Hi atomicop, the good news is that some of the features suggested by you already are under development for the next 0.3-beta release
atomicop wroteThe UI should use embedded album art as a priority (if I added it, it's most likely the artwork that I want to see), then alternate sources if nothing is embedded. Most popular formats allow some sort of embedded information, including album art. The next step would be "folder.jpg" or "cover.jpg" (or similar), and then moving to the web if nothing else is found. Additionally, this helps systems to not require internet access (security concerns, portable setups, etc).
Already done, we are polishing that feature.
atomicop wroteFrom the playback UI, it would be great if tapping on the album art brought me to the album (in case I want to add other songs to the playlist). Tapping on the information above that (artist, track, album name, etc) would take you to the artist. That second one requires additional features (I'll describe in detail further in this post), or it could just take you to the browse page and search for the artist name by default (this would be the fastest to implement).
I already thought about this feature and discussed it with Orion some days ago. It's going to take some time, so it won't see daylight in time for the next release.
atomicop wroteThere has already been mention of adding a function to randomly add files to a playlist (ACX mentioned it in a post). That would be great as I currently use MPoD (and MPaD), on my iOS devices, in order to randomly add files to the playlist. I bring up the random functionality here because I would like one thing to be considered: have a threshold setting for minimum track length to add. That would allow us to avoid adding short tracks such as skits and interludes that are common for some artists (or soundtracks where they include some dialog clips between songs).
Already introduced, still perfectioning it.
atomicop wroteThe browse section would greatly benefit from a restructuring. This is the major addition I mentioned previously. Essentially, I don't want to have to browse through folders to find my music. Since the info is already being saved to a database, it would be best if I was presented with categories (artist, album, track, genre, year, etc). Then I could have data spread across multiple drives but not need to know where it existed to find it. While I can currently search, I can't easily add an entire album that way (you can do it, but it's one track at a time).The presentation is really what matters; let me add any number of locations, but once all the data is scanned, let me not see the locations by default. Present as just the info I'd use to make a choice (info about the music, not the storage). Also, this would make my previous request even more useful. Tapping the current track info could take you to the Artist/Album view for that track. That would show all the tracks on that album, but allow the user to go up one level to see all albums for that artist.
If my explanation doesn't make sense, check out how MPoD displays data, or how Plex handles movies/TV shows.
In addition, there could still be an option to view the file's location, in case you needed to know where it was stored. But that option should be in an "info" submenu of some sort; it would be there if needed, but not displayed by default.
We initially simplified the browsing method, leaving only the "file" mode available. That simply was because both Orion and I have a music library that's well structured in folders, so it was the most rational approach for us. But I understand that that could be a limit for those who are not in the same conditions, so we are going to re-enable the other browsing methods in the future.
Thanks for your suggestions!
