Canary

Canary

Canary is a completely private and accountless way to follow artists and keep track of new releases. All data is fetched on demand from a few public external data sources (see below), and stored locally on your device in localStorage. No information is stored, transmitted, or tracked by Canary, the application doesn't even know you exist.

Canary is designed, developed, and maintained by

Yeah, But Why?

  1. I still listen to music the old fashioned way. I don't stream. I buy records.
  2. I don't have any social media accounts in order follow artists I enjoy.
  3. I'm getting old. The shear volume of artists I enjoy and want to follow is getting very large which makes it hard to keep tabs on each of them.

Essentially, I needed a way to quickly see when any of the artists I follow release new music. I don't want to sign up for some weird service that will sell my data just to accomplish this simple task. Bandcamp is actually a fantastic way to do this and buy music directly. Unfortunately, not all artists use it, especially "bigger" major label artists.

How It Works

You simply add artists you like to follow. This list of artists is stored entirely on your computer in your browser. This is not accessible by this application. From there a database (MusicBrainz) is queried to retrieve all releases by your artists. This release data is then also stored on your computer in your browser. Until you add a new artist or refetch your releases, you do not need to communicate with the Internet other than to fetch album artwork (from Cover Art Archive and Bandcamp).

Extra Features

  • You can view extra album detail like track listings and descriptions for all albums that can be found on Bandcamp
  • Additionally, artists that choose to make tracks available to stream (low quality) on Bandcamp, are available to stream here.
  • If available a link is provided to the album on Bandcamp where it can be purchased or preordered.
  • Album search links are provided for popular streaming services if an album is not available on Bandcamp.

External Data Sources

Canary pulls data (album information, images, tracks, etc) from 4 primary sources:

  • MusicBrainz API
    All artist and release data (excluding cover art) seen on main release list page.
  • Cover Art Archive
    Release covers seen on main release list page.
  • Bandcamp
    All release data seen on a release detail page including title, description, cover art, audio stream, tracks, etc.
  • Wikipedia / Wikidata
    Artist page descriptions

Analytical Data

While this website/application can run 100% offline—beyond initially downloading to your device to install (again, this is optional)—usage data is collected via Plausible.

Plausible is an extremely basic web traffic analytics application that only collects 100% anonymous website usage data like page visits, session, duration, etc. It is not Google Analytics that tracks literally everything about you, and is borderline illegal in many countries.

I only run it to see how much traffic I'm getting and what pages are being visited. I only use this to help improve the app, and again, it tells me nothing of you. That being said, if you are still uncomfortable with that, you can always opt out on the settings page.