By far the most requested feature on the new Magnatune site is the ability to jump around a song.
I've now added that feature.
When you play a song in an album, you'll see the time elapsed displayed in this new way:
If you click on a dot, you will jump to that precise time in the song. There are also "hover tips" as you hover your mouse over a dot, showing you the time at that point before you click.
This feature seems to work on all platforms, except if you are using a Flashblocker on Google Chrome, due to some bugs in OGG audio file support on Chrome. Firefox with a Flashblocker does not have this problem.
-john
I like the feature in and of itself, but it would seem that this rollout coincides with the significant slowdown I'm experiencing with music on the site. (Tech support email sent just a few minutes ago). Whereas before the music began instantly from either the preview page or album page, now I have to wait on an average of 40 seconds for the song to completely download before it begins playing.
IF this new feature could operate somewhat like the older Flash player and begin playing and buffering as the songs downloaded, it would be absolutely wonderful.
Thanks for keeping us posted.
Posted by: Spike | September 09, 2013 at 10:06 AM
re: IF this new feature could operate somewhat like the older Flash player and begin playing and buffering as the songs downloaded, it would be absolutely wonderful.
Spike, I'm not hearing of this problem (yet) from other people. Songs play as they buffer, and playback starts for me in about a second or two.
Can you post here what web browser, version and OS you're using, and if you have a flash blocker, firewall, or other tech in place?
There is a bunch of "special case" logic now in place, as I try to get playback working on every permutation that arrives.
One possibility for your delay, might simply be internet congestion routing. Every once in a while we find that some people have trouble using magnatune, and then the problem sorts itself out a few hours later.
Posted by: John from Magnatune | September 09, 2013 at 10:15 AM
(emails sent, but I'll post here too for others' benefit)
I'm running windows XP Pro, Flash 11.8.800.94 and Firefox 23.0.1.
I opened the site in IE ver.8 and everything worked fine..no delays and new jump-around bar displaying as it should.
I've since restarted FF with all add-ons disabled but the problem still occurs. All other streaming media seem to be coming at full speed in both browsers.
I'll keep looking for the problem (I love a good mystery) and am content to use IE for getting my Magnatunes on. I will also let you know if anything changes when I finally succumb to Microsoft's nagging and update IE to the newest version.
Posted by: Spike | September 09, 2013 at 12:30 PM
A feature to add to the todo list is the ability to link to a particular song. So I can send a link which plays that song first.
Posted by: Alexander Ross | September 14, 2013 at 04:51 PM
re: feature to add to the todo list is the ability to link to a particular song. So I can send a link which plays that song first.
That's a great idea! I think I might be able to dynamically change the current url to have a #1, #2, #3 etc... on the url, as each song plays, which also would make that if you copied that URL, it would play that song number right away.
Question: do you think you'd need the ability to start playback at a particular point in the song? I could see where that might be useful in some cases, but not that often, ie, a URL could be :
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/poeticallmusi-awakelyre/#2,3:15
which would start playing song 2 at 3:15 into the song.
Just an idea...
-john
Posted by: John from Magnatune | September 14, 2013 at 06:34 PM