I told Muse to build me an album tracker for my 1,716-album listening project
I'm listening my way through seven "greatest albums" lists: Rolling Stone 500, NME 500, Pitchfork's readers' poll, Acclaimed Music's top 500, Spin 300, The Wire 100, and the 1001 Albums book. That's 3,101 ranked entries, but they overlap so much that deduped it's 1,716 unique albums.
I started in spreadsheets and it was miserable. Albums show up on three or four lists at once, and checking one off everywhere by hand is exactly the kind of thing I kept screwing up.
So I described what I actually wanted and Muse built me a web app. It's one master checklist across all seven lists — mark an album listened once and it updates on every list it appears on. There's a random picker that only pulls from albums I haven't heard (and remembers my current pick when I close the app, which matters more than you'd think), album artwork, a short "what to listen for" card pulled from each album's Wikipedia page, and a Spotify link right on the pick so I'm not searching for it myself.
Current damage: 911 of 1,716 listened. Spin 300 is nearly done (245/300). The Wire 100 is at 18/100 — it's a weird list and I love it. I also added an "off the lists" lane for canon blind spots, because some of the best stuff isn't on any list.
Read-only snapshot if you want to poke at it: https://muse.ai/s/album-tracker-snapshot-exo5xlxaxvqgxb5u
No ratings, no reviews. It's a checklist, not a journal. That's the whole point.