Kind of lost in my kind of longish 1.6 feedback post was my thoughts on having the Now Playing (NP) screen function as the hub of interaction. This extends the new approach to NP that allows for different views in the top half+ of the screen while keeping a constant now playing bar at the bottom. We can now switch between artist bio, album review, artist pic, and lyrics. These can be reordered with a default intial view. Undesired elements can be switched off completely. Guys, this was genius!
Squabbles about the color and design fine points of the bottom bar aside, the overall concept is one that has immense potential and seems, to my non-dev sensabilites anyway, to be easily added to.
My first thought was to provide a “Queue” view in the top portion. I dislike that the now playing element in the queue was removed. I mostly lived either in the old now playing screen or in the queue, which gave me both now playing and upcoming tracks. Having to switch around now is more cumbersome.
Leave the queue page if desired, but add the queue to the top portion of NP. This would give the NP/Queue combo view for those of us that like it and would reinforce the central hub notion.
Ideas might be endless! I only have a few. Besides the Queue, how about access to the album art (photos and pdfs stored in our folders or from the cloud, if available). And there is already a cool link to Wikipedia and browser lookup for artist or album. Have those as top portion views in the NP screen as well! One can turn on or off any of these and reorder them. Switching between using the arrows or icons, though I think swiping left and right should be added to feel natural on touchscreens.
All of these views add power and flexibilty, reduce the need to leave the NP screen and adds no clutter!
I’m sure others can come up with ideas for more views like this.
I have a different view on the queue, which I think of as a way to manage what will play, while NP is for enjoying and studying what is playing.
But I acknowledge this may come from my habit to listen to albums. There was somebody who wrote a piece about the centrality of the queue because music listening is about playlists, and playlists are made up of tracks, albums have no role there. Crazy to me — it considers albums as merchandizing packages, while I think of an album as a cohesive work produced by the artist. Listening to a playlist of random tracks is like reading a bunch of chapters from different books. But that may be the pop mindset, I am aware that the ability to buy individual tracks that you like rather than paying for the entire album was considered the most important revolution of digital music. Page 143 of War and Peace has a really steamy scene, but the book as a whole drags. Crazy. And get off my lawn!
I thing that if they add Album Art as one of the NP screen choices that it should also include the UP Next functionality from the original Theater View.
To me, this is the beauty of this approach. You could just click the Queue view off in the customize box, but it would be there for those who want it available for this view.
Your comment added idea that another one of these items could be the album view. Again, you can click over to the primary album view, or get a quick view within the NP Hub.
I would like the “up next” visible, too. Ideally in the footer for me. Maybe that little pop up box could be an option to turn on full time, with the “X” to close it at any time.
Playlists are just modern mixtapes and I used them for many years - ironically often taped from an actual radio. Now roon radio is helping me populate my modem mixtape.
As you say more of a pop thing.
