Thread: Best browseing method, post your ideas! (long)

I think the reason that there is an argument of any sort here is because there are 2 very different ways that people enjoy music, which require 2 different browsing methods:

1) You have the "song" listener that enjoys a few or sometimes even ONE song by one band and doesn't know jack **** about anything else by that band and doesn't care to know. This person pirates all of their music and perhaps has likely never even bought a CD in their life. For this type of person, they have like 500+ various artist songs on their HDD. The most songs they will have by a single artist is like 5-10 of the different radio singles released by that artist or band. The best browsing method for this type of person is an easy way of looking up a single song name, perhaps by an OSK or a folder system which is broken up by ABCD, EFGHI, etc etc folders.

Then you have the real music enthusiast that buys rolling stone / spin etc every month and buys music on CD (yes, from a store) religiously. This type of person is very familiar and owns nearly every album release by most artists he listens to. As a result, this type of person is also familiar with album names, album artwork, and song names. This person rarely if ever downloads (often poorly encoded) music except to sample new artists work. This is also the type of person that is accustomed to loading an album in a CD player and listening to the album from start to finish. This person rips all of the CDs he owns to MP3 format (in a high quality bitrate) and puts them in his carputer. This is vastly superior to the pre-carputer method of a CD changer in the boot which has limited capacity and is annoying to change the albums out. Browsing is best accomplished for this person by an artist->album->song directory format. The easiest way to scroll through this in a car environment is to use a folder system for every artist. Within every artists folder are sub-folders for the albums, inside which are the text names (not a folder) of each song. The ability to load an entire album with the press of a button would be ideal, as pictured here previously within this thread:



Agree? Disagree?

Originally Posted by Jackboot

I think the reason that there is an argument of any sort here is because there are 2 very different ways that people enjoy music, which require 2 different browsing methods:

1) You have the "song" listener that enjoys a few or sometimes even ONE song by one band and doesn't know jack **** about anything else by that band and doesn't care to know. This person pirates all of their music and perhaps has likely never even bought a CD in their life. For this type of person, they have like 500+ various artist songs on their HDD. The most songs they will have by a single artist is like 5-10 of the different radio singles released by that artist or band. The best browsing method for this type of person is an easy way of looking up a single song name, perhaps by an OSK or a folder system which is broken up by ABCD, EFGHI, etc etc folders.

Then you have the real music enthusiast that buys rolling stone / spin etc every month and buys music on CD (yes, from a store) religiously. This type of person is very familiar and owns nearly every album release by most artists he listens to. As a result, this type of person is also familiar with album names, album artwork, and song names. This person rarely if ever downloads (often poorly encoded) music except to sample new artists work. This is also the type of person that is accustomed to loading an album in a CD player and listening to the album from start to finish. This person rips all of the CDs he owns to MP3 format (in a high quality bitrate) and puts them in his carputer. This is vastly superior to the pre-carputer method of a CD changer in the boot which has limited capacity and is annoying to change the albums out. Browsing is best accomplished for this person by an artist->album->song directory format. The easiest way to scroll through this in a car environment is to use a folder system for every artist. Within every artists folder are sub-folders for the albums, inside which are the text names (not a folder) of each song. The ability to load an entire album with the press of a button would be ideal, as pictured here previously within this thread:

Thats creepy how you know us so well, just kiding.
I fit more into profile #2, but not quite that into it (no rolling stone or spin for me). I may also have a few complete albums from friends.
But I only have complete albums, and I like to listen to them straight through in the correct order, as though it were a CD.

There are two camps, the MTV group (you know what I mean), and those of use who want to hear somthing different (not just that one track that you hear on the radio every five mins).

We will never come to an agreement on how to browse! The best thing would be an option in the installer for both browsing methods, but then who's going to want to code two browsers?

Originally Posted by Confused

Does anyone have any input on the browing method I posted above for AIMEE. If you've got something different, or any ideas, please let me know.

I'm really wanting to get AIMEE as customisable as possible, if this means building two (selectable) browsing screens, then I'm up for giving it a try


Garry

I didn't understand it. sorry.

Originally Posted by more mods

Thats creepy how you know us so well, just kiding.
I fit more into profile #2, but not quite that into it (no rolling stone or spin for me). I may also have a few complete albums from friends.
But I only have complete albums, and I like to listen to them straight through in the correct order, as though it were a CD.

There are two camps, the MTV group (you know what I mean), and those of use who want to hear somthing different (not just that one track that you hear on the radio every five mins).

We will never come to an agreement on how to browse! The best thing would be an option in the installer for both browsing methods, but then who's going to want to code two browsers?

The 2 profiles I outlined are exagerated for emphasis, but I think nearly everyone fits into one or the other...

It is a fact that the 2 profiles will never agree on the same way to browse - which is why someone developing software for carputers should really just include both methods, even if it means more coding. The focal point of carputers IMHO is music so this should be given top priority. Frodo already gives multiple ways to browse music in his 1.08 release and there should be even more ways to browse in 1.09. I've posted in the "feature request" thread for the next frodoplayer release asking for a way for the profile #2 people to browse. Hoping for the best...

Originally Posted by Jackboot

The 2 profiles I outlined are exagerated for emphasis, but I think nearly everyone fits into one or the other...

It is a fact that the 2 profiles will never agree on the same way to browse - which is why someone developing software for carputers should really just include both methods, even if it means more coding. The focal point of carputers IMHO is music so this should be given top priority. Frodo already gives multiple ways to browse music in his 1.08 release and there should be even more ways to browse in 1.09. I've posted in the "feature request" thread for the next frodoplayer release asking for a way for the profile #2 people to browse. Hoping for the best...

I think that we are out numbered though, so lets just hope we get included.

Originally Posted by Nic

i dont fit into either of those profiles, my music is organised as genre>album> songs, seeing as almost all of my albums are compilations. Plus i have pleanty of lose files in each genre folder

I think that kinda puts you in profile #1 or MTV.

Originally Posted by more mods

I think that we are out numbered though, so lets just hope we get included.

I think were outnumbered too, or people arent speaking up. I fit squarely into profile #2. 90% of the music i have is from my own CDs all ripped at 320k and some uncompressed. 75% of the time i want to listen to the whole album, thats why i bought it. I think profile #2 also believes that 3-4 good songs doesnt make a good album.

But hopfully there will be some options for us when 1.09 comes out
album art together with skip CD functons would make me happy.