Music -- give us now our daily playlist

July 5, 2006 8:00 AM

I have a GREAT IDEA for music.meta... and I'm sure that everyone will agree. [more inside]
posted by Witty to MetaFilter Music at 8:00 AM (31 comments total)

Wouldn't it be neato if I could click on a link on the music.meta front page, perhaps a link next to each day's date heading, that created a (temporary?) playlist of every track posted that day? For example, since I was out n' about yesterday for the big 4th of July holiday and didn't get a chance to listen to all the new music posted, it would be cool if today, I could go to the front page and click on something next to "July 4" and queue up all the tracks from that day for my listening pleasure... without having to go through each one individually. Awesome right (unless I just haven't figured out how this is already possible)?
posted by Witty at 8:00 AM on July 5, 2006

That seems like a reasonable idea.
posted by cortex at 8:05 AM on July 5, 2006

Seconded. Cigars all round.
posted by Jofus at 8:08 AM on July 5, 2006

Why not just subscribe to the feed?
posted by scottreynen at 8:16 AM on July 5, 2006

Seems like a great idea to me. I've never got my head around RSS feeds and the like, so this would be great for me personally.
posted by lloyder at 8:29 AM on July 5, 2006

That sounds awesome.

I am subscribed to the feed (bloglines) and if I want to listen to evey song played since my last check I would have to hit play on each song, one by one, until I had listened to them all. A playlist where I could just hit play once and then go and do my dishes or something would be highly preferable.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:35 AM on July 5, 2006

Make it so, number one.
posted by loquacious at 8:37 AM on July 5, 2006

This is a good idea.
posted by interrobang at 9:31 AM on July 5, 2006

Shouldn't be too difficult even -- m3u is a dead simple format, if you use that.
posted by reklaw at 9:57 AM on July 5, 2006

If the Flash player is XML-driven (and I think it is), it should be simple enough to generate an on-the-fly XML that the Flash Player grabs via FlashVars.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:59 AM on July 5, 2006

Bleh. I can't post today. Meant to include that I have done this, albiet with WordPress and PHP instead of ColdFusion.
posted by eustacescrubb at 10:01 AM on July 5, 2006

I could do this, yeah.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:25 AM on July 5, 2006

I don't like this idea.

... Sorry, didn't want to contribute to the pileon. Actually, I think it's a great idea.
posted by Tuwa at 11:43 AM on July 5, 2006

I have another idea, sorry if this has already been brought up.

What about making "Most Favorited Tracks" limited to a few days? Because now it's pretty static -- a favorite track just gets favorited more because it's there, and no new songs can make it up the list.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 1:41 PM on July 5, 2006

There is also "Recently Favorited Tracks", which picks up the recent side of things, but, yeah, nothing really in between. Maybe a Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Alltime breakdown?
posted by cortex at 1:56 PM on July 5, 2006

I know about the "Recently Favorited," but that's really kind of random. It would just be nice to be able to see what people have generally liked over the last couple of days. I don't have time to play every song but would like to check in now and then--maybe I'm not the target user. Anyway, a greatest hits list is also cool but not likely to change much.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 2:04 PM on July 5, 2006

We could get Casey Casem to do voiceover intros for each song, too.
posted by Eideteker at 2:19 PM on July 5, 2006

Part of the issue is that, as of today, it's about six days old. We haven't really had a chance to get beyond What's Popular This Week yet.
posted by cortex at 2:21 PM on July 5, 2006

Good idea. Using the podcast is a bit cumbersome for me -- a daily playlist would be great.
posted by danb at 2:49 PM on July 5, 2006

While we're talking about playlists, Matt, I have a pony request which understandably got lost at the end of the first Music thread. Can we have playlists run in the order in which you add tracks, rather than the opposite? E.g., when I made a playlist to hear pantufla's 2-part Champagne Jam dj mix, I had to add Part 2 first, and then Part 1, in order for them to play in the right order. This seems counter-intuitive. May I suggest that (in the absence of the ability to change the order of playlist tracks) tracks added to a playlist be added to the bottom of the list, and play *after* the tracks added earlier?
posted by mediareport at 3:18 PM on July 5, 2006

mediareport, I figured people wanted playlists to show newest first, so they started out different whenever they were saved and played (and esp. so if they become podcasts). You'd prefer if they were done in the opposite direction?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:30 PM on July 5, 2006

Well, it just makes more sense, given that every other medium I've ever made mixes on plays the cuts in the order that they were added. But I'm curious if other people have an opinion on that.

Will there ever be the option to change the order of playlist tracks? Making mix tapes has always been a hobby of mine, so forgive me if this is starting to seem obsessive. But that would make the playlist option much more fun and usable.
posted by mediareport at 3:38 PM on July 5, 2006

It'd be cool to be able to reorder tracks, but personally that's less important right now -- I only have one playlist, and I just use it to remember songs I like. (Browsing around, it seems I'm not alone there.)

In any case, the way the playlists work now is more intuitive to me than the reverse.
posted by danb at 4:03 PM on July 5, 2006

Make it so, number one.

I've seen your name on MeFi tons of times before, but I read that comment and for half a second I read your name as "Locutus." Hah, what a nerd I am.
posted by Alexandros at 4:19 PM on July 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

the way the playlists work now is more intuitive to me than the reverse.

It's more intuitive to have to add the second part of a two-part song first in order to hear it second? Huh. That's a strange definition of intuitive.
posted by mediareport at 4:28 PM on July 5, 2006

Shuffle, please!
posted by Eideteker at 6:03 PM on July 5, 2006

It's more intuitive to have to add the second part of a two-part song first in order to hear it second?

Uh, yeah, it is. It makes sense that the newest tracks are in front, because that's what I expect.
posted by danb at 6:13 PM on July 5, 2006

It's more intuitive to have to add the second part of a two-part song first in order to hear it second?

How many times will a part 1 and part 2 be posted? Seems like a once-in-a-blue-moon edgecase to me.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:37 PM on July 5, 2006

I'll stop after this, but the two-part thing is just one example. The deeper point is that when I make a mix, I start at the beginning and add to the end. I don't think of mixes as something I want to constantly change the beginning of. I thought that's how most folks thought of them, too.

*shrug*

If I have to, I'll learn to adjust.

So, any thoughts about the ability to alter the order of an existing playlist?
posted by mediareport at 6:52 PM on July 5, 2006

I am loquacious the bored. You will be bloviated.
posted by loquacious at 7:01 PM on July 5, 2006

custom playlist order would be a total bitch to code, but I think I can expose a shuffle button in flash.

I know playlists in the sense of music playing software is usually first added, first on the list, but I was doing the playlists in a metaphorical sense, being that they're online, so that if you clicked through to someone's random playlist from a song entry, you'd find other similar stuff. If those playlists always started with three or four popular old songs, it'd get kinda old.

I guess I based the "playlist" idea off stuff like Listmania and Wishlists at Amazon, and those always default to the newest stuff at the top.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:08 PM on July 5, 2006