The other day, Kottke linked to a post by Jon Hicks (a fellow inhabitant of Oxfordshire) entitled ‘My Perfect Music Player Doesn’t Exist’. This was catnip to a music listener such as I, since I have fulminated before about desiderata and disappointments among music apps.
…I almost always listen to iTunes on a semi-random shuffle, because I love so much music, and I want to hear unexpected things mingled with the cuts I know and cherish, so Shuffle is my favoured solution. I wish iTunes offered a better solution for weighted shuffle; my usual playlist involves an arcane combination of nested playlists that give extra prominence to women, to tracks I haven’t heard as recently, and to favourites of mine (since I do actually enjoy listening to my favourites). It would not be rocket science for a music player to offer this functionality — but since Apple will not let go of iTunes (presumably as a feeder to their music store), and alternatives don’t suit me for other reasons, there we are.…
…I’m mightily exasperated, though, that Apple has eliminated iTunes DJ (formerly ‘Party Shuffle’) from the application.…
…It’s no secret that pretty much everyone thinks Apple’s Ping feature in iTunes 10 would take significant improvement in order to qualify as a “disappointment”…
I upgraded to the latest version of iTunes recently, and have been flummoxed by the “Now Playing” cover display function…
Still, one switch that assigns one (undefined) weight to one variable is very far from a twenty-first century solution to the “weighted shuffle” problem.…
In short, I agree with Jon about everything he cites: Ethical company (always!), a very large cover image, happy to have magazine-like input on bands and releases I’m interested in, scrobbling simple and effective, some sort of functional rating system, sharing and streaming should cooperate, and (I, not Jon) insist on some form of weighted shuffle. If you build it, whoever you are, they will come to listen!