Restructuring some playlist/album menus and pages

[DusK 1,264]

A day ago, I suggested moving the "Create a playlist" option to somewhere other than the "Upload!" menu, because when you're creating a playlist, you're not actually uploading anything. I'm gonna expand a bit.

 

I originally proposed the option to manage playlists (maybe with an option called "Create/Manage Playlists") be put underneath the named menu to the right of where "Upload!" currently is. The albums feature also seems to be little different than playlists, consisting of simply playlists that include tracks flagged to be added to them in each track's edit page.

 

Considering that making an album also doesn't actually involve uploading anything, this menu item could be moved as well, but I think it would also be a good idea to consolidate album creation to the track uploader page. The track uploader would initially ask the user whether they're uploading individual tracks, a new album, or adding to an existing album, and change the uploading procedure accordingly. So if a user specifies that they're uploading a new album, they'd have the option to name the album, fill out an album description, set album art, etc., instead of having to go to another page after they finish uploading a bunch of tracks, or having to go track-for-track specifying it's for an album.

 

Another option (the best one imo) would be another drop-down menu at the top, "Manage", which would include three options: "Tracks", which would take you to the current track manager (https://pony.fm/dashboard/tracks), "Albums", which would take you to an album manager, and "Playlists", which would take you to a playlist manager.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Uploading tracks to albums

 

I have an "album uploader" planned. The way I'm envisioning that working is as follows:

• Create an empty album first.
• Access a special uploader screen unique to that album.
• Any tracks uploaded using that uploader are immediately attached to that album.

This comes with a few complications in handling the published/unpublished status of tracks in the album and playing that into the tags that are written into the downloads and kept in the database, but I'm thinking of sidestepping that by preventing the album from showing up on the site if there are any unpublished tracks in it. This would be less complicated to pull off than adding album upload features as you described to the track uploader in its current form, and I think it makes a bit more sense from a logistical standpoint.

 

 

The playlist creator

 

Moving it beneath the user menu or elsewhere makes sense. The reason I originally put it under "Upload!" is because that allows that button to serve as an endpoint for "creating" content. However, I see where you're coming from with it being fundamentally different from the uploading of a track.

 

Putting it under a dedicated "Manage" tab sounds interesting, and I'll give that a go to see how it looks and feels.

 

 

Albums vs. Playlists

 

The difference is largely semantic, though also functional. Songs that are part of an album get their downloads physically tagged as such, so they are represented as such in your media player, iPod, etc. I can't stuff multiple albums into that tag, so emulating this particular functionality using playlists would be kinda tricky - how would one choose which playlist is the one that gets its name written into the album tag? And how would this play in with the ability to have multiple artists' tracks in one playlist?

 

Moreover, knowing that a non-single track is either part of one album or none makes it easy to highlight the album that a track is a part of, because one space on the track page can be set aside for the "part of XYZ album" subheader that is shown.

 

Playlists, on the other hand, are designed to be a community-curated means of collecting tracks with a theme defined by the playlist's creator. Artists have no control over the playlists their tracks are added to, but being part of a playlist doesn't physically affect a track's downloads in any way - though it may boost the track's visibility.