Music feature request for favorites for playlists

July 9, 2006 2:11 PM

Mefi Music request: I want to be able to fave! (or otherwise link to my profile) playlists created by other people. (to podcasting, I say bah! humbug)
posted by muddgirl to MetaFilter Music at 2:11 PM (15 comments total)

Why not just paste the playlist url into your profile as a link?

Such as: muddgirl likes this
posted by cortex at 2:48 PM on July 9, 2006

wah. I want matt to spend half an hour (or whatever) to save me 10 seconds :(

thanks, cortex. I didn't even think of that.
posted by muddgirl at 2:55 PM on July 9, 2006

faving playlists is kinda weird so naw, not gonna do it.

I just throw them into itunes and download them all (and it'll download additions to the list as the person makes them)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:12 PM on July 9, 2006

I'm still a bit unclear on the favoriting thing. On the blue and green, favoriting threads is for when you want to follow them, right? And favoriting comments is for when you want to refer back to those specific bits. It seems that on the black, though, we're trying to accomplish the second goal with the first action. I don't really care to follow a thread about a song ("great tune!" "nice job!") -- I just want the thing to be recognized. It seems odd that it shows up on my list of blue and green threads that I want to follow the discussion on.

Does that make any sense?
posted by danb at 3:52 PM on July 9, 2006

The favorites are purposely general since everyone uses them different ways. While it doesn't really work for "I want to follow this thread" for a song, it does help for "oh right, I need to download that one song"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:15 PM on July 9, 2006

Actually, though, is faving playlists that weird? How about just keeping track of favourited playlists on the "manage playlists" page?

So, if I feel that user x has really great taste in music, I can bookmark their list and check back on it from time to time (maybe there could be a notifier when is something is added, like on the blue). Also, user x can have a "1 user diggs your playlist" message somewhere, and feel appropriately special.

Playlists are already public, anyway. This will just help people to keep up with the flow of new music.
posted by Drunken_munky at 5:33 PM on July 9, 2006

(Also, while we're at it, how about a way to rearrange songs in playlists? That's probably hard, though.)
posted by Drunken_munky at 5:40 PM on July 9, 2006

"(Also, while we're at it, how about a way to rearrange songs in playlists? That's probably hard, though.)"

This is one of the reasons I suggested having "Matt's Whiteboard" or a public to-do list. Not so that #1 can be taken to task, but so that people keep asking for the same features that have already been discussed extensively.

I don't remember whether or not I already requested the length be published with the track. Neither the flash app or quicktime (which is what FF uses to embed mp3s) gives you the length of the track in minutes and seconds.
posted by Eideteker at 6:21 PM on July 9, 2006

but so that people keep asking

so that = because
posted by Eideteker at 6:21 PM on July 9, 2006

ordering playlists is a giant pain in the ass, both on the UI side and on the data storage side.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:52 PM on July 9, 2006

faving playlists is kinda weird so naw, not gonna do it.

I doesn't seem counterintuitive to me at all, maybe it seems strange to use because of the way the database is setup. I'm guessing favoriting works by linking a post or comment ID, which I would guess playlists don't have?
posted by delmoi at 7:55 PM on July 9, 2006

no delmoi, it's weird for me to think of marking someone else's group as a favorite and I haven't seen it done before. Favorites are kinda tailor made for individual items of a similar sort.

At flickr, I can't mark your set of photos from a party as a single favorite, I have to do each item. I can't mark three friends as a favorite there either. I can't mark a tag as a favorite. But each of those things strikes me as an odd use of favorite or bookmark functionality.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:36 PM on July 9, 2006

OK, so throw out favoriting. What I want is an easier way to access other people's playlists, period. I took cortex's suggestion to just link to a playlist in my profile. So I (intuitively) when to cortex's profile. Nope, can't access his playlists from there. Went to Music > Playlists. Nope, can only access my playlists from there. Unless I'm being obtuse, it seems the only way to get to a playlist that someone else created is to find a song on that playlist. That seems pretty convoluted to me. I can surf other people's favorite songs from their profiles, but not their playlists?
posted by muddgirl at 8:46 PM on July 9, 2006

Yeah, I'll be listing playlists on everyone's profile soon, that feature's definitely missing at the moment.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:48 PM on July 9, 2006

Cool, thanks.
posted by muddgirl at 9:24 PM on July 9, 2006