This morning, we released an all-new, shiny user interface for Popcuts. We’ve spiced up the look and implemented lots of little and big improvements to usability, functionality and performance.

The general site structure stays the same, but the new look gives us a foundation to roll out new features over the next couple of months.

One thing we’ve learned is that it’s a lot more fun to browse music by looking at cover art. So we increased the size of song covers in our list views and put a cover zoom function everywhere. Still to come: An entirely, cover-based section to browse music.

We unified the way the rewards for a given song are presented: In the new version, a little dollar icon next to the preview button brings up a table with a “profit preview” for the song.

For those who like to buy whole albums, we’ve added a shortcut for that.

By popular request, we moved an overview of the newest releases to front page. And we added a news ticker with the most recent user events there, too (such as reviews, purchases, recommendations etc.). Now, you can get a sense of what’s going on on the site just by glancing at the Popcuts front page.

Finally, we brought back an old favorite of ours: the slightly tilted logo. In combination with the dancing equalizer bars, we feel it’s much more suited for a site that’s all about music.

We thank you, our users, for all your support and hope you enjoy the new site! And do let us know if you’ll be at SXSW!

Team Popcuts

P.S.: Thanks, Simon Beckmann, for laying down the design vision, implementing countless screens, navigating around IE6 hell and just being of great help!