Changelog

Updates

New things on Release Wave, newest first

Nº 07New

Liner Notes: your whole Spotify history on one page

The top of Andrew's Liner Notes page: 6,343 hours, 12,371 artists and 114,858 plays from 2012 to 2026

Spotify keeps a record of every song you've played since you signed up. Liner Notes turns it into a page you can share: hours per year, your top artists each year, how your genres changed, who you're playing now, and the artists you drifted away from.

Line chart of listening hours per month from 2012 to 2026, peaking at 129 hours in August 2023, with each year's top three artists underneath
Hours per month, with each year's top three artists
Grid of genres by year, electronic genres shaded orange and guitar genres shaded black, darker for more hours
Genres by year. Orange is electronic, black is guitars
Top ten artists all time as bars, led by Lane 8 at 63 hours and deadmau5 at 62, with buttons to switch to a single year
Top artists, all time or one year at a time
Heatmap of listening by weekday and hour of day, darkest on weekend afternoons
When you listen, by weekday and hour. You can hide it
Three lists side by side: artists in rotation over the last 90 days, lost favorites not played in two years, and recent discoveries
What's in rotation, what you stopped playing, and what's new

You need your Extended Streaming History from Spotify’s privacy page. Not the one-year “Account data” file, which is too short. Spotify then emails you to confirm the request; press Confirm or nothing happens. The file usually shows up in a few days and can take up to 30. Claim your username while you wait, then drop the zip on the upload page.

The zip never leaves your browser. We save only the totals: single plays aren't stored, and the IP addresses and countries in the file are never read. Your page is public unless you make it unlisted. Turn on “Hide when I listen” to drop the time-of-day chart, or delete the page whenever you want.

There's no “Connect Spotify” button because Spotify's API only gives back your last 50 plays. The export is the only way to get all of it.

If you scrobble to Last.fm, type your username when you upload and the records you played outside Spotify get added too. Your browser fetches the scrobbles from Last.fm directly and skips any that match a Spotify play. On Andrew's history, 10,319 of 14,405 scrobbles matched and 4,086 were added. Your page shows your Last.fm username unless you untick “Show my Last.fm username” when you publish.

You can also add www.releasewave.com/api/mcp/public to Claude or another AI assistant and ask it about any public page. Give it a festival lineup and it ranks the bands against that person’s taste.

Nº 06

On Air: our reels on the homepage

The On Air band on the homepage: a Follow the Wave heading, Instagram and TikTok buttons, and four reel covers with play buttons

We make short reels every week: premieres, live cuts and records we keep playing. They used to live only on Instagram. Now the newest ones show up on the homepage, right under Upcoming Releases. Tap one to watch it.

If Instagram is down or slow, the band just doesn't show. The rest of the page loads without waiting for it.

Nº 05

Release Radar: every upcoming record we're tracking

The Upcoming page: 477 records tracked, genre and label filters, and an October 2026 calendar with 325 releases

Every night we pull announced releases from MusicBrainz, Spotify, Apple Music, Wikipedia and a few editorial feeds. The Release Radar at /upcoming shows all of it on a calendar. Right now that's 477 records, 325 of them in October.

This is the raw list, not our curated picks. Filter it by genre or label, search for an artist, and hit play to hear a preview without leaving the page. Each record also gets its own page with the label, genres and a Spotify player, so it turns up when you search for it before it's out.

When we pick one up for the site, it moves into Releases with a write-up.

Nº 04

On Rotation: the old records we keep going back to

An Andrew On Rotation post titled My Vitriol's Finelines, Revisited, posted July 1, 2026

Release Wave is mostly about what's new. On Rotation is the exception: one of us writes about a record that's been out for years and still won't leave the stereo. The first one is Andrew on My Vitriol's Finelines, which he's been playing for over 25 years.

Each post sits in the On Rotation box on the homepage for about two weeks, then makes room for the next one. The post itself stays up, so the link keeps working.

Nº 03

Share images for any artist or release

Hit Share at the top of any artist or release page. You can copy the link, or download a 1080 by 1920 image sized for an Instagram story, with the photo or cover art, the genres and our logo.

A story-sized share image for My Vitriol: a black and white band photo, the band name, and Shoegaze and Alternative Rock tags
The share image for My Vitriol

The image is made when you ask for it, so it always matches the page.

Nº 02

Ask ChatGPT or Claude about Release Wave

The Release Wave in ChatGPT page, explaining that it's free, needs no account, and can only look things up

You can now ask ChatGPT or Claude about the records on Release Wave. Add www.releasewave.com/api/mcp/public as a connector (Settings, then Connectors) and ask things like “What’s new in shoegaze?” or “Tell me about Wishy.” The answers come with cover art, genres and tracklists.

It's free and you don't need an account. It can only read what's already public on the site, so it can't change anything. In ChatGPT, custom connectors need a paid plan.

Nº 01

A new look, plus search, labels and genres

The redesigned Release Wave homepage with a big Release Wave masthead, the week's date and the Cover Story underneath

We rebuilt the whole site to look like the music zines we grew up reading: big type, paper colors, stickers and a weekly masthead. Same records, much easier to browse.

Search is new too. Press ⌘K or click Search to look across releases, artists, labels and genres as you type. Labels and Genres have their own pages now. Genres has a shuffle that pulls three genres and a couple of records from each, for when you don’t know what to put on.