Curation Policy

1. What Counts As A Good Song Entry

A song entry is considered useful when it helps a visitor understand the sound of a specific year or period. We prefer songs that were released, charted, widely performed, or culturally remembered near the year where they appear. Some older songs may be placed in nearby years when release dates, chart dates, or regional popularity dates differ.

The playlist is not meant to be a strict academic chart archive. It is a practical listening map for people who want to explore music by year. That means a track can be included because it represents a genre shift, a regional memory, a breakthrough artist, or a song that remains strongly associated with a particular era.

2. Manual Review Standards

Music Time Machine avoids fully automatic playlist generation. Before a song is added, it is reviewed for basic relevance, playable video availability, and fit within the surrounding year. The site also avoids filling pages with random embedded media without explanation, because visitors should understand why the music is grouped together.

• Use recognizable artist and song names.
• Prefer official music videos, official audio, label uploads, or artist channels.
• Avoid duplicate YouTube video IDs within the same generated playlist.
• Balance each region so one decade or genre does not dominate the whole experience.
• Keep old and new music together only when the year relationship is clear.

3. Use Of YouTube Embeds

The site does not host music files, download links, or copied audio. Playback uses YouTube's official embed player. YouTube availability can change over time because of takedowns, region restrictions, channel changes, or disabled embedding. When a video stops working, the preferred fix is to replace the video ID with another official or stable source for the same song.

4. Corrections And Song Requests

Visitors can request corrections through the contact page. Helpful reports include the year, region, artist, title, and a short explanation of what is wrong. Examples include a broken video, wrong artist, duplicate song, inaccurate year, or a better official upload.

Song requests are reviewed before inclusion. A requested song may not be added if it lacks a stable video, does not fit the year, duplicates an existing entry, or would make a regional playlist too narrow. This keeps the site useful as a broad music discovery tool rather than a list of unrelated favorites.

5. Update Rhythm

The database is updated when broken videos are found, when new years need stronger coverage, or when a region needs better balance. New releases are treated carefully because a current hit may not remain representative after a few months. For recent years, entries may change more often than older decades.

The goal is steady improvement rather than mass publishing. Adding fewer well-reviewed songs is better than adding many low-context entries that make the site harder to navigate.

6. User Experience Principles

Visitors should be able to understand the service without signing in, downloading software, or clicking through misleading screens. The main player, guide, about page, contact page, terms, and privacy policy are linked from the site navigation so both users and crawlers can understand the structure.

Ads are not shown on error pages, experimental pages, or screens whose only purpose is navigation or notification. Advertising, if enabled after policy review, should be secondary to the music guide and playlist experience.