lordmonkus Posted September 26, 2017 Share Posted September 26, 2017 @Jason Carr it would really be a good idea if you could layout what your short term and long term plans are for Music Box. Laying this out would help alleviate the "Feature Request" bitbucket less cluttered. It would also help people to know what you have in mind for the software because right now obviously the current state of Music Box is very bare bones and needs a lot of work which you obviously are aware of. The top things I would like to know right now as a user would be things like: Will there be a "BigBox" type of view where you can control it with a controller ? Will there be some sort of way to tie this into Launchbox / BigBox ? Will there be a "folder view" and "tagging" ? Yes I know you answered this one and said it's planned but it's an example. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Conroy Posted September 26, 2017 Share Posted September 26, 2017 Agree - even in the short launch video the same questions were asked over and over! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted September 26, 2017 Share Posted September 26, 2017 This definitely needs an HTPC view to be competitive with current solutions, although I don't think giving each application their own Big Mode is the way to go about it. I think at this point Jason should take advantage of the fact that Big Box was never named "Big LaunchBox" and consider it a third product, the HTPC application which consolidates all of the metadata of the "Box" family of products. Which for now means Music Box Alpha (a name which I adore, btw. It reminds me so much of Spaceport Alpha from Diddy Kong Racing [which, conveniently enough, has killer music]) and LaunchBox, but I have a feeling will mean at least a MovieBox a year or two down the line. Big Box will likely need a bit of an overhaul to compensate for this new direction, but I think it would be worth it (and looking at the UI design for MBA here, Big Box really could become a Kodi Killer [which is super important right now since Kodi is going to be rolling out RetroPlayer with their next revision]). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 2 hours ago, lordmonkus said: @Jason Carr it would really be a good idea if you could layout what your short term and long term plans are for Music Box. Laying this out would help alleviate the "Feature Request" bitbucket less cluttered. It would also help people to know what you have in mind for the software because right now obviously the current state of Music Box is very bare bones and needs a lot of work which you obviously are aware of. The top things I would like to know right now as a user would be things like: Will there be a "BigBox" type of view where you can control it with a controller ? Will there be some sort of way to tie this into Launchbox / BigBox ? Will there be a "folder view" and "tagging" ? Yes I know you answered this one and said it's planned but it's an example. I'm with Kriven that the full screen view should probably be worked into Big Box, but I don't expect that Big Box will ever give you the same type of interface that is available in MBA, as it will likely be a more simple interface to match the large style. This is up for discussion though. It's also worth noting that a Big Box style interface could be built for MBA just with a new theme, as the themes are certainly flexible enough for that. There will definitely be a way to tie MBA into LaunchBox and Big Box, yes; that is planned, though still needs to be fully defined. We'll at least create a good way to map games to soundtracks. Tagging is definitely coming and is a priority, as is ripping. We may tackle some sort of a folder view, but I think it might be more likely to adapt the songs view to allow adding many more columns and such to show that information. But let me know your thoughts on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 I don't know if it matters, but I could explain how I did music in Big Box when I was using LaunchBox for my music collection? I don't have any visual aids because I stopped using LB for this purpose in July, but I'll try to explain to the best of my ability. That might give you some ideas. My top layer in Big Box (Platform Categories) looked like this: All Music -- Music (By Artist) -- Music (By Genre) -- Music (By Year) So naturally once you clicked into one of those, you would find LaunchBox Playlists of exactly what you would expect to have found. The one thing I did do that I would want Music Big Box to automate was, I went around and created an .m3u playlist as a Master List for every LaunchBox Playlist. So, for example, if you clicked Linkin Park you would see: Play All -- Hybrid Theory -- Meteora -- Minutes to Midnight So each album was a game, but at the beginning of every Platform/Playlist was the "Play All" album, and that would play every song by Linkin Park. The game menus themselves were pretty simple: Play -- Play in Visualization -- Add to Now Playing So, for an official Music Big Box, I would just merge "Play" and "Play in Visualization" so whenever an album is launched Big Box goes into a visualization of some kind. Additionally, if Big Box is playing music, maybe allow "Visualization" as an idle alternative to "Attract Mode." This shouldn't be too difficult, right? Since Big Box uses VLC for videos. Then of course, it's just that when you launch Big Box we would have a level that's even higher than Platform Categories, "Media" which would give you: Music -- Video Games Additionally, with the automation and tag reading, Music Big Box could go one level deeper and allow users to choose individual songs instead of having to put up with an entire album. