Song annotations
Attach your notes to the exact moment they are about.
A review covers a whole song. But most of what people actually want to say about music is about a moment — the drum fill going into the last chorus, the line in the second verse that lands differently once you know what the record is about, the eight seconds of silence before the outro.
Trackboxd annotations attach your note to that moment. You set a timestamp, write what you heard, and it stays there on the track page for anyone who opens the song.
How annotation works
- — Open any track page and choose Annotate
- — Set the timestamp the note belongs to
- — Write your reading of that moment or lyric
- — Publish it publicly, so it appears on the track page for other listeners, or keep it private to your own account
Meaning is not the same as explanation
Lyric sites answer “what does this line refer to” and settle on one answer. That is useful, and it is a different job from the one annotations do here.
A Trackboxd annotation is allowed to be subjective. Two people can annotate the same bar with completely different readings and both stay up, because the interesting thing about a song is rarely that everyone agrees on it.
Annotations, ratings and reviews on one page
Every track page carries all three: the rating distribution, the written reviews, and the annotations in time order. You can see how a song scored, read what people thought of it overall, and then go through it moment by moment — without leaving the page.
Read more about the wider idea on the Letterboxd for music page, or see how Trackboxd compares to other music sites.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a song annotation?
- On Trackboxd, an annotation is a note attached to a specific point in a song — a timestamp, a lyric, or a section. Instead of writing one review about the whole track, you can leave a comment on the exact moment you are talking about, and it appears there for anyone else who opens the song.
- How do I annotate a song?
- Open any track page on Trackboxd, choose Annotate, set the timestamp you want the note attached to, and write it. The annotation appears on the track page alongside everyone else's, ordered so you can read through the song moment by moment.
- Is this the same as Genius?
- No. Genius annotations aim at a single agreed explanation of what a lyric refers to. Trackboxd annotations are personal readings — what the moment did to you — and they sit next to ratings and reviews of the same track rather than existing on their own.
- Can I annotate any song?
- Any track in the Spotify catalogue can be found and annotated, which in practice means effectively any commercially released song.
- Are annotations public?
- You choose. Annotations can be public, in which case they appear on the track page and in the feeds of people who follow you, or kept private to your own account.
Start your listening diary
Trackboxd is free to use. Search any track, give it a rating, and write the first thing you actually think about it.
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