Music Improvements

[Luke 38499]

Let's improve the music experience, so please offer your suggestions. Specially the things I'm looking at changing are:

 

- music now playing screen (including the playlist - should we just merge them onto one screen?)

- Screensaver during music playback

- what happens after starting music playback - should we just bring you to the now playing screen?

 

@@gcoupe and @@ginjaninja always have good ideas about this.

[Guest asrequested]

When selecting an album to play we are presented with the track list. I would like this also be the current play list. So when I click on a track to play it, we stay on that screen and the play/pause will appear on that track, indicating that is what is playing. Then to play another track, I just scroll down to that track and play it, or just press skip. Having to go forward another two levels is a pain. The three dot options on the track are great, no suggestions on that. So keep it all on this screen.

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by Doofus

[Guest asrequested]

Another major thing I'd like, is for the sound to follow the speaker arrangement we choose in the settings. I have mine set to 7.1, but music is played in stereo. I'd like it played through all speakers.

[ebr 15342]

- music now playing screen (including the playlist - should we just merge them onto one screen?)

 

Yes.  Doesn't have to look exactly like this, but an example:

 

 

- Screensaver during music playback

 

Yes

 

(note this screen grab makes the text much less obvious than it really is)

 

 

- what happens after starting music playback - should we just bring you to the now playing screen?

 

Yes - unless you just added something to a queue of already playing items.  In that case, you probably want to stay where you are so you can add more.

[Luke 38499]

For the screensaver, what about MTV music video style? Remember they used to have the album art in the lower left along with the details right next to it.

[Guest asrequested]

For a screen saver, when I was using the zune player, it would pull images of the artist from what I assumed was the internet, and make a slideshow from them. I liked that. I like ebr's suggestion, with the info on the screen like that. Maybe that with a slideshow of the now playing artist? 

 

What about volume normalizing? That would nice, or is this only about the UI?

Edited July 24, 2016 by Doofus

[Deathsquirrel 743]

I'd like the ability to easily kick off a shuffle play from most any screen.  For example, I click a genre and see the buttons Play All, Shuffle, and Instant Mix.  The latter two don't do anything.  Play All plays all songs in alphabetic order by song track.  If I have a shuffle button I expect it to play the current group of tracks in random order.

 

On playback go straight to Now Playing.

 

For screensaver during music it doesn't make sense to see movie images.  I'd REALLY like an option to use my photo library, but barring that it should stick to music-related images.

[mentasm 43]

I tend to think some text needs to go on/with album artwork in many places.  A lot of times I'm staring at an album I'm not that familiar with and have no idea who the artist is or what the album name is.

 

I like ebr's suggestion for the screen saver.  I'd also like to see a mock up of the MTV style.  The only problem with associating it with the current playing music will be if the current album doesn't have any nice backdrop images.  Do we get a black screen?  

 

Perhaps having something that does a nice effect scrolling through random cover art, or random music backdrop images could work too?

 

I also think in music it is important (as it is for movies) that we have the ability to skip through lists by just starting to type a name, just like the EWMC client did.

 

Is there any easy way to integrate something like spotify into the music library, so that all your music can be played from the one location?

[jasonwilliams 34]

+1 for the photo album screen saver. Choice of transition would be a bonus and overlay (a la MTV) at the start of a new song would be bliss.

[swhitmore 781]

For the screensaver, what about MTV music video style? Remember they used to have the album art in the lower left along with the details right next to it.

 

I can't seem to find it anywhere, but the best music screensaver I remember is the desktop version of Zune. Man, that was gorgeous. I'll try and find a clip.

 

Edit: Found one here. It's not a great example since the framerate is like 1sec... but you get the idea.

 

If you could pull off something like this, I think it would be amazing.

Edited July 25, 2016 by swhitmore

[swhitmore 781]

Here is another slightly better example (still low framerate for some annoying reason). I love the way the text overlay moves diagonally, and in different directions. I'd love to see this for the video screensaver as well. I like that it shows stats on how may times it's played etc. I think that could be really nice.

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by swhitmore

[Guest asrequested]

Here is another slightly better example (still low framerate for some annoying reason). I love the way the text overlay moves diagonally, and in different directions. I'd love to see this for the video screensaver as well. I like that it shows stats on how may times it's played etc. I think that could be really nice.

 

 

And if it couldn't do it for the artist, it would put up revolving covers

 

 

[swhitmore 781]

Omg, that ninja tuna cover still pops up randomly.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[JDizzy 21]

I kinda like it the way it is with a few tweaks:

 

Background fanart changes (as it does now), but also has the zoom-in/out moving effect.

Cover art / text etc fades out after xx seconds (maybe relocate to lower screen as to not obscure fanart behind it).

For the playlist: on or off toggle (as it is now).

 

It would be nice when you start a playlist to load Now Playing.

 

Those Zune screens are pretty nice but very busy... play count??! (why?)

Also if the text could be toggled off on those screens then it wouldn't distract from the fanart.

