Mefi Music Playlist and Issues

March 29, 2007 8:53 PM

Two requests for Mefi Music: 1. It would be nice to have usernames on the tag results page. (e.g. acoustic) This would help users find other songs by the same artist. 2. The frontpage tends to load my system because of all of the flash files. Would it be possible to have everything show up on one playlist like the "tagged with" pages or the user pages? [mi]
posted by spiderskull to Feature Requests at 8:53 PM (18 comments total)

Regarding #2, for those of us who use flash blockers, but want to just listen to all the new music, this would be super useful. It would also make the page load a bit faster. I'm assuming there are people who prefer it the way it is now, so maybe an option in the user preferences page? With this option activated, the rest of the page would simply show up as regular posts without their individual mp3 players.
posted by spiderskull at 8:53 PM on March 29, 2007

I'm not sure I understand what you mean regarding point # 1. If you go to, say "acoustic" tag results (as in your link example) you should see this:

Users that often use this tag:

and just under that, a list of usernames.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:12 PM on March 29, 2007

and just under that, a list of usernames.
A useful feature, no doubt. But it would be nice if the byline on the tag pages read like this:
posted by username on Mar 29, 2007 - View this thread
posted by carsonb at 9:18 PM on March 29, 2007

flapjax at midnite: What carsonb said -- that was what I meant.
posted by spiderskull at 9:21 PM on March 29, 2007

and if we could download the mp3s from the front page....
posted by blue_beetle at 9:31 PM on March 29, 2007

Yeah, I can add usernames to the tag pages. I haven't heard too many people complain about the flash files on the front page and I find it really useful to be able to stream any song so I like it the way it is.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:01 PM on March 29, 2007

mathowie -- what about a hack that lets me view all tags? That way (assuming it organizes it by date), the structure is already there. If there's some wildcard feature for the tag search, I think this would do the trick.

(If this isn't applicable to everyone, we can continue to conversation via email)
posted by spiderskull at 10:12 PM on March 29, 2007

An all-tags page would be a nightmare, with thousands of them.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:21 PM on March 29, 2007

Matt, how about a search function for MeFi Music? There have been a couple of occasions recently where, when posting a comment in the blue, I've wanted to link to a song from MeFiMu. Occasions where the song I wanted to link to had something to do with the thread I was commenting in, whether because of the song's lyric, or to illustrate some point or make some comparison. BUT... I couldn't exactly remember the song titles, or who posted them! I wanted a search function in MeFi Music! Any possibility of that? Or would that be too crazy to set up?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:35 PM on March 29, 2007

A search function would fix my only real problem with MeFiMusic which is that sometimes I'll find some old track I really like in the podcast and I want to go leave a comment. I have to usually Google the track name to find the post since the podcast data doesn't have [and please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd love to find this] the post number for the song.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:12 AM on March 30, 2007

jessamyn, I always put up links to songs whenever I post a podast, but yeah, I need to add a search to it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:27 AM on March 30, 2007

In the MeFi Music podcast there are links to the original MeFiMu posts? I think we may be confusing podcasts. If I listen to MeFiMu via iTunes I don't see a way to get back to the original post containing the song without doing a search.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:39 AM on March 30, 2007

How do you listen to MeFiMu via iTunes?
posted by micayetoca at 9:13 AM on March 30, 2007

micayetoca: go through the "add a podcast feed" (or whatever) menu option and drop in the address of the Music feed xml file (which you can find on the front page of Music). Badabing: it'll download new tunes whenever iTunes checks the feeds (if nothing else, then just when you start iTunes).
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:27 AM on March 30, 2007

Wait a sec... apparently I missed the player under "Stream the RSS Feed" (unless that was just added). In either case, this is perfect!
posted by spiderskull at 1:31 PM on March 30, 2007

Also, has anyone else noticed that the music stops playing once the flash player is off the screen? It happens in both Opera and Firefox, which leads me to believe that it's a Flash "feature" (one that I actually appreciate for ads that have sound).

Has someone figured out how to disable this?
posted by spiderskull at 1:34 PM on March 30, 2007

spiderskull, Matt just added that front-page player a few weeks ago, so you're probably not crazy.

As for the flash thing: it seems not to happen when playing back from the song-specific page—try clicking through, starting the song, and minimizing/cover the window at that point. Of course, you're shit outta luck with the player on the front page. And no, no definitive fix has been forthcoming, and it does indeed seem to be a Flash-specific problem.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:39 PM on March 30, 2007

(I just kick open an IE window.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:39 PM on March 30, 2007