OndaRock

You'll have noticed: something has changed. Ondarock 3 isn't just a revamped homepage, a nice "facade" hiding the same old site behind it. Over the past few weeks, the review and feature pages have changed profoundly. For the better: we hope you'll agree.

This isn't, however, a simple restyling. Along with the look, the content changes too, and so does our idea of the site, which is evolving to stay true to its goal - the one thing that never changes - of being the best musical point of reference for our readers.

The whole history at your fingertips

How many times, while reading about an album, have we found ourselves curious about the artist's story or their earlier work? It's precisely with this incorrigible curiosity of ours in mind that we designed the new "summary" box that now accompanies every review and artist profile on OndaRock: a launchpad for discovering everything OndaRock has ever written about an artist - all their albums, concerts, and projects. We were the first ones to dive in ourselves...

Let similarities be your guide

We love discovering new music, but at the end of the day we're all a bit conservative. In our musical explorations, we like to be led by the hand by what's already familiar to us, following a path made of similarities and connections, as well as surprises and differences.

The new "similar artists" box that now accompanies every artist profile was born as a support for that fundamental mechanism of discovery: analogy. Thanks to an exclusive tagging system, we structure our profiles so that they suggest to readers whatever is most closely related to the artist they're reading about.

With streaming, it's the music that speaks

We all love reading about music. Some of us - us, for instance - even love writing about it; but the best thing, obviously, is to listen to it. To let your own ears guide you, rather than someone else's plain impressions.

Every new review now devotes a dedicated space to Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Youtube streams. In some of them, you'll even find tracks exclusive to OndaRock: you can trust us - if we're featuring them, it's because we were the first ones to fall under their spell.

No more rushing, thanks to the new review board

We publish around thirty new reviews every week. That's a lot - maybe too many - but they still only cover a small part - the best part, we like to think - of the chaos of releases crowding the pop-rock universe. How can readers possibly keep up with such a publishing pace?

Thanks to the new review board, missing something is no longer a problem. The list can now be sorted by two criteria: alphabetical and chronological. If it's been a while since your last visit, just pick the chronological order to see, in sequence, all the latest content we've added.

And then...

What's next? For starters, an update to the interviews, live report and feature pages. But the real "revolution" will come with the new section homepages: we have some ideas in store that will make using the site noticeably easier and more efficient!

A brand new showcase

By now, we know you well. You get home after a Sunday spent out and about, take a look at the online papers, check your email, check Facebook, and then head straight to OndaRock to see what goodies the weekend has brought. With a confident flick of the mouse, you head to the right-hand review column, scroll down discovering all the new artist profiles, until you reach the new landmark feature at the bottom of the page.

Today too, we'd bet, you did the same thing, but the effect was disorienting: everything has changed. The page is shorter, more aligned, there are fewer reviews and things have appeared that weren't there before. This is the start of OndaRock 3, the perennial "work in progress" that will hopefully lead us to offer you a music webzine that's more user-friendly and engaging, more dynamic, more varied and more "social".

For now, though, OndaRock 3 is just a completely redesigned homepage. So let's explore its new features together.

Less clutter, more space

We've widened the page, increased the font size, enlarged the images and the spacing between elements. At the same time, the page is shorter and holds more content. What makes this miracle possible are above all the slideshow that opens the page and the tabbed showcase that hosts the reviews. These two elements, in fact, are the true stars of our new home.

The "focus space"

The most prominent element of the new homepage is the central slideshow. This is the space where you'll find all the most important music news: bombshell news items, hugely anticipated reviews and unexpected revelations, but also our meatiest retrospectives, ever more popular features like OndaDrops, and our ever-present milestone albums.

The reviews showcase

OndaRock brings you dozens and dozens of albums every month. Displaying all of them for an adequate amount of time on the homepage is no small feat, but from today it's possible thanks to the large box you'll find in the middle section of the page. There are as many as twenty-four titles — double the previous homepage — that you can scroll through using the little numbers at the bottom. This will make it easier to keep pace with the ever more frenetic rhythm of our review publishing.

Album of the month and milestones

OndaRock's two most recognisable flagship features aren't just staying put — they've been paired up in a single space that highlights their connection and complementarity. Each month our editorial team will place its "bet" on a particularly deserving release, and every two weeks a new review will be added to enrich our now vast archive of unmissable albums from the past.

The "picks of the month" in a single panel

For several years now, the sheer abundance of releases has pushed our editorial team to diversify its selection, organising itself into sections and highlighting a specific "on the crest of the wave" album in each one. However, the flexible timing of these picks, not strictly monthly, and their exclusive placement on the (admittedly well-visited) section homepages limited their visibility and recognition. From today, though, all eight "crests" are prominently displayed in the dedicated tab of the reviews showcase, so you won't miss a single one, while still keeping the big picture in view even when focusing only on your favourite genres.

Sound comes to the homepage with the video corner

Previews, interviews, live performances, but above all electrifying singles that build anticipation ahead of an album's release. These are the stars of the newborn "video corner", designed to bring the music straight from the homepage to your speakers. Because reading about music is wonderful, yes, and we wouldn't be here if we didn't love getting swept up in detailed analyses of the latest albums out there... But the thrill of experiencing music live, with eyes and ears, discovering the "behind the scenes" or falling under the spell of tracks that have only been out for a few hours — that's a different thing altogether. We know it well, and we want to get excited about it together with you.

Share and follow us from the "social" bar

OndaRock is no longer just OndaRock.it. Like everyone else, it's been on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace for a while now. You can jump from one to the other thanks to the new top bar, which also lets you share your discoveries with a simple "like" and subscribe to our RSS feed, to get every one of our updates in real time.

Going even more "free" with Creative Commons

Ever since it was launched eleven years ago, OndaRock has pursued a policy of complete freedom from outside influence and free access to content. We've always treated material from file hosting sites and peer-to-peer networks with the same respect as "promos" received from labels and artists. As of today, the free nature of the site is underlined by dropping Copyright in favor of a Creative Commons "sharealike" license across all pages: our texts can be reproduced by anyone, provided the source is credited, the use is strictly non-commercial, and the same type of license is adopted. We've updated our disclaimer to provide further clarification.

What's next

But OndaRock's overhaul doesn't end here. Soon the inner pages will also be updated with new graphics and content, starting with the interviews and live report sections. The goal is to make the webzine ever richer in information, more dynamic and more multimedia.

Ride the wave of great music

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