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordmonkus Posted September 27, 2017 Author Share Posted September 27, 2017 My overall point of this thread though @Jason Carr was for you to tell us what your short term and long term plans with Music Box. What sort of features are you planning to make it worth the money to people over the many free alternatives out there currently ? I am quite sure you are aware of this but I will say it anyways, the music manager software market is much more mature and narrow, it has really awesome options already while the emulator front end market was severely lacking and Launchbox found its market quickly. I know the end users like myself and others could give you a list a mile long of things we would love to see but what exactly is on your list of things you are planning on ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Conroy Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 Yes - I agree @lordmonkus - even if it's as simple to start with as reviewing the stream and listing all the things you said "we're going to do that" then @Jason Carr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundtrackgeek Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 Thinking long term, I definitely think this needs to get the possibility to play music from anywhere, from a web browser, a mobile app etc. also when you are not at home Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newlander Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 yeah i would love an outline of what the future of music box will look like hopefully scraping for vevo and youtube music videos can be added and possibly concert/live dvd scraping also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 Hey all, as with everything lol, I'm not necessarily very good at planning everything out. I honestly don't have a huge "master plan" of killer features, but I do know that with the help of the community we'll be able to make Music Box truly unique and special. My initial plans here are to finish up the MBA interface to the point of it being fully implemented, and then we'll begin to tackle things like tagging and ripping CDs. Features like scraping YouTube music videos and stuff like that are amazing little features that are hard to find elsewhere, and it's those kinds of things that can really put the app over the top, so we will definitely get there. I have no doubt that with all the ideas coming in, MBA will become a power house and a huge competitor in the market. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted September 27, 2017 Share Posted September 27, 2017 I would love a little pop out music control once i have minimised also, pick my album minimise to tray, listen, need to pause or skip back for a reason, handy little box with the major controls. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney Posted September 28, 2017 Share Posted September 28, 2017 6 hours ago, Jason Carr said: Hey all, as with everything lol, I'm not necessarily very good at planning everything out. I honestly don't have a huge "master plan" of killer features, but I do know that with the help of the community we'll be able to make Music Box truly unique and special. My initial plans here are to finish up the MBA interface to the point of it being fully implemented, and then we'll begin to tackle things like tagging and ripping CDs. Features like scraping YouTube music videos and stuff like that are amazing little features that are hard to find elsewhere, and it's those kinds of things that can really put the app over the top, so we will definitely get there. I have no doubt that with all the ideas coming in, MBA will become a power house and a huge competitor in the market. I like the sound of that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lc_lol Posted September 28, 2017 Share Posted September 28, 2017 Well, I have to say I'm a bit perplex (or worried) about all of this. I think many software solutions already answear to the kind of stuff musicbox does (and also the ones @Jason Carr seems to plan for the future). Ie : I use helium music manager and I think it's very powerful for this kind of music management). Apart from the sympathy I have for Launchboxapp devs, I'm not convinced I really need this one But the main question is : with Musicbox growing, does that mean the efforts will be lower on Launchbox ? I mean, there are so many features that still could be added to LB, I would regret if Musicbox needs put them on the lower part of the todo list... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordmonkus Posted September 28, 2017 Author Share Posted September 28, 2017 These questions asked over here on the Launchbox forums. It is locked but feel free to read every ones concerns along with Jasons and Vlansixs answers. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/41117-musicbox-post-your-thoughts-here/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lc_lol Posted September 28, 2017 Share Posted September 28, 2017 Thank lordmonkus I'm gonna look at these Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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