Discography Updates
Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2016-07-22)
When we launched in November, we were still clearing some cobwebs, and making some changes to the site. But we were ready to share our work with you. We continue each week to make advances in the state of the site, but wanted to share with you some notes about one section in particular, the U2 Discography.
The first big update I’d like to draw your attention to is some new features in the “Catalog of Releases” section. When you scroll down to the bottom of any discography page you will see this section which attempts to catalog every U2 release with images and information about pressings around the world.
Prior to our recent updates, this page was sorted by country, and then by release type (5-inch CD etc).
We’ve added some functionality which will allow you some control over what you see, and will hopefully allow you to view what you are looking for quickly.
When you scroll to the bottom now you will still see the catalog information sorted in the same manner and you will see all releases worldwide as your default. But at the start of the section you will see a place where you can choose what “Media Type” you would like to view. You can choose to view all, 7-Inch Vinyl, 12-Inch Vinyl, Cassette, 3-Inch CD, 5-Inch CD, Digital or Other. Other would include anything that doesn’t fit under the earlier categories. Digital includes any digital releases we have included in the catalog.
You will see above an example of a catalog entry sorted by type. Just to remind you what you are looking at, “5-Inch CD” has been bolded to remind you that you have applied a filter, and are not looking at all releases.
To speed the entire site up, we’ve also broken some of the longer entries into multiple pages, and if you are viewing one of these entries with so many releases we have to split things up you will now see a page counter at the top and bottom of the catalog section allowing you to browse through other entries as you can see below in the entry for “Songs of Innocence”.
IMAGES IN ENTRIES
We are working on rescanning every image in our database. The old site at u2wanderer.org was wonderful, but many of the images generated for that site were done over 10 years ago now. We are working on rescanning every image at high resolution, and working diligently each week to add between 100 and 300 images.
To date most of the singles on CD have been completed. We are currently working on 7-inch singles, and those are complete up to the late 1980s. The digital releases have also been completed, and most of the solo projects, other releases with U2 etc have images now. We have not yet filled in the albums section but did recently fill in the “Songs of Innocence” page with all of the CD releases due to a request.
The image database is much more complete than it was when we launched, but we still have significant work in this area and we expect scanning to continue into the Fall.
NEW ADDITIONS
Down under “Artwork” there’s a few new sections we are filling out as we go as well.
The first is a section which lists recognition and awards for an album or a single. Here we list all of the information we have been able to dig up for each release including magazine “best of” rankings, radio station polls, Grammy awards and nominations, and more. In the image below you will see the list of “Recognition and Awards” for “The Joshua Tree” — the list is pretty staggering, and we are adding more information all the time.
Also with the launch of our new promotional video section, you can now find a link to all of these entries in the video section right in the discography entry itself. If you want to know about the videos just from “The Joshua Tree” you will find a link to all of these right in this “Related Promotional Videos” section that you can see above.
And just like the videos, if we have a story in our news archive about an album or a single, you can bet we’ve included the ability to find these from the discography page as well. If you want information about “Achtung Baby” you can search through our news section. Or you can just head to the discography entry for that page and you will be able to quickly see each and every news story we have in our database.
NEW FEATURES
Regardless of where you are in the discography, over on the right hand side you will have access to all of our sections with one quick click. We are working on the organization of these and have implemented a few new additions since our launch. First of all we’ve sorted the Singles, and the Promotional Releases not just by release date, but you can also view them alphabetically. So if you don’t know what year something was released, but you do know the name, you can use a better method of finding that information.
As well we’ve introduced a few new sections:
Not U2 Content is what it sounds like. It’s songs that have identified in the past as having some sort of tie to U2, but upon further investigation we have been able to confirm that these indeed do not have any U2 content. For years sites have listed “Hard” by the band Cut to the Chase as having drums on one track performed by Bono. We were able to track down additional information to show that indeed it is not Bono on the track, and instead is a musician by the name of Glenn “Bono” Saunders. No The Edge did not work on the Godzilla Island soundtrack. No Larry Mullen did not work with Iggy Pop. And no Bono isn’t moonlighting with INXS. There’s a link above if you want to dive into this fascinating category now.
List of Live Songs is for those among you who like delving into the world of U2’s live recordings. All of the songs they’ve released over the years are accessible through this link, and are sorted by the most recent release, back to the earliest. We are working on some additional navigation to allow you to sort through this section in different ways.
Unreleased Projects pulls from our news database. Any article that we have about a recording that has yet to surface is included here. It includes Bono’s work with Dr. Dre and Jennifer Lopez. It includes the story that U2 would contribute to the X-Files soundtrack, a song that never materialized, and it includes news that U2 were collaborating with the Chemical Brothers on a remix. We hope you will find all three sections informative and that they help you sort out what you are looking for in the U2 discography.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
We aren’t done yet. We continue to build and improve the site every day. We hope you are enjoying the additions to the site, and the improvements to old features. We are close to a few other additions going live. One is a list of DJ released remixes. Oakenfold, Van Dyk, have officially released remixes over the years, and occasionally released their own mixes that weren’t officially released by the Band. We’ve taken a stab at identifying these and will share those efforts with you soon.
We are still moving over sections from the old site that haven’t yet made the jump, and next up will most likely be some books and collectibles.
We are also working on new ways to organize the information in the discography. So instead of having to view multiple entries to see all of U2’s 3-inch singles, we are working at ways of showing you all of those in one entry.
And in the discography itself we are working to allow you to sort the catalog by other criteria, including by country of release.
And we are adding new information about releases all the time. At any time you can see the most recent discography updates on the front page of the site, as well as in the sidebar on the right hand side of any discography entry.
Still loads of work ahead, but we’re happy to be able to share it with you as we build. Thank you for your support all through the transition to the new site. We could not do it without your help.
If you want to keep up with our progress please follow us here as well as in these locations:
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