I've been thinking a bit and it really feels like it's time to try to
move the Squeezebox products to the next level. I'd like to get some
more focus on features that's related to finding music both in your own
library and also new music which you currently don't have in your
library. It's getting painfully clear to me that it's not the primary
focus area for Logitech, at least not during the last year or two. At
the moment with the smaller team, they seems to be mostly focused on
fixing bugs, doing some technical enhancements and doing small
enhancements to the core functions, but nothing revolutionary related
to the music discovery. I should say that the Logitech developers are
doing a great job with the amount of resources they have access to, so
this isn't any critique on them.
However, if we want something to happen it feels we need to take this
into our own hands. I'm not sure about exactly how to do this yet and
I'm also not sure how much time I'm personally prepared to commit on it
but I like to at least start a discussion about what's missing to make
the Squeezebox the best music discovery device out there. If I decide
I'm not prepared to do this myself this discussion might at least
result in some good ideas which Logitech can use. Hopefully more people
in the community are willing to help with various parts if something
good comes out of this discussion, I'm definitely not going to do
anything if I'm alone. However, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be the
only one interested in this kind of functionality.
So some questions to guide the discussion:
1.
How do you find music in your own library ?
- Which way to you browse/search ? (which browse or search menus)
- Which type of remote/interface do you use ? Different for different
situations ?
- Do you find music through statistics based browse menus ? (ratings,
play counts, history)
- Do you find music through smart playlists based on statistics or
random selection or other kind of automatic mixes ?
- Do you use album art when selecting what to play ?
- Do you typically start searching/browsing from an artist, album or
track and want to find something related to that ?
2.
How do you usually find new music you like to get but currently don't
have in your library ?
- Heard it on the radio ?
- Where do you start when searching ? Top charts ? Genres ? Similar
artists ?
- Do you use some web site when searching or do you browse some music
store directly ?
- Are you using the computer, your Squeezebox or some other device when
searching for new music ?
- Do you preview the music before puchasing ? Do you preview it on the
real system or cheep laptop speakers or something similar ?
- Do you use a subscription based service so you aren't actually buying
albums, you just need to find the albums/tracks you are interested in by
browsing the service ?
- Through reviews ? Any specific online site ?
- Through friends ? Some community site ?
3.
How would you like to be able to find music in your own library in the
future ?
- What kind of functionality is missing today related to browsing ?
- What kind of functionality is missing today related to searching ?
4.
How would you like to find new music you like to buy/get in the future
?
- What would you like to do through the Squeezebox/SBS or one of it's
remotes ?
- What would you like to do on some other hardware ?
5.
What kind of tagging/management do you do on new music you add to your
library to make it easier to find stuff later on ?
- Which additional tags do you add which isn't handled by standard SBS
today ?
- Is the folder structure the music files are stored in important ?
- If you use Custom Scan, which additional tags do you add besides
those supported by SBS ?
- Do you manually add ratings to your music ? Why ?
6.
Do you synchronize the data in SBS with some other application to make
it easier to find interesting music ?
- Import statisitcs from MusicIP ?
- Export statistics to MusicIP ?
- Import files, playlists and statistics from iTunes ?
- Export statistics to iTunes ?
- Do you use some other application integrated with SBS/Squeezebox ?
I've probably missed a lot of relevant questions, so feel free to post
your thoughts about other areas that's involved in discovering old and
new music even if it's not mentioned in the questions above.
I realize there are many questions to answer and that this is a huge
functional area, so feel free to answer in several posts if the forum
post max length feels too limited. :-)
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer
helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum
and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always
appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate))
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