What is a music diary?

On cantia, your music diary is the Diary view on your profile: a dated record of everything you have listened to, kept as you go. Think of it as a music diary app for people who still listen to albums in sequence. Every album you log takes its place under the day you heard it, each entry carrying its own rating and its own review. Month by month, the list becomes the story of your taste, and the entries are allowed to argue with each other as that taste moves.

How to keep one

1. 1

   Log a record with its day.

   Search for an album, tap Log, and give it the day you listened. That date is the record’s address in your diary, so a listen from last week files into last week, exactly where it happened.

2. 2

   It files itself by month.

   The Diary on your profile groups everything by the month you listened, newest month first, each entry under its day. There is nothing to sort or shelve, because the chapters write themselves as you log.

3. 3

   Every entry keeps its own words.

   Write a review and its first line rides along on the entry. Your rating rides too, and it stays private: an entry shows your stars to you and to nobody else. An entry with no words is marked Rating only.

4. 4

   Relistens get their own entries.

   Hear a record again and the new listen does not overwrite the old one. It takes its own dated entry, marked as a relisten, so a record you loved in March and rethought in November keeps both takes. A song you log tucks in under its album’s entry.

5. 5

   Read it your way.

   The Diary is one of two views of the same record. Flip the toggle on your profile to Shelves and the same entries line up by the decade and year the music was released instead, with anything undated filed under Undated.

See one in the wild

My music diary is on my profile, open on the Diary: this month’s listens at the top, last month’s chapter right under it. It is the same record as my dislography, read by the calendar instead of by era.

What do you do with it after that?

Keep it fed, and let it argue with itself. An entry is how a record felt on one day, so when a record hits differently a year later, the honest move is a new entry, not an edit. The chapters keep both takes, and the story gets better for it.