I personally would not like a random cover art wall.

 

I have seen a few Kodi screens that have Milkdrop/ProjectM visualization overlay semi-transparent on top of artwork that also looks nice

 

Mainly, not too busy... let the fanart shine through.

Also, if you could add the ... somewhere when browsing songs to do an instant mix.

It seems as it is now, you can only instant mix an album (and then are lucky if it ever plays within the mix)

Edited July 25, 2016 by JDizzy

[Ernst 29]

I agree with most of the suggestions, but have one (maybe weird) request.

My family and I like to guess the song and artist by occasion.

I have an album with 2000 songs that is ideal for this little game (but I could also use multiple albums for this).

 

The way we use this is to select the large album and shuffle play.

In the current music set-up, the view stays at the album view, without showing the details of the song.

When everyone has had a chance to guess the song/artist, we hit the now playing button to check, then go back to the album view for the next song. It would be awesome if we could have a next song button on there to move on.

 

If the suggestions from other users are implemented, we would probably not be able to do this any more, so I would like to have the ability to hide the song and artist (maybe some sort of show/hide button?)

[gcoupe 63]

- music now playing screen (including the playlist - should we just merge them onto one screen?)

- Screensaver during music playback

- what happens after starting music playback - should we just bring you to the now playing screen?

 

 

I'm still a fan of the old WMC "waterfall of album covers" screensaver, which also doubled as the "now playing" screen. An (optional) alternative would be a screensaver of photos (also in WMC), perhaps (optionally) overlaid with the "now playing" details...

 

I should perhaps also come clean and say that I no longer use Emby (or Plex) for playing my music - I use Roon instead.

[ebr 15342]

For a screen saver, when I was using the zune player, it would pull images of the artist from what I assumed was the internet, and make a slideshow from them. I liked that. I like ebr's suggestion, with the info on the screen like that. Maybe that with a slideshow of the now playing artist? 

 

That's exactly what the above one does.  It rotates backdrops for the artist of the song currently playing.

[Nikolaech 32]

autor @im85288  rotating oval cd-art =brilliant idea

 

add

+description artist

+album description

+a description of the song

[JDizzy 21]

Hopefully, whatever is implemented, there will be some sort of configuration to allow fallback to just the basics (album art, title, artist, duration).

You might also consider hiding the onscreen controls and pop them up using the up arrow or something (might also be a good place to have  button for config).

 

Lastly, did I mention crossfade? (that would be cool)

[AndyBak 11]

Two things I like with the Amazon Prime music app that may be worth consideration

 

1) Lyrics being displayed as the song plays

2) Thumbs up/down quick buttons to promote or reject tracks from random/shuffle play.

 

I expect the first would require a decent amount of develop to include (source or lyrics, where they are stored - in source media / in database, how they are processed/displayed); but I would have thought the second one would be fairly straight forward, just another field in the user database.

[ginjaninja 569]

if their is such a thing as a lyrics provider, lyrics would be great.

[chef 3788]

For the screensaver, what about MTV music video style? Remember they used to have the album art in the lower left along with the details right next to it.

Yes! Please have it appear near the end of the song as well!

 

Bringing' me back to the MTV days! That is a sweeeeet idea!

[ginjaninja 569]

Suggestions for Artist view:

 

i would like to see the artist interface discriminating between studio albums and non studio albums, when viewing an artists work.

or even better studio albums, live albums, eps, soundtracks, albums where the artist appears in one of the tracks, etc.

ie grouped by album type (with option to ungroup)

 

Musicbrainz provides this information as tags..but a crude measure based on the id3 tags would also be a step forward.

if the set of album artist tags on an album is size 1

and if that albumartist is a member of artist tag for every track on the album (the tracks artist is the album artist [+ potentially others])

then the album is a studio album...else album is 'other'

 

It would be good if albums in artist view could be sorted by year (default?) or alphabetically.

 

maybe one axis of buttons/tabs would alter the sort/grouping/(filtering?) of the artists content...whilst another independent axis provided artist description, similar artistists

Edited July 31, 2016 by ginjaninja

[ginjaninja 569]

Suggestion for track view and general navigation.

 

whereever an artist appears eg. on an album tracklisting or playlist, it is useful to be able to jump to that artist.

 

for tracklisting of compilation albums especially it is a -ve not to be able to jump to that artist.

 

I imagine that the classical lot might want a view which show classical metadata like composer and be able to jump to that; but they can speak for themselves.

[ginjaninja 569]

suggestions for music searching:

 

something more sophisticated than substring matches on artist and track searches would be helpful.

eg how easy would it be to have spaces as separators eg 'n order' matches to 'new order'

 

being able pin search results to browse between results (without having to reenter search terms to browse next result) would be useful.

oops just webclient that doesnt do that..et allready does

 

being able to constrain searches to music artists or tracks would be helpful

oops et already groups results 

Edited July 30, 2016 by ginjaninja