something completely new: meta playlists

[6arms1leg]

well actually, im not sure if its new, but at least i have never seen it anywhere before (maybe because its a stupid feature...): a "meta playlist"! :new: my idea was to have playlists, that can contain other playlists. it would make the playlist management much more dynamic.

lets say all users have a playlist "my favourite songs", which is updated frequently. then i can make a meta playlist (e.g. "what other like") including all "my favourite songs" playlists from all other users and i would have an always up to date playlist of music recommended by other users. there are probably even cooler uses which im just too stupid to think about right now.

its a little like symlinks (and maybe has similar problems concerning cicles...).

so what do you think? :hear_no_evil: cherrymusic could be the inventor of the "meta playlist", a never before seen feature. :cool:

[devsnd]

Even though I like this concept for its computer-scientific nature, I wouldn't know what to do with this. Why should I compose a playlist of other playlists, especially if i don't know their length nor the content?

For me, it made more sense to have features like the following:

• play the next playlist (the one in the tab to the right of the currently playing playlist) after this one has finished.
• make a playlist of the most listened / starred / listened-by-others-but-not-by-me tracks

You will have to be more specific about the uses of such a feature; Otherwise noone will feel the need to implement it at any time...

[6arms1leg]

yah, give me some time to figure out a good situation where this will be ultra cool. i need to smoke more crack for that...

[tilboerner]

I've also been thinking about this recently, mainly because I've been wondering if there's a neat concept that can unify directories and playlists. More about that another time, maybe. What I realized, however, is that I don't like the idea of nesting playlists; it adds another dimension to the complexity of a couple of questions, comparable to the abomination that is nested commenting. Why does there need to be a tree-like structure to the music you intend to listen to? If nothing else, it sure complicates the interface and also your own mental model.

@6arms1leg, in the scenario you initially described, I'd find it much more sensible to allow everybody to have their own version of a given playlist and then have another playlist that represents an "accumulation" of the individual lists.