New features: volume, repeat, autoplay

Since forever, people have been emailing me to ask for these features in the Magnatune audio player:

1) the ability to set the volume level on Magnatune, and have it stick

2) the ability to turn off auto-play

3) the ability to turn off automatically repeating playing of an album.

4) the ability to shuffle-play an album

All four of those features are now on the site.

When you play an album, at the bottom, you'll see this text:

These controls will be in a light-colored text and will "pop" and be normal colored when you roll your mouse over them.

The volume control is self-explanatory. The "repeat" feature cycles between "album" "shuffle" "song" and "none", and auto play is an on/off toggle.

These settings are saved in a cookie and automatically carry between the free and member sites.

When you visit the home page, the repeat and volume settings (that you set on any album page) are applied to the music you listen to there. I didn't put the additional volume/repeat controls on the home page as there isn't enough space, so you'll need to set volume and repeat on an album page. Autoplay is always off for the home page, since you have to choose an album you want to listen to.

Here is where you'll find the new controls (note that they only appear when an album is playing).

A few caveats:

If you have your browser set to aggressively forget cookies, these settings will not, however, stick for you between web site visits to Magnatune.

Android/iPhone users: the in-browser volume control doesn't work on your devices, presumably because you have your own volume controls on your phones. So, the Magnatune web site doesn't display the volume control to Android/iPhone users.

Comments

[Andrew Kornylak]

Great redesign!
Any chance we will have the ability to jog or skip forward/back through a track? That feature is huge for me, as I can quickly sample several parts of a track that way.

[John from Magnatune]

re: Any chance we will have the ability to jog or skip forward/back through a track? That feature is huge for me, as I can quickly sample several parts of a track that way.

Yep, that feature is coming soon, in the next two weeks.

-john

[Bookworm]

I noticed the pause function has disappeared. Will that be coming back?

[John from Magnatune]

re: I noticed the pause function has disappeared. Will that be coming back?

For the time being, the pause button isn't around, because some people had problem restarting the music after hitting pause and coming back a few hours later (it seems that their web browser erased the music in memory).

So... unfortunately for now there isn't a pause button, until I can figure out how to implement it in a way that doesn't mess up playback for a few people that had trouble with the old way of playing.

-john

[Bookworm]

Oh, dear--that makes playing through the browser much less useful for me at work, as I need to pause often. I hope you'll be able to figure out a solution soon.

[John from Magnatune]

As I think about it, I can likely bring the pause button back when you have flash installed - let me give it some more thought.

[Brett]

Any chance that you will be adding a find a similar music function so we can discover more great music?

[John from Magnatune]

re: Any chance that you will be adding a find a similar music function so we can discover more great music?

Click the "recommendations" tab when you're on an artist or album, and that's exactly what you'll get.

-john