------------------------------------------------------------------------ A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29368 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Question: What do playlists mean to you? - Never or very rarely use them - Not a big problem: use static playlists for parties or similar, current features ok - Use static playlists a lot, would like to see better features for managing them - Want smart or dynamic playlists. iTunes integration and/or plugins usable (but could be better!). - Smart or dynamic playlists are very important, current options not good enough, must be improved - Critical: Playlist handling must be improved or I'm out of here ------------------------------------------------------------------------
How you use playlists depends to some extent on how you listen to and interact with music. This is probably a very simplistic analysis but my impression is that most of the regular contributors here are very music "literate" - they think about it a lot, they've amassed extensive music collections, and they tend to be early adoptors of networked music technology like the Squeezebox. IMHO, this group is likely to have quite definite ways they want to listen to their music, have set up detailed structures for their music libraries, and they are more likely to play music per album or using fixed playlists created over time. Slimserver's pretty well set up to deal with this type of music interaction. What Slimserver doesn't handle half as well is the person who has amassed a library of random music tracks (a la ITunes) and who wants to listen to it in semi-random fashion using dynamic playlists. This is becoming more and more the norm as increasing number of people put their music onto an Ipod and add odd tracks to their libraries using Itunes, Emusic, or copying from friends. This group tend just to want to access "music", not worry about music library structure. Ease of access and simplicity are key to this group. Slimserver isn't half as well set up to deal with this kind of use, although things like MusicIP and ITunes update go a long way to introducing this kind of functionality addon. These people tend to be the ones who post a couple of time only on the boards, saying that they can't get their playlists to work they way they want (usually the same way that ITunes does something) and that Slimserver doesn't work for them as a concept for that reason. I think the question Ceejay may really be asking is how far should Slimserver go to appeal to the second group, recognising that it's an increasingly common way to interact with music ? If Slimserver wants to cross over into a mass-market product, then better playlist handling is essential - but I still question why it has to. For myself, I use playlists a lot, but I'm pretty happy with the workarounds / additional functionality provided by MusicIP or Erland's plugins. Even if these sometimes can be a bit of "kludge" with Slimserver, it's better than losing any of the other music cataloguing functionality that comes with Slimserver in pursuit of a mass-market product. Edited to say, I think this puts me in category 4 ! -- Siduhe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Siduhe's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=723 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29368 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
