Frequently Asked Questions

Sleevenotes is a music tracking and social platform where every review is backed by a complete listen. Connect your Spotify or Apple Music account and we'll automatically track what you listen to going forward. Once you've heard an album front to back, you can rate it, review it, and rank it in your personal collections. Think of it as a digital record shelf that only contains music you've actually sat with.

Create a free account, connect your Spotify or Apple Music during onboarding, and start listening. Your collection builds automatically as you play albums. You can also explore what other people are rating, follow users whose taste you trust, and browse community rankings right away.

Yes. Sleevenotes is completely free with all core features included: unlimited album tracking, reviews, ratings, collections, rankings, and social features. We may introduce optional premium features down the road, but the core experience will always be free.

Sleevenotes verifies that you've actually listened to an album before you can review it. That's the whole point. We connect to Spotify or Apple Music to track your listening in real time, which is how we know you heard the full thing. You can still browse the platform, read reviews, and explore albums without connecting a streaming service, but you won't be able to rate or review until we can verify your listens.

No. Sleevenotes tracks your listening going forward from the moment you connect your account. We don't pull in years of old data from Spotify or Apple Music. Your collection starts fresh and grows as you listen.

Once you've listened to an album all the way through, you can rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and write an optional review. You can also select your favorite tracks and add tags. Your reviews show up on the album's page and in your followers' feeds. The full-listen requirement means every review on Sleevenotes comes from someone who actually engaged with the music.

Collections are how Sleevenotes organizes your listening. You have two main types: artist collections (where you rank every album by a specific artist) and year collections (where you rank the albums you listened to from a given year). Your personal rankings feed into the site-wide community rankings, so the more people rank, the better the community lists get.

When you rank albums in your collections, your rankings are combined with everyone else's to create community-wide lists. For example, the Sleevenotes 2026 list is built entirely from individual user rankings. No editorial picks, no algorithms. Just real opinions from people who listened.

Your feed shows recent activity from users you follow, including new reviews, ratings, and collection updates. It's a good way to discover albums through people whose taste you trust. There's also a global feed if you want to see what the broader community is up to.

Yes. Each review can be shared as an image card that includes the album artwork, your rating, and your review text. Hit the share button on any review to generate a shareable image or copy a direct link.

The Most Played section on your profile shows the albums you've listened to most frequently based on your streaming data. It updates automatically and reflects your current listening habits.

We connect through Spotify's official API using OAuth. When you authorize Sleevenotes, we get read-only access to your recently played tracks. We never get access to your password, payment info, or the ability to change anything on your Spotify account.

We connect through Apple's MusicKit framework. You sign in with your Apple ID and grant read-only access to your listening data. Same as Spotify, we can only read your listening activity and cannot modify your account or access payment information.

Yes. You can connect both services and your listening from both platforms will be combined into one collection. This works well if you use different services in different contexts.

Syncing happens automatically in the background. New listens typically show up within a few minutes. During busy periods it might take a bit longer, but you don't need to do anything. Just listen to music like you normally would.

An album gets added when you've listened to enough of it to show genuine engagement. Skipping through a couple tracks won't count. You need to actually listen to the album. This keeps your collection honest and ensures you can only review music you've really heard.

Yes, you can disconnect Spotify or Apple Music at any time from your account settings. Your existing listening history and reviews stay in your Sleevenotes account. You can reconnect whenever you want to resume syncing.

Your listening history is visible on your profile by default. Your email address is always private. Reviews and ratings are public. You can adjust privacy settings in your account to control what others can see.

Visit someone's profile and click Follow. Their activity will show up in your feed. You can find users by searching usernames, browsing the members page, or through mutual connections.

You get notifications when someone follows you, likes your review, or interacts with your activity. Click the bell icon in the navigation to see them all. You can customize notification preferences in your settings.

Profiles are public by default so the community can discover each other. We're evaluating additional privacy options based on feedback. Your email and personal information are always kept private regardless.

Email us at sleevenotes.music.app@gmail.com with the username and a description of the issue. We review all reports and take them seriously.

Check that your streaming service is still connected in your account settings. If it is, try disconnecting and reconnecting. If it still doesn't work, it might be a temporary sync delay. Give it a few hours. For ongoing issues, email us at sleevenotes.music.app@gmail.com.

Albums show up after syncing completes, which usually takes a few minutes. If you recently listened and it's not appearing, give it a moment. For very obscure releases, the album may not be in our metadata sources yet.

Album metadata comes from multiple sources and occasionally has errors. Let us know at sleevenotes.music.app@gmail.com with the album name and what's wrong. We'll get it fixed.

Click 'Forgot Password' on the login page and enter your email. You'll get a reset link within a few minutes. Check your spam folder if you don't see it. The link expires after 24 hours.

You can delete your account from your settings. Deletion is permanent and removes your profile, listening history, and reviews. Some anonymized data like aggregate review statistics may be retained. Contact us if you need help.

Clear your browser cache and cookies, try a different browser, disable extensions that might interfere, and make sure you have a stable connection. If it's still not working, email us at sleevenotes.music.app@gmail.com with your browser version and what's happening.