Win 4 tickets to any concert of your choice, anywhere in the U.S.A. + VIP Travel and accommodation!
23rd April 2012
*MY COLLEGE MY SOUND UPDATE*
It’s now two weeks into the My College My Sound Competition and the contest is hotting up! It’s been fantastic to see all of the different Top10s that have been created, we now have over 480 colleges and universities taking part from across the US.
So, at the halfway point, we thought we’d introduce the My College My Sound official leaderboard!
Check out the Top10 colleges / universities here - with 10 days to go, there’s everything to play for - it’s super close between the top 50 schools, so spread the word amongst your campus and you could be battling for the top spot (and those awesome prizes) next week!
Good luck!
TOP10 PLAYLIST COMPETITION
Win 4 tickets to any concert of your choice, anywhere in the U.S.A. + VIP Travel and accommodation!
Calling all college students from across the U.S.A!
In partnership with our friends at Spotify, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, Warner Music Group & Universal Music Group, our ‘My College, My Sound’ competition invites students from colleges across the U.S.A. to create a Top10 of the songs that have made the soundtrack to their college year so far, using the Top10 app in Spotify.
Whether you’ve been chilling out to Coldplay or partying to Pitbull, we want to know about it.
The college with the highest number of Top10s created by 05/18/12 will be declared the winner.
One lucky student from the winning college will be selected at random to win the fantastic grand prize of 4 tickets to any concert of their choice, anywhere in the US, for themselves & 3 friends including travel & accommodation!
And that’s not all - there will also be a 10 runners-up prizes for students at the winning college of Spotify Premium for 12 months.
So, click here and follow the links to find your college, then simply pick the 10 tracks that have rocked your year so far, it’s that easy! The hard part will be deciding which friends to take with you if you win :)
Remember - it’s the college with the most Top10s that wins, so be sure to share your Top10 and spread the word around campus!
What are you waiting for - get started now!
March 2012 Update
7th March 2012
This week we’ve reached the incredible milestone of 50,000 Top10s created in the Spotify app - you’ve been sharing and recommending almost half a million tracks on Top10 since launch! Explore all these awesome Top10s here.
We’ve also just launched a fresh new look to the app with some added new features we hope you’ll enjoy. We particularly love the new comments feature - you can now add comments to any Top10, so get that debate going now!
As always, we love your feedback so do get in touch & tell us what you think of the new look & features.
Until next time!
Valentines Day Competition - Update!
21st February 2012
This month we held a competition where we asked you to simply tell us your Top10 Love Songs for the chance to win Spotify Premium for two….and you guys responded in your hundreds! We had over 450 Top10s created including some great alternatives to the traditional love songs. You can check out the Top10 created from all of your contributions here.
Sadly, there could only be one winner and that lucky person selected at random is…………..
Samantha Scheurich!
Many congratulations to you Samantha, you win Spotify Premium for you and that special someone for a whole year!
You can check out Samantha’s Top10 here.
Competition: Win Spotify Premium for two - Just pick your Top10 Love Songs!
1st February 2012
Competition: St Valentines Day at Top10!
Love Love Love… Love is all you need. But a year’s Spotify Premium for you and a loved one is also worth having, yes? Well your luck is in!
As St Valentines Day is just around the corner, we want to know your Top10 Love Songs!
As a reward for sharing the love, we will select, at random, one entry to the Top10 to win a year’s premium subscription to Spotify for two - you can share your prize with that special someone. We’ll also have two individual runner up prizes of a 3 months premium subscription - so that’s three opportunities to win! You can find out about all the benefits of Spotify’s Premium account at www.spotify.com.
Get involved!
The rules are simple. All you have to do is share the songs that warm your heart, get you in the mood or just simply bring out the old romantic in you.
Your ‘Top10 Love Songs’ needs to be created within the Top10 app on Spotify. Start now by clicking here, or you can search ‘Love Songs’ within the app and go from there if you prefer.
Entries to the competition will be counted from Wednesday 01st February 2012 up until and including Friday 17th February 2012. After this date we’ll randomly select a winner who will be notified by email.
Best of luck Top10ers - and Happy Valentines Day!
