What changed at 22tracks and why?
Last Friday, we released a new version of 22tracks.com. We did a full overhaul and made quite a few changes. Because of this, some of our users had some questions. Find our answers below.
Why did you change 22tracks?
During the last seven years, we’ve offered all of our music free of charge. Due to rising hosting and licensing costs, this became difficult over time. In the meantime, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music rose in popularity and improved their databases significantly. Our solution to our biggest problem was to start hosting our playlists and music on these existing streaming platforms.
What happened to the four cities?
Nothing but love for Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris. Expect many curators and playlists from those cities. But we’ve also been eager to add DJs from cities like Berlin, Los Angeles, Toronto, Cape Town and others. Our new platform enables us to highlight music scenes globally.
Will you add other streaming services besides Spotify?
Yes. We’re not working exclusively with Spotify and will add Apple Music and Soundcloud integrations soon. We now have the freedom to showcase music from any existing service.
What happened to the previous playlists and curators?
We went from 88 to 22 playlists and will now start building up a new catalogue of great playlists. Lots of your favourite curators will be returning shortly. For example, fans of our earlier Relax and Indie Electronic playlists will feel right at home with our Downtempo Round Up playlist by Venz & Saux.
It’s also worth noting that on our new platform we have different playlist categories. Apart from focusing on new releases (Round Ups), we will also dig into the past (Classics), have playlists with a story (Selects) and archives with our best selections in previous years (Top Lists).
What happened to the iPhone/Sonos app?
Since we’re no longer able to host the music on our servers, we’re unable to stream them to our iPhone and Sonos apps. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. A great alternative would be to stream our selections from your Spotify app on your phone or Sonos.
We will launch more features in the near future and are fully dedicated to create the best playlists out there. We realise this update must feel like quite a change, but we promise you this new direction is the only way forward for 22tracks.
Below are some great playlists to start your music discovery.
