Rebuilt Music Videos Search & Watch Pages

UE Music received a major update this weekend. Music videos were now transitioned to databases, meaning all info would now be stored permanently and can be retrieved from anywhere on the site. This also means that music videos could be added so much faster, and search is more accurate.

The “New” Watch Page

If you browse through the music videos, you might notice that they have a new URL structure. Instead of videos, it says watch, which you can see for yourself here: http://music.myunv.com/watch/michael-jackson/thriller/. Why? Because they now are served from a new “watch page” that get the results from the new database. It checks to see if the video exists, and retrieves all the info needed such as the title, artist, album, etc.

So what does this mean? I don’t have to do the hard labor anymore, everything is now automatic. Right now there are about 50 music videos, ranging from all different genres but there will be a lot more added as time moves on.

(Screenshot of the UE Music videos page)

Rebuilt Search

Before, the search was provided by Google, meaning the video actually had to be indexed by Google’s bot which can be slow. Sure it was ajax and looked cool, but if you’re not getting results on a video that actually exists, what’s the point?

Enter the rebuilt search, it sees if the video is in the database so you get a music video that was even added a second ago. You can also search for many videos, for example any that have the word “love” in it: http://music.myunv.com/videos/search?q=love.

(Screenshot of a search for a music video)

Benefits for the Future

Artist pages are still nowhere to be seen yet, which is due to the bad way of how data was stored. Well, technically it wasn’t so it’d be hard to update everything. Now things like artist pages will be much easier to build, and I can provide useful information like videos from that particular artist or band, or perhaps albums and photos.

Upcoming Updates

I will probably be changing up the watch page a bit so that it makes more sense, and the related videos section doesn’t reach the best videos you might want so that will be fixed.

Some more updates will include ability to add artists in your music videos search query, artist pages, and radio search. That’s it for now, if you have suggestions for a music video that hasn’t been added yet, let me know.