Easier way to move songs within playlist

Ideas
1

Hi Florian.

I continue to greatly enjoy being a proud W2G user and promoter (amongst friends, family and colleagues!), and I commend you on keeping this web app alive and growing.

One little suggestion/query: Playlists grow long, and sometimes I want to get a song from the top of the playlist to the bottom. Other than dragging and waiting, is there a faster way of doing this?

If not, may I suggest an onhover option to “Jump track to end of list”.

Thank you
Dimitri

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2

Hi Dimitri, thanks a lot for your feedback. You are right, with large lists the drag&drop does not work very well. Definitely room for improvement. Is there any specific reason why you are moving items all the way to the top or bottom?

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Servus Florian!

I’m honoured at your swift reply!

The logic is simple: my friends and I create a large collection of songs we like, and then return to the same playlist week after week. So from time to time, one of us wants to hear a song that’s already somewhere in the list. That’s basically the use case (I jumped to a solution, but this may have been premature!).

In this case, one currently has two choices:

  1. Repeat the search to find a song already somewhere in the list (which feels unnecessary)
  2. Scroll up, search for the tune, grab it and then drag down (which as I said, feels clunky and time-consuming).

I guess there are several potential remedies here, aside from directly addressing the scroll/jump thing. Here are some alternative ideas:

  • A “source list” of favourite/starred tunes, which one could access easily and add to the list (could be same interface / style as search results, e.g. collapsible box at bottom of page)
  • Search within playlist (edit: I just saw this, sorry: Search bar for the playlist)
  • Define “breakpoints” in a playlist, and jump songs to any one of them (i.e. not necessarily the end of the list)
  • when dragging, have some hotzones appear which give options like a) play next b) move to end c) play within next x songs
  • Drag a song right or left to move it to next/end

But of course, its for you to decide on the relative benefits and costs (time/effort) involved in each of these ideas.

Thanks for your support - you can count on mine!
Dimitri

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4

A further thought just occurred to me: if you maintained a count of track play frequency, you could make available (somewhere other than in the playlist itself) a list of most-played tracks, which are likely to be the ones we end up searching for.

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5

Thanks for your ideas! I think that the option to search within a playlist will already help you. Additionally what’s needed is some kind of “Up Next” queue were items can be placed that should be played next, no matter if they come from a playlist or from the search. Once they are played they are automatically removed from the queue. This way items don’t have to be moved within a playlist just because you want to play them next. However, this has to be implemented in a way so that it’s not getting too confusing…

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Hey Florian!
You are welcome, I hope you find them useful.

Frankly, I would not bother with a separate “Up next” list - you are right, it would add confusion. Right now, if you want something up next, you add it to the playlist - it works and its easy to understand.

Looking at this again, I think there are three questions which the user might ask themselves, which lead to some implementation options:

  1. Can you FIND the song in the playlist? Yes, thanks to your implemented function. (note: maybe a new keyboard shortcut to jump to playlist search?)

  2. Once you found it, do you want to MOVE or COPY the song?
    i.e. add the song to the end of the playlist (or elsewhere, see 3), whilst also leaving it in its original position in the playlist (COPY) vs delete from current position and add to end of playlist (MOVE; same effect as dragging)

  3. Do you want it to play IMMEDIATELY, NEXT or LAST?
    IMMEDIATELY = Just click (this already works) - and no movement of song.
    NEXT = Song would move down playlist to just after current track
    LAST = Song goes to end of list.

This condenses into four options, in two groups:
Play next (move or copy)
Play last (move or copy)

Clearly there are many ways to issue these commands. Even something simple like clicking with modifiers (ctrl, shift) would be nice.

In my dream world, when you click and hold on a song, four zones (quarters) would appear overlaid on the song block, and you release your click according to what you want.

leftmost quarter: play NEXT(copy)
left-middle quarter: play NEXT (move)
right-middle quarter: play LAST (move)
rightmost quarter: play LAST (copy)

Obviously, there are options for how it appears, it could also be a circular design (I’m just assuming a block will fit nicely over the song list display, as it currently looks.

Thanks again for listening to your users, and looking forward to your decision on which way to go!

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