What's new in CLZ Music?
A huge update for your CLZ Music Web software today, which dramatically improves the look and usability:
- A new, more compact, design and layout, so that you fit more data on screen
- Improved layout of the “album details” panel, with better support for back covers
Our web-based software has been around since 2009, first called “Connect”, but renamed in Oct 2024 to simply “CLZ Web”. The Web software is currently the most popular solution for use on your computer, far exceeding the number of users of the legacy “Collector” desktop software.
However, through the years, there is one particular piece of feedback we kept receiving from both new users *and* from users who switched from the desktop software, but phrased in different ways:
“It is all so BIG!” or “I can’t fit a lot of items on my screen”
And they’re right. CLZ Web has been designed to be “big and bold”, as is common with web-based software. Large fonts, big buttons, etc… It looks nice, but the side effect can be that you can fit less collectibles in your on-screen list. Especially when:
- Using a low-res laptop screen
- Using a tablet device
- Using several layers of toolbars in your browser
To resolve this, we were initially planning to introduce an optional “Compact View” or “Compact Skin”.
But when we starting working on that, we liked the results so much that we decided to make it THE new look of CLZ Web for everyone. It looks so much better, more compact, more items on screen. But never too small to read.
Here’s what we did:
- New font style to fit the new CLZ styling
- Slightly smaller fonts everywhere
- In the main screen, we combined toolbars and made them “lower” overall
- Lower list rows in List View, by slightly reducing the spacing
- Reduced the height and width of all input boxes in the Edit screens
- Reduced the height of the screen titles of all popup screen
- Reduced the height of the collection tabs at the bottom
This new compact look is going live for CLZ Web within a few weeks. But today, I can share more sneak preview screenshots of the most important screens, with a nice BEFORE (left) and AFTER (right) comparison. Enjoy!
Main screen
Edit screen
Fixed:
- The bottom collection tabs were invisible
What’s New:
- Optimized startup process for a quicker launch
- Improved Sync with CLZ Cloud: Smoother and faster, especially with image downloads
Fixed:
- Problems could occur when updating to new app version with an incorrect login
BOOK ONLY FIXED:
* Rare crash when showing keyboard in Add by Title/Author
This is a recommended security update:
- 2FA support: if you have 2FA enabled on your CLZ Account, the app will now ask you for the 2FA authenticator code when you log in to the app
- Several other changes to better secure your account
- New “Change email address” link in the CLZ Account screen
Fixed on Android:
- On startup, the collection tab-bar on startup could be blocked by Android navigation bar
New: “edge-to-edge” support for Android 15. This means that all screens will now use the entire vertical space. This gives you more screen real estate to (for instance) view more of your album list in your main screen!
Fixed:
- Photo / image picker wasn’t able to access all images on the device
- Side menu: Refreshed background colors at the top
- Details panel: Updated placeholder cover for albums without a cover
Fixed:
- Tablet: Barcode scanning didn’t work while in landscape orientation
- Switching between folders would not always refresh the list correctly
- Adding albums by barcode: on some devices the barcode queue didn’t appear
- Side menu: Refreshed background colors at the top
- Details panel: Updated placeholder cover for items without a cover
Today we bring you a nice improvement for Adding Albums by Barcode.
Sometimes, when you scan the barcode of a multi-disc album, you only find the discs listed separately in the results. Annoying, because you of course want one album entry, with multiple discs. And now you can!
You can now checkbox the found discs to combine them int a multi-disc album! You can do so by clicking on the little < dropdown icon to "show all the found discs", and checkbox the discs you wish to include in your multi-disc album: Read more
Adding albums by scanning barcodes is THE most important feature of the app, so we will never stop trying to make the barcode scanner better and better 🙂
In today’s 9.5 update, we bring three improvements to the barcode scanner:
- Now reads barcodes much faster and in the entire camera screen!
- New scanning feedback shows where it “sees” a barcode
- New Type Barcode tab for manual barcode entry and support for external USB/BT scanners
A nice update for your CLZ Music Web software today.
We improved the Add Albums screen to make it more compact, better looking and a bit snappier to use.
On top of that, the process for combining discs into multi-disc albums is much better now.
Here’s what’s new:
- Search results now show the number of discs
- The Preview panel on the right has been replaced with a nice and quick “Confirm” popup, that just slides in from the bottom.
- Improved process of combining discs into a multi-disc album
We’ve fixed various crashes that happened throughout the app that.. shouldn’t happen anymore with this new version 🙂
We recommend you update your app A.S.A.P. Your app may have updated itself already (check the menu top left, the version number is at the top). If it hasn’t updated itself yet, here’s how to force the update:
- On your device, open the Play Store app.
- Search “CLZ” and select your CLZ app.
- Tap “Update” to update the app.
Fixed:
- Add Albums: Tracks, Label, Release Year and Barcode were missing from the add sheet
- Fixed a couple of startup crashes
- Small tweaks to the app icon
- Fixed various crashes
- Small tweaks to the app icon
Two weeks ago, on Oct 7, we changed our company name to CLZ and moved our website to clz.com.
On top of that, we also renamed our “Connect” web-based editions to CLZ Web. So:
- Movie Connect became CLZ Movies Web
- Comic Connect became CLZ Comics Web
- Game Connect became CLZ Games Web
- Book Connect became CLZ Book Web
- Music Connect became CLZ Music Web
Today, we implemented the next step and also moved the CLZ Web editions to their new home at app.clz.com. (previously “connect.collectorz.com” )
At the same time, the CLZ Cloud site moved from cloud.collectorz.com to cloud.clz.com.
Big changes this week, as we have changed our company name!
We were previously called “Collectorz.com”, but as everyone called us “CLZ”, we figured, let’s go with the flow and officially rename the company to just “CLZ”!
But that’s not all. This week also brings:
- a new company logo and styling
- a completely new website at clz.com (previously www.collectorz.com)
- new names for our web-based software, previously called Connect, now simply CLZ Comics Web, CLZ Movies Web, CLZ Games Web, etc…
- new app icons for all CLZ apps!
A nice update for CLZ Music again, in which we did improvements to several areas of the app.
- Re-design of the Sort Order screen
- New Date and Month folder options for all date fields
- Statistics: new look for Most Recent lists
Fixed:
- Edit screen: After cropping a cover, the app would sometimes still show the non-cropped version in the edit screen
New:
- Better indication and handling of “subscription expired” status
New:
- Better indication and handling of “subscription expired” status
Fixed:
- For items with very big images, the Edit screen could crash
The app now has a “free 7-day trial” again.
No more 100 item “free mode” or “free trial”. We did our best to make it work, but it just didn’t. So we’re back to the old tried and tested “7-day trial” system 🙂
(Don’t worry, if you already started your free mode, it will keep working.)
Updated:
- Add Album by artist/title: after adding an album, the cursor will be put back in the search box straight away so you can immediately start your next search
Fixed:
- Statistics: In some cases the order under “most recent” could be wrong
Updated:
- Add Albums by Artist and Title: after adding an album, the cursor will be put back in the search box straight away so you can immediately start your next search
Updated:
- Free Mode is now called Free Trial (still works the same way)
Updated:
- Free Mode is now called Free Trial (still works the same way)