A new look for LM Tracks, and a note about Les Mills Originals
LM Tracks has had its biggest update so far. Here's what's new, and a few words about why the site works the way it does.
A new look
The site has been redesigned! The home page is calmer and has been polished to be visually more straight-forward with a new Explore section to discover more songs and info. Program pages start with their releases, and your library pages (Favorites, For You, Playlists, History and My notes) now share one common look. On a release page, a slim bar appears at the top as you scroll. Tap it to jump straight to a part of the class.
Presenters
Many more releases now show who presented them. A release that was filmed more than once, for example at a Les Mills LIVE event and in the studio, shows each team separately. A lot of this comes from Les Mills' own release articles, choreography notes and filming posts, and from people who sent in suggestions (thank you!). Presenter pages now also list the releases Les Mills has announced for them before they come out.
If you know who presented a release that has no presenters yet, tap Add on the release page. On a presenter's page, you can also suggest releases they presented that aren't listed yet.
Which songs play where
When you tap a song, the mini-player searches your music service for it, so you don't have to. Over a thousand more songs now have their own curated links, meaning the song is played immediately instead of searching. Not every link will be perfect yet, but it's more accurate than searching from scratch every time, and more links are added as time goes on.
Each song's service icons now show, before you tap, whether that service has the exact song, only the original artist's version, or doesn't have it at all. Tap the arrow next to the icons to see it in words. And when a song can't play, the player now says what happened and offers another way to play it.
The mini-player doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself: it searches for the song for you, just much faster. Sometimes it might pick the wrong song, which can happen if the song is not publicly available. The player then warns you that it's a poor match, and when nothing reliable turns up, it offers to search the service yourself or to play the song on another service, in the same way you would do if you searched manually on i.e. YouTube.
Why some Les Mills Originals won't play
Many tracks in Les Mills releases are Les Mills Originals: covers, remixes and new songs made just for Les Mills classes. Les Mills puts some of them out on its own label, Aesium Music House, but most are never released anywhere, so there's nothing for the mini-player to find. When that happens, the player says so: you'll see "Les Mills Original" with a short note that it's made for classes and rarely on music services.
Les Mills Originals are marked with a gold star. If an Original has come out on a music service, the mini-player plays it like any other song. If it hasn't, but it's a cover of a known song, the player plays the original artist's version instead and tells you so (you can turn that off in Settings → Playback). Most Originals are new songs with no other version, so there's nothing to play.
If you'd like to dig deeper, the Les Mills Original Music page (Originals, on the home page) lists every Original that is known so far. Choose "On streaming" to see the ones you can play. LM Tracks doesn't host full Originals, but for a few of them there's a short preview clip: look for the 'LMT' button on the track.
For You
For You keeps track of what's new for your favorites: new releases in your programs, changes to releases you saved, new choreography notes, new releases with your favorite presenters, songs by the artists of your favorite tracks, and your favorite Les Mills Originals once they come out on streaming. Tap Customize (the sliders icon at the top) to choose what it shows. After your first visit, a small dot on For You in the menu (on phones, on More) tells you when something new is waiting. Tap the heart on a few programs, releases, tracks or presenters, and For You will build the personalized feed for you.
Thank you
Thank you for using LM Tracks. I build and look after it on my own mostly because I wanted one place to look up the music from Les Mills classes and the amazing presenters behind them. If you find it useful, feel free to spread the word to your friends.
The data isn't perfect, and it never will be without help from you and the rest of the community. If something is wrong or missing, or you'd like the site to work differently, use Report an issue in a release's ⋯ menu or at the bottom of any page. Every message and feedback is read and always taken into consideration. Also if you'd like to support the project, you can do so on Ko-fi.