Manually Publish Albums

[Anorax 29]

Splintering off of an idea mentioned in this (now locked) thread: http://mlpforums.com/topic/47220-option-to-delete-albums/

 

What if albums were unpublished by default and could be published at a later date? (Websites like Bandcamp does this, mostly by allowing you to "Save Draft")

THis could be useful if you're compiling an album and it's about 90% complete except for that ONE song that that ONE collaborator just isn't finished with yet, but you want to go ahead and upload what IS finished anyway, but set the 90% as unpublished so all you have to do is upload that one last song when it's finished and click "publish" and voila!

 

Album is published, and everyone is none the wiser.

I would add diagrams, but are they really needed here?

unles you want som comic sons

Edited January 26, 2013 by Anorax

[Killian Jones 2,652]

You could then perhaps add to that that song could go in draft mode and wait to become visible once the album is done, it'd be kind of silly to have most songs be visible, but not the collection or album.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,249]

Having some mechanism to keep albums in an "unpublished" state like tracks, giving the artist the ability to "complete" it good and proper, is a great idea, but it comes with the technical challenge of handling the status of an album in the context of a track.

 

Thing is, if a track is attached to an album, the following album-specific information is physically recorded in the track's audio files:

• the track number (its position in the album)
• the album title

Moreover, tracks that are part of an album exhibit some additional on-site behaviour:

• a link to the containing album is prominently displayed under the track title
• the naming scheme of track downloads is slightly different, to include the track number in the filename

Making these last two features check if the associated album is published or not should be relatively straightforward. The first two may take a somewhat more elaborate implementation, however, as no album-specific information should be written into the track files until the album is published.

 

The best way I can think of to approach this issue is to make the publishing of an album permanent and irreversible, just like tracks. If a track is part of an unpublished album, the track will behave as a single for all intents and purposes. When the album is published, the appropriate tags will be written into the track files, and the album-specific site features like the link to the album from the track page and the album filename scheme will take effect.

 

Does that sound like a good way to implement it?

[Anorax 29]

absolutely.

 

although you did mention once something along the lines of each album having it's own upload page.

 

what if. the songs that are uploaded directly into the album-specific uploader aren't published until the album is, but you can still "link" songs to albums (like it's currently set up)?

 

this way, songs uploaded directly into an unpublished album are published with the album, and songs that are linked into the album are treated as single tracks until the album is published, then the correct tags and whatnot are put in place?

 

if that doesn't make sense let me know

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,249]

what if. the songs that are uploaded directly into the album-specific uploader aren't published until the album is, but you can still "link" songs to albums (like it's currently set up)?

 

this way, songs uploaded directly into an unpublished album are published with the album, and songs that are linked into the album are treated as single tracks until the album is published, then the correct tags and whatnot are put in place?

 

Good call. I forgot to consider how the album uploader would tie together with the ability to publish an album, considering that tracks themselves already have their own published status.

 

So, is this what you are proposing?

• Tracks uploaded directly into an album cannot be published directly.
• Publishing an album publishes all of its tracks.
• Publishing the album is the only way to publish tracks uploaded using the album's uploader.
• The ability to freely attach and detach tracks to and from albums remains as-is, handling unpublished albums as if no link to the album exists (per the idea in my last post here).

The main issue this introduces is letting artists adjust their track's info without publishing it. It will add some more complexity to the publishing process, which I'm currently trying to keep to a very simple "Save & Publish" or "Cancel" option at the end of a form. I can't see the addition of an album publish feature happening without splitting track updates and track publishing into two separate actions first.

 

Someone could also circumvent the restriction on publishing tracks uploaded to an album by detaching and subsequently re-attaching them to the still-unpublished album. That may not really be worth worrying about, though, as the main point of combining the album uploader with an album publisher is giving artists a way to release a collection of music all at once.