Music Feature Enhancements

[Brent]

Time to dig up a thread that is important to me. Music on SageTV is important to me. I failed to discuss it much with Jeff on the GeekTonic interview so I thought I'd revisit it here.

Anyone have additional suggestions on what you would like to see in SageTV for music improvements to the core? I'm not thinking SageMC or customizations here - more towards features we need in the SageTV core.

[bastafidli]

- #1 is to make it plainly work, i have reported several usability issues month ago that were not fixed, e.g. play a single song and after it finishes you have to press stop to be able to play another one
- Pie in the sky would be something like Apple's Music Genius or Pandora (wonder if they have api or license access to their database) where once could start a song and there would be mode to play songs similar to that one

[david1234]

Originally Posted by CPA

-gapless playback
-replaygain support
-smart playlists (support for multiple genres per tag...semicolon seperated)
PLEASE!!

These 3 should be the bare minimum. Dont' get me wrong, I have nothing against visualizations and streaming radio, but shouldn't we start by pushing them to just get basic music playing working right!

[Olias]

Another vote for the basics.
I'd really like to get gapless playback and smart playlists.

[Peter_h]

My List.

Necessary improvements.
1.) The overall navigation. It's way to clunky and you go through way too many screens to get to what you want.
2.) It needs to be able to ignore "A", "An" and "The" in the artist names.
3.) Gapless Playback
4.) Net radio - pandora, slacker, lastfm. Take your pic but it should be one seamless experience.
5.) Multiple genre tag
6.) how about a "create random playlist" button?

Would be nice improvements
6.) Suggestions - similar to the itunes genius playlist or the SageTV "Intelligent Suggestions" but for music. So suggest playlist or even new music.
7.) Visualizations
8.) Artist info - something similar to imdb actor search or what is pulled up when we look at movie details.

[briands]

My (and wife's) suggestions, most are already mentioned, so this is just to add support:
Proper sort order for artist - Omit "the"
Dynamic playlist - playlist based on a set of filter criteria
Star rating - able to set on the "now playing" screen with just a press of the numbers 1-5 or something easy.
A good playlist import/export method - let's face it, Sage will likely never be your only music player since so many functions are not likely to ever be implemented (managing sync w/ portables,etc).
Easy web radio
Some sort of FM tuning mode - gravy if you could timeshift / record to music directory.
True STREAMING support - I think this is what makes the pandora and web radio plugins so complicated...

[tmiranda]

+1 for "the basics".

Recognize the "Disk" tag. I have many 2 disk CDs that I've tagged but Sage ignors the disk tag completely.

I think PluckyHD is working on improvements in the music area....

[Fuzzy]

Sage Music Wall....

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Sage Music Wall....

Yep. I'm excited about what Plucky's doing with the music wall believe me. And I bet there will be other really nice, exciting things coming from 3rd party devs like that.

Still, I know there are some important shortcomings in the SageTV music core functionality that need to be addressed so getting all of those on SageTV's list is my aim here although I enjoy seeing the other ideas as well so keep them all comin'

[scanner95]

As an existing user of both SageTV (headless with extender) and Squeezeserver/Squeezebox(es), I would love both of them to integrate.

How about running an instance of sueezeplayer (or another squeezebox emulator) on HD200, so it would be recognized by Slimserver as a standard Squeezebox/receiver? Then all the audio features of the Squeeze systems will become readily available on Sage HD200.

I do not want to power up my TV to listen to music. I would use Logitech Squeezebox controller, or Squeezecenter Web UI to control the music

[HuMan321]

Isn't there a limit to how many different files you can use at one time? We have a bunch

[andycee]

1. Gapless ! - Media Player, WinAmp, iPods, even my USB car stereo manage to do this correctly. I never use SageTV for listening to music for this one sole reason.

2. Support for listening to radio channels on DTB, surely an easy addition

2. Web radio feeds

[ScubaMedic]

Gapless for me. It's not fun listening to Dark Side of the Moon with gaps!!

[cychou]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Haha!

I gave up on that years ago.

+1

Don't you see the logo at the top left corner (SageTV)?

[Brent]

Oh boy - it's 2010, SageTV 7 is in public beta and I'm back on the music kick. I'm reviewing a Sonos device for GeekTonic and it has me thinking of ways SageTV can "get it's music on" and make SageTV that much better.

Here goes. Most of these things are SageTV Core requests - things that are less UI-centric, but need to happen on SageTV's side to make music a good feature in SageTV. Obviously much, much more could be done with plugins and such.

