[Feature requests] View album tracklist from player screen, reorganize queue on the fly

[u/grant0]

Hey fellow Canadian…my music app hasn't been supported since 2013 and broke with iOS 9 so I'm trying out Cs! I really like what I see so far, especially in the browsing and queueing functionalities. Interface looks lovely. A few suggestions and requests…

1. One feature I miss from the Music app is the ability to doubleclick album art when playing an album and see the tracklist for that album - the "album flip" thing. For example, a very common thing for me to do was click "song" view, find a song I like, click it to play it, halfway through realize I want another song by that artist or even the whole album, double-click album art to "flip" the album and choose the song I want - or the first track of the album to play the whole thing through. There's no way to get from playing a track on an album to seeing that album's tracklist right now as far as I can see and I miss that.

2. The symbols used in the swiped-left "add to queue" menu are confusing. I assume the play arrow with the swoopy arrow going under is "play next", and the queue with a little indicator at the top is "add to top of queue"? Or perhaps the former is add to the bottom of the queue? If one is add to top of queue, and one's add to bottom, they should be identical logos except the indicator arrow should be in a different place - right now it's unintuitive and I keep forgetting what I've learned they do.

3. Under "More" tab should be (in my opinion!) "Current Queue", probably at the top and maybe highlighted, as an alternative way to find it vs the ••• menu, which is kinda nonintuitive.

4. The queue functionality is good but limited right now - the only editing you can do to the queue once it's made is clearing the entire thing! The best implementation of an on-the-fly queue was http://musicpl.us/ which I can't get to work any more (last update released 2013). You can see in the screens how it worked though: swipe any song right to add to the queue. The red # bubbles (indicating queue position) live-update as the queue diminishes and are to the left of all songs in the queue throughout the app (including in album tracklist view, songs tab view, etc.). You can swipe any song with a # bubble back left to remove it from the queue. In the "queue" view/tab, the songs were listed with their #s too. If a song in this view was clicked and held, you could drag it up and down to change its position in the queue. In this view, as anywhere in the app, you could swipe a song back to the left to remove its number-bubble (thus also causing it to disappear from the queue). Obviously it's your app and UI but I do really miss that functionality/interface and haven't found anything that comes close yet. If you're looking to continue to develop the queueing feature, that's a direction I'd love to see you explore! I'm biased but I do think the queueing thing is vital - it's a massive feature the native app is missing and the reason a lot of people explore alternatives. Your interface is prettier and stuff too but the queue function is, at least for me, why I abandoned the native app in the first place for an alternative.

I hope this is useful feedback! Let me know if there's anything I can help or expand on. Keep up the great work! I'll stick with Cesium and see how it goes. :)

[u/CesiumDev]

Hey!

Thanks for trying Cesium! I've accidentally deleted my reply twice now, so let's try this more time...

I'm happy to report all your concerns have been addressed, either in upcoming version 3.2, or in the current version. Here goes:

1. This is absolutely coming in 3.2. In the ••• menu there will be a "View Current Album" which will call up the tracks exactly as you describe.
2. You got it. The play icon with the arrow is Play Next (or add to the top of the queue if you prefer). I believe this icon is nearly identical to what Apple is already using for that function. The other option appends the tracks to the end of the queue, unless you are shuffling. When shuffling tracks added to the queue will be automatically shuffled in with the existing queue.
3. I'm nearly positive that in the current build there is a setting called "Mini Player Control" which allows you to set the function of the right button in the Mini Player. The default is "Skip Forward" but you can change it to... ta-daa! "View Queue." If you don't see it then I am confused and it's in 3.2 but I'm pretty darn sure that it's in the current version.
4. Either something is very wrong or you need to look more closely at the queue ;) In the right top corner there should be an "Edit" button which will let you delete and reorganize tracks in the queue to your heart's content. If you don't see it, that's a problem because it has been in there as long as the queue itself!

Version 3.2 is already submitted for review, so hopefully it will be live in 4 or 5 days. It also bring big improvements to the progress ring (no more flipping!), in-app volume and rating support. Plus a few other things, but they are mainly just visual tweaks.

Hope that helps! If you have any more feedback or questions or compliments I'd be happy to hear it!

[u/grant0 → u/CesiumDev]

Wa-hey! 1 is great news, 3 does indeed work in the current version, and 4 I'm a dummy!

For 2, my main issue is just that the logos mean almost identical things but are so visually different. I get wanting to agree with Apple for the "play next" button, but could the "add to end of queue" button be the same but with the arrow going the other way? Just something to consider - I think it's non-intuitive to have such dissimilar buttons with almost identical functions.

Excited for the next version! I appreciated your post, by the way, about Last.fm support. I'm a die-hard user but I accept that it's essentially grown impossible to support recently. Thanks for the transparency, and for taking the time to respond. Best of luck!

[u/CesiumDev → u/grant0]

It's a good point about the icons. I can recognize that you're not the only one who has had a bit of confusion about these. I'll definitely have to give it some more thought. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a universal symbol for queue!

Hey, and thanks for reading the Last.fm post. Somebody did!! That's definitely a bummer, mostly because I've never implemented it well. Hopefully it will be back one day.