The music4dance song library is the core feature of music4dance. It a library of songs indexed by dance style that can be searched in a number of different way.

When you first choose the song library from the music menu on music4dance, you’ll be presented with a simple search header and a list of songs.

Simple Search Header

The simple search header consists of a dance chooser drop-down, a search control, and a couple of helpful links.

1. The dance drop-down allows you to select dance styles by name or grouping. Choose “All” which is the default to not filter by dance style.
2. The search box:
   • Type a Google/Bing style search of the dance library. This will do a freestyle search of all of the information we have about songs in our library. Typing a few characters into this box will often bring up an autocomplete drop-down with suggestions, you can choose one of the suggested searches or just type your own and click the magnifying glass button to start the search.
   • Alternately, you can type, paste or drag a Spotify or iTunes/Apple Music share link into this box. If that link has been included in the music4dance library already, we’ll take you directly to to song page, if not you’ll have the opportunity to add the song.
3. Saved Searches: If you’re logged in, we’ll automatically save your searches and you can click this button to go back to previous searches. If you’re not logged in, clicking this button will prompt you to do so.
4. Dance Information Page: If you have chosen a specific dance to search on, you’ll see a link with the dance name that will take you to a page with more information about that style.
5. Advanced Search: Clicking this button will take you to the Advanced Search page which will let you do more sophisticated searches. If you have already chosen a dance style or text search, the advanced search page will be populated with those choices.

Song List

The core song list is available on the Song Library page as well as many other pages including New Music, Holiday, Halloween, and as the top ten lists in the dance details pages.

1. Title: Clicking on the title of a song will take you to a song details page, which will not only allow you to see more details about a song but also allow more advanced editing of the song (if you’re logged in). In most circumstances you can also sort by title by clicking on the header.
2. Artist: Clicking on the artist will take you to a list of songs that we’ve cataloged by that artist. In most circumstances you can also sort by artist by clicking on the header.
3. Tempo: The tempo column shows the tempo of the song in beats per minute if we have that available, this is a particularly nice column to be able to sort by since that will let you (for instance) refine your search by slowest to fastest.
4. EchoNest Info: This group of columns represent the strength of beat, energy and mood of songs as computed by Spotify. Spotify acquired EchoNest, which was the startup that was doing this kind of work, so we’re still calling this Echonest Info.
5. Dances: This is a list of the dance styles that people have tagged this song with. The number on the badge indicates the aggregate number of people that have voted that this song is danceable to this style. If there is a tag icon, that means that there is at least one tag on the style. Clicking on the dance style will bring up a modal with more details. Sorting by dance is available if you’ve searched on a single dance style.
6. Tags: This is a list of all of the (non-dance-style) tags that we have added to the song. Click on a tag will bring up a modal that will let you filter your current search on those tags.
7. Like/Play: This column has up to three controls:
   • Dance Vote: If you’ve searched on a specific dance style you’ll see a number bracketed by an up and down arrow. The number indicates the aggregate number of votes that this song is danceable to the style that you’re searching on.
   • Favorites: The heart icon indicates if you’ve added the song to your favorites list or if you’ve blocked the song (of course the default search filters out the blocked song, so generally you’ll on see the empty heart indicating that you haven’t added the song to either list or the red heart indicating that it’s in your favorites).
   • Play: The play button will bring up a modal with a list of the services where you can play/purchase the song and if it’s available a 30 second clip of the song that you can play directly in the browser.
8. Time Order: This will let you sort the list by the date a songs was last changed. You can go to the New Music page for an easier way to do this. But the default version will let you do basic sorting and hovering over the single letter duration indicators (M/D/Y/m/s) will show you the full date of the last edit of the song.
9. Changed By: (not shown here) – In some cases the Time Order column will be reaplace by a this column. If the search is by a specific member, the column header will include that member’s id and the rows will contain their last change. In other cases, each row will be the most recent change by anyone.

A Note on Mobile:

On small (generally mobile) screens, the song list looks a bit different. The title artist and tempo columns are combined as are the Dances and Tags columns. The only functionality that you lose is the EchoNest rating and the time order. You can still sort by these values as well as by tempo by using the advanced search and you can see the values for individual songs in the song details pages, you just won’t see them listed here.

Song Footer

The song footer lets you navigate through the list of songs that you’ve found as well as containing a couple of other useful things.

1. A simple pagination control that lets you go to the previous or next page or any number page in the current search
2. An additional indication of which page you are on and how many pages there are. In addition this text shows the total number of songs found by the search
3. Clear your search and start over by clicking “New Search”
4. If you are a premium member and logged in, you can create a Spotify playlist from the search that you’ve tailored.