Playlists, Tags & Organization:

• Playlist import that works
• Update of playlist files that change when media import is executed
• A better playlist editor
• Smart playlists (support multiple genres per tag, dynamic playlists that change as you change the ratings, update based on a set of criteria like: (Pop or Rock genre, 3 stars or higher, haven't played for #days etc)
• Ratings - ability to rate track by using the number keys on remote - display & ability to sort by rating within views
• Support for ID Tags - better tag parsing, auto tag population
• Create random playlist button

Music Without the TV On - this is one of the most common responses when I bring up Music and HTPCs. After using Sonos (I'm reviewing it this month) the SageTV solution for this is quite obvious to me: Build the native, mobile SageTV UI that provides 2-way feedback from SageTV. Then you have a non-TV UI to control & manage music playback

• Step 1 is to build a native SageTV app for the iPhone, Android or one of the other popular mobile devices. This would be used for controlling SageTV's media - TV, Videos and of course music. Pick one mobile device & then move on to the next most popular one etc. I think people would pay for a mobile app - think: more income opportunities for the company)
• Step 2 would be giving the mobile UI a fully featured music UI for control. Control of the extender is key here so you can turn the device on, browse your music collection and manage playback from your mobile device
• Step 3 would be finding a way to sync multiple extenders to play music simultaneously in multiple rooms.

I'm sure by this point you're seeing the possibilities & noticing the fact that the mobile UI opens up new possibilities for not only video, but music as well...
This could also open up SageTV to a new type of hardware device (read: more income opportunities for the company) and presumably a new audience of music lovers to expand SageTV's reach

Integrated webradio/netradio support (including extenders) [mp3 streaming radio, last.fm, pandora, Shoutcast, Sirius etc]

[briands]

Great list Brent... I think it is spot on... of course if they do all of that my recent Squeeze box investment is a waste. But I would much rather use stick with everything in Sage. Might even add more life into the old MPV as a primarily music extender.

One thing I didn't see on your list which would be nice though maybe technically difficult is Synced zone playback. But at a minimum, we should be able to control all of the clients (extenders as well as full PC clients) from any of the other client instances.

Originally Posted by Brent

Oh boy - it's 2010, SageTV 7 is in public beta and I'm back on the music kick. I'm reviewing a Sonos device for GeekTonic and it has me thinking of ways SageTV can "get it's music on" and make SageTV that much better.

Here goes. Most of these things are SageTV Core requests - things that are less UI-centric, but need to happen on SageTV's side to make music a good feature in SageTV. Obviously much, much more could be done with plugins and such.

Playlists, Tags & Organization:

• Playlist import that works
• Update of playlist files that change when media import is executed
• A better playlist editor
• Smart playlists (support multiple genres per tag, dynamic playlists that change as you change the ratings, update based on a set of criteria like: (Pop or Rock genre, 3 stars or higher, haven't played for #days etc)
• Ratings - ability to rate track by using the number keys on remote - display & ability to sort by rating within views
• Support for ID Tags - better tag parsing, auto tag population
• Create random playlist button

Music Without the TV On - this is one of the most common responses when I bring up Music and HTPCs. After using Sonos (I'm reviewing it this month) the SageTV solution for this is quite obvious to me: Build the native, mobile SageTV UI that provides 2-way feedback from SageTV. Then you have a non-TV UI to control & manage music playback

• Step 1 is to build a native SageTV app for the iPhone, Android or one of the other popular mobile devices. This would be used for controlling SageTV's media - TV, Videos and of course music. Pick one mobile device & then move on to the next most popular one etc. I think people would pay for a mobile app - think: more income opportunities for the company)
• Step 2 would be giving the mobile UI a fully featured music UI for control. Control of the extender is key here so you can turn the device on, browse your music collection and manage playback from your mobile device
• Step 3 would be finding a way to sync multiple extenders to play music simultaneously in multiple rooms.

I'm sure by this point you're seeing the possibilities & noticing the fact that the mobile UI opens up new possibilities for not only video, but music as well...
This could also open up SageTV to a new type of hardware device (read: more income opportunities for the company) and presumably a new audience of music lovers to expand SageTV's reach

Integrated webradio/netradio support (including extenders) [mp3 streaming radio, last.fm, pandora, Shoutcast, Sirius etc]

[hedly]

Yep, have to say the smart playlists like in winamp.

Visualizations are not as important 'cause I merely use the TV to populate the playlist then turn it off once the music starts since I use the amp for sound.

I manage all my music through another computer on our network using Winamp and sometimes WMP. Like some others have said, Sage it primarily for TV. To much resources spent on music could take away from the focus of providing a great TV experience.

[tchapin]

I'd like next / previous to work so that I can skip songs with my remote.

About 75% of my music playback when I'm not in my office is via extenders attached to a TV. I don't mind turning on the TV to start playback. In fact, my wife and I enjoy the photo slideshow. To help compensate for Sage's lack of music capabilities, I bought this bluetooth audio receiver. I can connect to it w/ my iPhone or my laptop and play pandora or mood agent or itunes smart playlists. I also picked up one of these and used some old computer speakers to have audio in my kitchen as well.

If I'm upstairs working at a computer, I use pandora or iTunes. For most things, I find Sage to be too weird to use w/ a mouse and keyboard. I know that makes me a freak...

Also, turning shuffle on/off w/ the remote would be nice.

I like all of your suggestions Brent.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tchapin

I'd like next / previous to work so that I can skip songs with my remote.

Pretty sure Channel Up/Down do this currently (as the different tracks in a playlist are treated like chapters)

[tchapin]

Huh. I never would have thought of that. I'll give it a try.

Thanks!