Separate web radio and music file playback

[waves]

In another post ACX wrote that the RuneAudio is getting a deep rework. Here is a request regarding the radio stream part.

The starting idea for this request is that listening to live radio streams and listening to music tracks are different activities and in many cases it doesn't make sense to combine them in one playlist. A user may have a playlist with 63 music tracks but then want to listen to live radio for half an hour before going back to listening to the music tracks. Comparison with an old time CD/radio hifi system: the user listens to a CD but then pauses and toggles the stereo to radio mode, listens to radio for half an hour and then toggles back to CD and continues where he was.

I see that this topic has been talked about in various older forum posts. ACX has replied ( two-nice-features-t107.html ) that MPD by design uses a playlist queue.

Ok. But a workaround could perhaps be this: RA keeps track of two modes (radio stream, music file mode) and in addition to the existing active playlist makes use of two saved temporary playlists.

If the user is playing a playlist in music mode and then clicks to start a radio stream RA would do
1 save music queue to a special temporary music playlist
2 clear queue
3 add radio stream to new queue and play it

Similarly if the user is in radio mode and clicks to play a music file RA would
1 save radio queue to temporary radio stream playlist
2 clear queue
3 add play music file to new queue and play it

A user can already do all this manually. But the suggestion is that it be automated.

The queue window would also get a button for manual toggling between radio stream and music file modes. Clicking that button when in music file mode would save the current music queue to temporary music playlist, clear queue and load the saved temporary radio playlist into new queue. No other changes to the UI layout would be required.

Extra: if the above is implemented then the radio stream title in the Playback view could be made into a link that jumps directly to the radio stream library section view and a single click on radio streams for quicker switching between radio stations.

[ACX]

This thing could be a topic to be debated, as some users want to do the exact opposite: manage all different types of media (files, streams, Spotify, etc) under the same queue. Keeping queues separated (expecially for MPD and Spotify, for example) would be easier to code, but is that the way to go?

[waves]

This thing could be a topic to be debated, as some users want to do the exact opposite: manage all different types of media (files, streams, Spotify, etc) under the same queue. Keeping queues separated (expecially for MPD and Spotify, for example) would be easier to code, but is that the way to go?

I'll stick my neck out and bet one banana that there are very few users who want to combine endless live radio streams with finite songs in one playlist.
But I can see how people would want to combine spotify songs and local songs into one playlist (and maybe songs from other music file stream services too if more get added over time). I think one playlist for endless live streams and one playlist for everything else makes most sense.

I haven't set up spotify so tell me: how does RuneAudio currently handle that? Does playing something in spotify spawn a new playlist? When the users toggles back to MPD does the old playlist reappear?

[ACX]

I haven't set up spotify so tell me: how does RuneAudio currently handle that? Does playing something in spotify spawn a new playlist? When the users toggles back to MPD does the old playlist reappear?

Yes, that's how the current implementation manages it. You have to switch between players (MPD or spop) and each one shows its playlist.