I'm sorry if this gets a tiny bit of topic but it feels related to this
discussion so I'm posting it here.
I guess the real long term question here is how we want to use these
services.
I can personally see two different kind of usages.
1. Discovery and preview of music before I purchase the real CD or
digital download.
2. Adding online music directly to my main library making it possible
to browse a combined library of music I like where some albums comes
from my locally ripped CD's and others come from streaming services
like Spotify, Napster and Rhapsody.
I'd personally want both alternatives on longer terms and I'm also
going to invest some time to try to reach this goal, at least for
Spotify which is available where I live.
For music discovery I think there are a few things that are important:
1.
Make it easy to find music which is related to music I have access to:
-- The "On Spotify" link already available today makes it easy to find
music by artists I already have in my library.
-- Through the "On Spotify/Similar Artists" link already available
today which makes it easy to find music similar to the artists I
already have in my library today.
-- The missing link I'd really love is an integration with Michael's
Biography plugin, which would make it possible to find related artists
based on the AMG data provided by the Biography plugin. Making it
possible to launch "On Spotify" from an artist inside
"Biography/Influenced By", "Biography/Similar Artists" or
"Biography/Followed" would be really great.
2.
Make it easy to search for things:
-- In iPeng, SqueezePad and the Logitech iOS/Controller apps,
Squeezebox Touch or the web interface this is fairly easy since you
have access to a keyboard.
-- In SqueezeBox Radio, Squeezebox Controller and IP3K devices this is
a big problem since search is really user unfriendly. Remembering
recent searches as both Logitech's Spotify app and Triode's Spotify
plugin does is a start and Triode has taken this one step further by
also remembering Recent artists and albums, which is something I really
miss in the Logitech app. However, something similar to Lazy Search
towards Spotify would really be the icing of the cake on IP3K devices,
I'm not sure if there is any possibility for this though.
3.
Make it easy to discover things based on genres, styles, moods, years,
decades.
-- This is where it gets very interesting to match with data from
LastFM. Matching with data from AMG would be even better but that's
obviously not a possibility due to their rather high licensing prices
and restrictions.
4.
Discover things based on recommendations from friends.
-- Here I think pippin has taken the first step with the latest iPeng
release but I think this could be taken a lot further. Just look at the
Music section in this forum, there are a lot of tips of artists and
albums and songs you might want to listen to, the problem is just that
there is no easy way to listen to it when not sitting beside a
computer. I'm not sure exactly how to solve this but making it easy to
go from the forum on the iPad and make it play the music of the artists
I've selected on the Squeezebox would be a big improvement.
5.
Remember music I've listen to and like and might want to purchase later
on
-- The only thing SBS offers here is favorites and that's really not
working good as a "things to buy" list IMHO. If there was a way to
"star" albums in Spotify plugin I guess it would be one step in the
right direction but I'd really want to "mark an album for purchase" or
something similar. One way would be to make it possible to easily put
it in a favorites sub folder, that's something I think currently only
is possible while sitting beside a computer.
For the possibility to add online music to your music library and get a
mixed library of local and online music there isn't any easy solution
based on SBS database as long as it's completely cleared during a full
rescan. It would be easier if there was an option to "clear LOCAL music
and rescan everything" but that's currently not an option as SBS don't
want to be a music library management system. A few of us are working
on something to solve this using a separate database, but it's going to
take some time until that's a working solution that could be available
to the general public.
--
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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