Competition terms & conditions
Entrants must add their list to this specific Top10: Top10 Love Songs Additions to other similar topics will not be included.
We will randomly chose the winner from all the contributors to this Top10 entered between 01st February 2012 up to and including the 17th February 2012.
The winner will be notified by email, with instructions for redeeming the prize. If there is no response within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen at random.
Entrants may only enter one playlist.
This competition is not open to staff or partners of Top10.com.
Happy New Year from Top10!
6th January 2012
Wow, what a crazy few weeks! The Top10 Spotify app has been live just 3 weeks, and it’s been a big hit. We’ve had over 12,000 Top10s created, and in excess of 100,000 songs recommended by our users already. Also worth noting that some of you have built up some impressive Top10 collections in record time - good job there’s no limit to those shelves…
There’s been some really great feedback on Twitter & via email over the past month and if you don’t mind us indulging, we’d love to share a few of those comments with you:
@FrankO “The top10 app on Spotify is heavily addictive. #beware”
@Rdasselaar “Top10 at Spotify Apps, now great to see what others find the best songs from artists”
@flosoft “this is actually a really cool app. @top10 on @Spotify. Basic idea, amazing execution. Awesome UI.”
Zack, Kentucky USA
“I am IN LOVE with your Spotify app—I had been using Spotify playlists to make my own Top 10s of various artists, and your app provides such a cleaner interface for doing the same task. Also, the points system that rates many Top10s overall is quite fun to see…… Rest assured, I’ve told plenty of Facebook (and real-life) friends about the app, and I look forward to its further development.”
Andrew, Renfrewshire Scotland
“Thank you so much for developing the Top10 Spotify app. I’ll be using it for the rest of the night (and for an awfully long time into the future); it’s already helped me to rediscover so many forgotten songs, which I am very grateful for.”
We’ve also had some great suggestions on things you’d love to see in the app - the team are busy developing some great new features which will be available soon. If you have any other ideas, head over to our feedback page - we’d love to hear them.
Finally, congratulations to Ryan James from Austin, Texas! We had a some fun over the holidays with a competition to create the Top10 Songs of 2011 within the app. From hundreds of entries, our lucky winner selected at random was Ryan - he wins Spotify Premium for a year, and you can check out his Top10 here!
COMPETITION: What are your Top 10 Songs of 2011? Win Spotify Premium for a year!
22nd December 2011
Up for a festive challenge? It’s been an amazing first six months here at Top10 and to celebrate the launch of our Top10 app on Spotify, we want your help in collating the ultimate Top 10 Songs of 2011. We want to know the tunes that have become the soundtrack to your year.
As a reward, we will pick, at random, one entry to the Top10 to win a year’s premium subscription to Spotify - so you can enjoy all the benefits of this ultimate music service! For more info on all the benefits visit Spotify.com.
So, the rules are simple. All you have to do is compile a complete ‘Top10 Songs of 2011’ in Top10 on Spotify. Start now by clicking here, or search ‘Songs of 2011’ in the app. You can then add the tunes that made you laugh, cry and boogie through 2011 and you’ll be in with a chance for the prize.
Entries to the competition will be counted up to and including Tuesday 03rd January 2012. We’ll then randomly select a winner who will be notified by email. Already submitted your Top10 Songs of 2011? Fear not, your entry will still be included!
Good luck Top10’ers and happy holidays from all of us at Top10!
Competition terms & conditions
• Entrants must add their list to this specific Top10: Top 10 Songs of 2011. Additions to other similar topics (Top 10 2011 Classics etc) will not be included.
• We will randomly chose the winner from all the contributors to this Top10 after January 03rd 2012
• The winner will be notified by email, with instructions for redeeming the prize. If there is no response within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen at random
• Entrants may only enter one playlist
• This competition is not open to staff or partners of Top10.com
Everyone’s Favorite Music - Top10 launches on Spotify™!
30th November 2011
The secret’s out! We are very pleased to announce that today marks the launch of Top10 on Spotify™ - an integrated app to help everyone share and discover more of the music they really love.
Top10 is one of only a handful of companies selected by Spotify to build an application for their amazing new App platform, and we’re thrilled to be part of the launch today. The Top10 app is available in beta for the next week, and will then will be rolled out to all Spotify users around the world.
