Mobile Magnatune Improvements

I received a hand-me-down iPad a few months ago, and have been using it to play Magnatune throughout my house.

I've been using both the Mobile Magnatune site (because it supports Magnatune Podcasts) as well as our iPad/iPhone app.

My iPad can send music (via the "airplay" feature) to the airport express wifi boxes I have around the house, allowing me to direct music from Magnatune to whatever room I happen to be in.

Here is what this feature looks like from the Mobile Magnatune site:

and from the iPad/iPhone app:

Android and other webphone users: I recommend you use the Mobile Magnatune site, which I've also been improving.

Three improvements to the Magnatune Mobile Site were launched today:

a) the artist name is linked back to a page listing their other albums
b) a "recommendations" link provides 20 other albums we think you'll like that are similar the one you're listening to
c) the artwork is now high resolution and fills the screen.

These improvements work equally well on all web browser capable phones:

We'll be continuing to regularly improve the mobile site, as it's much easier to improve an HTML web site than an iPad app, and also because the mobile site improvements help people with all kinds of phones, not just Apple devices.

If you have a feature you'd like to see on the Mobile Magnatune site, say so!

-john

Comments

[Brian]

Artist and album descriptions would be nice.

Perhaps download links for signed-in members, too. Being able to grab an album or two for later without booting up the laptop to sideload from could be useful.

[Jörg Sonnenberger]

Looks nice. You might want to add a check for desktop users running Firefox -- it doesn't support mp3 for . So either print a warning or fall back to classic might be needed.

Another wish list item would be the recent additions as another category.

[John Buckman]

You might want to add a check for desktop users running Firefox -- it doesn't support mp3 for . So either print a warning or fall back to classic might be needed.

If you click on the link right below the audio player that says "NO SOUND? CLICK HERE", that works in Firefox.

Another wish list item would be the recent additions as another category.

Good idea!

-john

[John Buckman]

Artist and album descriptions would be nice.

Good idea.

Perhaps download links for signed-in members, too. Being able to grab an album or two for later without booting up the laptop to sideload from could be useful.

Apple products don't allow downloading. I know that Android phones do, but I was thinking that in that case, they might be best off simply using the regular site.

-john

[Brian]

I know that Android phones do, but I was thinking that in that case, they might be best off simply using the regular site.

Perhaps, then, a link on an album's panel to jump directly to its non-mobile page? That would be more expedient than having to locate it all over again.

[Brian]

Also noticed after poking around the mobile site some more that if you navigate away from an album panel the audio stream will continue playing. This is not itself a problem, and might even be seen as a feature. However, if you then navigate to another album panel a second audio stream starts playing over the top of the first.

[John Buckman]

Also noticed after poking around the mobile site some more that if you navigate away from an album panel the audio stream will continue playing. This is not itself a problem, and might even be seen as a feature. However, if you then navigate to another album panel a second audio stream starts playing over the top of the first.

That's a "feature" built into how each phone implements the audio tag.

On the Android, which is what I assume you're using, you can leave the web page that started magnatune playing, and it'll keep playing. Kind of a nice feature. However, to stop the music and play something else, you have to go back to the original page that was playing, and pause that. That, I find a bit annoying.

The iPhone/iPad does some something similar: the music keeps play when you leave the Magnatune Mobile page. However, if you go to another play page at Magnatune Mobile, you are presented first with a pause button, which stops the background, and then the pause button changes to a play button, to play the music on that page. That seems better.

So... I'm hoping that Android improves their implementation of the HTML audio tag. It seems well done on the iPhone/iPad.

-john

[Jörg Sonnenberger]

One other small glitch is the use of width=99% on the album arts. That seems to assume portrait format. It doesn't look good on the average desktop where landscape is more popular.

[John Buckman]

One other small glitch is the use of width=99% on the album arts. That seems to assume portrait format. It doesn't look good on the average desktop where landscape is more popular.

What don't you like about that? I find it looks fine on my web browser, as it makes the artwork as large as your browser window is, and usually the artwork is interesting to look at.

-john

[Spike Page]

I'm not sure if this is related to the mobile improvements, or if you have improved other aspects of the site too, but THANK YOU for fixing the Facebook interface so that when I link to albums, a thumbnail picture of the album cover is generated rather than the generic Magnatune logo.

No disrespect toward the logo, but I hope and believe album art will be more likely to bring in new listeners.

PS the mobile site tweaks look good too. Thanks again.

[John Buckman]

THANK YOU for fixing the Facebook interface so that when I link to albums, a thumbnail picture of the album cover is generated rather than the generic Magnatune logo.

You're welcome!

This turned out to be a total pain in the neck to get to work right, but now when you link to an album on Facebook, the album art is displayed as an icon in facebook, and if you link to an artist page, an icon is displayed of the artist photo. In theory, other facebook uses (such as the ipad) that use a larger resolution graphic, will now see high res versions of the graphics too.

I hadn't blogged it yet, because it was still a work in progress (a few days' work & bugfixing) and didn't want to announce it until I was sure it worked.

-john

[Olli]

I second the "recent additions" request. As a download member that's one of the things I check regularly to find new and fresh music. I also second the download link, although downloading is not possible on apple devices, on other devices it kind of defeats the purpose of a mobile page if you're required to navigate the regular page anyway to access somewhat regular functions. But this of course depends on the purpose of the mobile page at large.

But with that said I'm glad a mobile page is taking form, even on the ipad its nice with big clear lists, so looking good, and looking forward to future enhancements!

[Mike]

I'm really glad I came here tonight. I was going to cancel my download membership because the Magnatune catalog refuses to load in Rhythmbox (w/Ubuntu Lucid, 64bit). I loved loading the catalog, putting it on random, kicking back and discovering great new tunes, all while supporting such a cool company. But I haven't been using Magnatune much since Rhythmbox stopped working, I can only browse via the website. That was before I saw the spiffy new mobile site with my Android phone.

At first, the mobile site didn't seem to work. There was just an X in a grey box where the music player should be! I think Firefox mobile for android doesn't handle your page correctly. I tried again with the original built-in browser and it works like a charm. The site is great. It runs as smooth as an app and has brought back much of the enjoyment I used to get from the functioning Rhythmbox implementation.*If Firefox mobile isn't going to work for whatever reason, it might be a good idea for the site to suggest using the default android browser(perhaps at the "No sound?[click here]" link or when firefox mobile useragent is detected)

** If possible, it would be AWESOME if the mobile site had a RANDOM PLAYLIST function, maybe using radio buttons to select genres, building a random playlist of X number of songs pulled from all the albums+artists in the selected genres. That would be a great way to find new music! **

Peace and love, and keep up the awesome,
-Mike