and promise of more to come soon. We also saw another Staff-Community meet up take place a Santi traveled to Argentina and met some of the Specialists there.

Wow, what a busy year! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; 2023 brought us many other initiatives, updates, and new features which we don’t have the time or space to mention here, but this reflection of the year is a great opportunity to remind ourselves or what we can achieve when we work together, and motivate ourselves to continue doing so into 2024!

We send you our warmest wishes for the new year, and look forward to reconnecting with you all in the one to come ♥