It’s been an amazing experience working alongside the talented folks at Spotify - and while we’ve had to be super-secret about what we’ve been up to for the last couple of months, we can now finally spill the beans!
We launched the Top10.com website in September this year, and it won’t come as any surprise that music has been one of the themes our users have been most vocal about. You have created thousands of Top10s on everything from Lady Gaga songs to breakup ballads, and we’re obviously keeping good company with serious music fans - even grunge heroes The Pixies used Top10 to get their fans to rate their back catalog! So when Top10 was invited to build something for Spotify’s new open platform, we jumped at the chance – we knew we could build an app that would appeal to music lovers everywhere, and would also add some awesome new features to the existing Spotify experience.
Digital music services have given all us access to an unprecedented amount of music. Charts tell us what’s popular right now, and we can even see what our friends are listening to on Facebook, but all this can make it hard to filter out the very best songs – and to share just the music you really love.
The Top10 Spotify app is about just that. You can create and share beautiful, lovingly-picked Top10 playlists of your favorite music, and check out thousands of Top10’s from your friends and other people on Spotify.
You can view, listen and subscribe to curated Top10 playlists from hundreds of contributors, or bury down into recommendations from your friends. We’ve spent a lot of late nights (made possible by copious amounts of caffeine & energy drinks!) to make some smart little surprises in the app that we hope you’ll love using.
You can find out more about the features of the Top10 app and try it out yourself now – find out more here.
In the weeks after this launch, we’ll be adding a bunch of very cool new features to the Top10 Spotify app, website, and beyond – so keep ‘em peeled. It’s also business as usual on the main Top10 site, we’ve seen some fantastic top10s created on every topic under the sun since our launch - don’t stop!
In the meantime we’d love to hear any feedback on our shiny new app. Drop us a line at hello@top10.com, hit us up on Twitter, or you can use our dedicated feedback page for the Top10 Spotify app.
We can’t wait to hear all of your favorite music Top10’s in Spotify!
The Top10 Team
How We Built the Top10.com Front End
29th September 2011
The new Top10 redesign didn’t involve just a re-skinning of the existing site, but a complete rewrite of the presentational code. We used the opportunity to put into practice some modern and cutting-edge techniques we’d been keen to try, and in this post we’d like to talk about that a little more. We’ll try not to be too technical, but you’ll get more out of this if you’re a code geek.
The first and most prominent of the features we used are web fonts, which we’ve implemented across the site in two major ways. The first is for the main title on each page; this is a font called URW Clarendon, bought from MyFonts, and it’s a key element of the Top10 brand. But a less obvious way we’ve used web fonts is in the site-wide iconography.
We made a custom font set and converted it for use on the web, and have applied it using generated content properties. Loading only one font file instead of a number of images is a real time and resource saver, and it means the images scale nicely on high-resolution monitors and when zooming on mobile devices.
It’s not only for the icons that we’ve used generated content, though; we use it quite extensively across the site, notably using counter properties for the numbers in the main Top10 list view. This gives us more (although not total) control over the characters than is provided by the default list counter, and is also vital for keeping the numbers consistent when the list is remixed and items moved around.
That movement in the list, when items are moved up or down, are made possible by the use of CSS transforms and transitions; the transforms scale the list items up and down appropriately, and the transitions give the smooth movement between positions.
Using CSS for these transitions lets us utilise the power of the user’s computer’s graphics card, making the animations fast and smooth. But in order to make vital animations work even in unsupported browsers we extended jQuery (our framework of choice) in order to provide a JavaScript fallback for the CSS transitions.We used CSS keyframe animations in a few places on the site, notably to animate the shining effect which you can see when you hover over the logo, and the buttons which are shown when you’re about to remove an item (if you’re technically minded - and you probably are, if you’ve read this far! - here’s a more in-depth explanation of the button and logo effects).
The buttons use CSS gradients for the gloss effect. Users of Internet Explorer 9 will also see this effect even though their browser doesn’t support gradients, as we provided a fallback method using SVG. Anyone using IE8 or below will see flat colours instead.
