Happy Friday Slipmatians! 
After almost 5 years of moving fast and breaking things, first iterations of the new public beta are finally coming together and I put together a public (technical) Iteration Plan for pushing the first versions public in about two weeks time. (All the work here is done in public and can be followed realtime on our Discord community chat dev-firehose channel!)
We’ll try to make the jump from the old tech to the new as smooth as possible, and the current plan is to offer a preview of the new live page (as an alternative to the current one) so everyone can try it out in their own pace. Some concrete long-waited things that the new live page will have compared to the old:
- Easy listener registration straight from the live page (no email verification, no jumps out of the page)
- Dedicated, custom themes (like the ones we’ve had on Halloweens, Christmas etc) for artists
- Better integration with other social media sites for easier and better looking sharing
- Complete tools for friending, following, blocking and managing connections on Slipmat
- Shows presented by multiple hosts
- A native iOS app with notifications (currently in testing for handful of users, targeting Q2 for broader beta)
- Detailed minute stats for artists (you get much better view of when people joined, leaved and HYPEd the show – in realtime and after the event)
Public Beta for current Slipmat Supporters
Public beta means that the site will have open registrations for everyone with no invitation process. The moment we launch the new registrations (in few weeks) all active Frankie Pro subscribers are qualified for a forever free basic account and a lifetime discount for higher plans.
We’ve been a long time in an unfortunate situation of having literally hundreds of DJs waiting and wanting to test out the site and only a handful of them actually getting a chance so it’s only fair that the early adopters who made all this possible get rewarded for their support.
What’s coming in the spring (plan for H1/2021)
We got a ton of stuff done in 2020 but the pandemic pushed the development back to the old site just to get things like open tipping and other artist-supporting features out of the door as fast as possible. However, de do have some serious problems with the old tech, as well as the old ways of doing things. Our listeners and artists deserve better.
Major new features like event recordings, event ticketing, and restreaming are pushed straight to the new code and will have to wait a few weeks for us to make the final jump. The new tech stack is also a commitment for much more stable way of developing, which means more planning and communicating, less bugs and much easier to use systems in general. In practice, we will have a much better public issue list, a better way to report and follow issues, and fully open and transparent development.
In 2020 a handful of new great artists found a home from Slipmat, I hope we’ll make it easier for many more in 2021. We’ll also keep on pushing to make the listener experience much better than anywhere else.
My biggest hope with Slipmat is to find more ways to give back to the artist and music community, and I hope we can keep on it at least another 5 years!