wanted to get this down. the various play modes i've seen in player software.
find a song and play it
typically user knows what they want to hear right now.
finds artist, finds album, finds track and plays
pros
instant gratification
cons
many steps
ambiguity about what happens when the song is over. play next on the album, play next alphabetically, stop playing
building a playlist
user has in mind ahead of time what they want to hear, either n tracks or n albums or n artists
pros
more music and less interaction with the player.
cons
building a playlist can be cumbersome. I like how winamp does it.
winamp
the first artist, album, track you select to play becomes the start of the playlist so you get to hear something right away.
subsequent selections either replace what you are listening to, or you can add it to the end of the playlist "enqueue" it .
you can also navigate to the current playlist while playing and re-order tracks that have been cued.
you can also give the playlist a name or generate an m3u file which can be played later
potentially an m3u since it is just a list of file paths can be used to drive some batch file operations like copy to device, or burn to cd(if anyone does that anymore :) )
dj mode
this is a variation on the playlist mode. the way I have seen it implemented is there are 2 playlists and the player will bounce back and forth between them.
typically there are other features that make the playing a more hands on performance than a passive listening experience such as....
crossfade
beat matching
mixing(2 tracks playing simultaneously)
pitch change
tempo change
digital signal processing (EQ, low pass/high pass filters etc....)
personally, the only time I would use this kind of mode is if I were hosting a party. the last time I did it though, it was fun building the playlists b/c the software was giving me tempo information which is not in the id3 tags as far as I know, so I was selecting songs not only by what the mood of the party was going to be, but by how well they might be blended together.
I dont know, there was something very satisfying about managing to nail a transition from meshugah to madonna to trail of dead beastie boys over the course of 15 minutes.
wanted to get this down. the various play modes i've seen in player software.
find a song and play it
typically user knows what they want to hear right now.
finds artist, finds album, finds track and plays
pros
instant gratification
cons
many steps ambiguity about what happens when the song is over. play next on the album, play next alphabetically, stop playing
building a playlist
user has in mind ahead of time what they want to hear, either n tracks or n albums or n artists
pros
more music and less interaction with the player.
cons
building a playlist can be cumbersome. I like how winamp does it.
winamp
the first artist, album, track you select to play becomes the start of the playlist so you get to hear something right away.
subsequent selections either replace what you are listening to, or you can add it to the end of the playlist "enqueue" it .
you can also navigate to the current playlist while playing and re-order tracks that have been cued.
you can also give the playlist a name or generate an m3u file which can be played later
potentially an m3u since it is just a list of file paths can be used to drive some batch file operations like copy to device, or burn to cd(if anyone does that anymore :) )
dj mode
this is a variation on the playlist mode. the way I have seen it implemented is there are 2 playlists and the player will bounce back and forth between them.
typically there are other features that make the playing a more hands on performance than a passive listening experience such as....
personally, the only time I would use this kind of mode is if I were hosting a party. the last time I did it though, it was fun building the playlists b/c the software was giving me tempo information which is not in the id3 tags as far as I know, so I was selecting songs not only by what the mood of the party was going to be, but by how well they might be blended together.
I dont know, there was something very satisfying about managing to nail a transition from meshugah to madonna to trail of dead beastie boys over the course of 15 minutes.
pros
interactive performance based
cons
interactive performance based