Speaking of Internet Explorer, we’ve used the graceful degradation methodology while building the site, so there are a few cosmetic differences which are more noticeable in that browser. In total, however, we used only 20 lines of code to cater specifically for IE users (it should be noted that while the site works in IE6 and IE7, it’s with greatly reduced functionality).
Even after all of our changes and the increased use of CSS over images, the final minified stylesheet is 10k smaller than that used for the previous design, and we eliminated all CSS hacks in the process of redesigning. This cleaner, ligher code lays the foundations for making a device-responsive design, which is our challenge for the near future.
There are still a few wrinkles to iron out in this new design, but when those are out of the way we’ll start planning new features and new and interesting ways to create them.
Welcome to the new Top10
20th September 2011
After months of designing, building, testing and iterating (and many late nights) we’re pleased to announce a brand new version of Top10 today. Plus we’ve moved house - from today onwards you can find Top10 at its new permanent home on Top10.com!
The product we are launching today is cleaner, simpler, faster and easier to use than ever before. While we have added some exciting new features (more on this in a minute) we’ve also focused heavily on making the Top10 experience as easy and enjoyable as possible; reducing complexity wherever possible.
We’ve made these changes based on invaluable feedback of our beta users; and we’d like to extend a huge thank you to everyone that’s emailed, tweeted and posted feedback since we launched the beta back in February this year.
For those who’ve been using the beta, here’s the skinny on what’s new:
A fresh new look
The new Top10 features a fresh new design. We’ve aimed to create a interface that feels light and spacious; bringing the focus back to the recommendations, images and links that you are contributing.
We’ve rethought everything from the homepage to the shape and size of our buttons in order to create an experience that is intuitive, elegant and enjoyable.
Everything’s a remix
Our beta made it easy for anyone to get involved with a topic by remixing an existing Top10 or suggesting missing items. Today we are taking this further by making every item on the site interactive.
Hover over any item in any Top10 and controls will appear allowing you to move the item that around, edit the image and description, or remove it from the Top10 completely. It makes contributing your ideas on a topic even easier - and we think you’ll find it really addictive.
Collaborate
In addition to our standard sharing tools we’ve added a new ‘friends’ area to the bottom of every Top10 which lets you invite specific people to contribute to a Top10.
So if you’re a fishing nut, start a Top10 on your favorite spots for catching perch in your area and get your fishing buddies to contribute! Or start Top 10 Lady Gaga Songs and get all your friends to vote on theirs too.
Once a few friends have got involved you’ll see the Top10 for your topic start to take shape. We think it’s a great way to debate and build Top10’s with people that share your interests.
Finally, if you’re heading off to Paris on vacation but don’t know where to eat - just invite all your friends that have been before. Once they’ve recommended their favourite restaurants you’ll have a great Top10 to hit up.
Make friends and influence people
With so many interesting Top10s being made and new people joining Top10 every day we’ve introduced following so you can keep up to date with your friends and follow like-minded people you discover.
We’ve also launched email notifications so you get notified whenever a friend starts a new Top10 or someone remixes one of yours. You can manage your email preferences and twiddle more knobs and dials with our new settings area.
And there’s more…
Alongside these big features we’ve made hundreds of smaller improvements - from enhanced profile pages to a new way to start a Top10 - so come and check it all out.
We really hope you enjoy the new version as much as we do, and please keep those Top10s coming!
Team Top10.
Where is my mind? The Pixies on Top10
17th August 2011
Anyone needing proof about how much music fans love to list their favorite tracks should check out this Top10 of the best Pixies songs of all time:
Top 10 Pixies Songs
Frank Black & co have a huge fanbase on both Facebook and Twitter - as you’d expect for the band that kicked off the grunge-rock revolution.
To find out the Top10 tracks according to their own fans, The Pixies rallied the troops with this tweet out a few days ago:
Within hours, over 150 fans had signed up on Top10 and listed out their favorite tracks, from Debaser through to Velouria.
The contributions are now up to 192 and lo-and behold, the number 1 is… Where is My Mind. And as it happens, we agree!
We’ve made a Spotify playlist of the final Top 10 Pixies, so get your cans on and rock out to the definitive Pixies playlist - 192 people can’t be wrong!
