AlbumMixer 1.6 is coming to an iOS device near you. This release works around a problem with the playlist query API in iOS 4.0 – thanks to Ray for the problem report and the debugging help. I also added new settings to adjust the playback volume (Kelly?) and disable use of Album Artist when filtering by playlist.
I love the app. I find it works really well with relatively short playlists and not at all with long ones. I’m happy to answer any other questions to help you sort this out.
I’m extremely grateful for this app. This is my favorite way to listen to music on my other iPods and I’m happy to be able to be able to do this on my iPhone.
Hi, looks and seems to work faster. I can’t find my previous post, but you might remember I raised the question that album tracks seem to be out of order when played. I didn’t know if it was a symptom of my using smart playlists as the basis for AlbumMixer filter. For example, I add a new album to itunes and it appears in smart playlist “never played”. When album mixer finds this it succesfully finds all tracks (chosen filter by album artist=off), but when it plays back it plays in a non-track no order. Can you please ensure the algorithm queues any tracks that satisfy the playlist filter in album, then track no order?
Also, has apple opened up a better API than queuing here, or is this what you already use? : http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/08/ios-4-adds-direct-access-to-itunes-library-iphone-dj-apps-about/
Great app and very simple.
Darren, thanks for the feedback.
I could teach AlbumMixer to re-sort the playlist entries at playback time, but my initial experiments suggest that the performance hit would be substantial. The existing code assumes that Apple’s APIs will return the playlist entries in album order, and they usually do that. Could you check the mis-sorted playlist in iTunes, to see if you have a sort column selected there? I believe AlbumMixer will see whatever playlist order iTunes sets.
I am not sure which new APIs the folks at Engadget were writing about. The old APIs already allowed fairly direct access to the library, and as far as I can tell they haven’t changed much in iOS 4 (aside from a new bug, which I am working around in AlbumMixer 1.6). Maybe the author was confusing music library access with the new APIs for accessing user photos and videos? There’s also a new ability to create background music players, but AlbumMixer queues to the built-in “ipod player”, which already does background playback. So I am puzzled by the brief reference in that article. Thanks for sending it along, though.
Hi Michael,
no problem at all.
I’ve verified what you say regarding the order is correct, when working with an explicit smart playlist. Further investigation into my playlists showed that the playlists I use most commonly (ie that experience the issue) were highlighted in iTunes with an exclamation mark. This is because these playlists were themselves filters on a larger playlist which were not applyed to the phone because it was too large. Thinking that this could be the issue, I have since restructured my playlist organisation and in my few tests I have not been able to reproduce the issue. I’ll let you know if it comes back :)
BTW, I do notice two other ‘undocumented features’ of v1.6.
1. the loading of the filters can take an extraordinary long time (>1min).
2. once AlbumMixer has queued all tracks, and the ipod has started to play the first track then the spinner icon sometimes continues to spin, but it is not clear why.
I guess these issues are down to the new playlist API and bugs that Apple are exposing to you.
If it helps, my iphone is a 32GB GS and I have approx 100 genres and 17 smart playlists.
No worries re the engadget article. I think you’re right they could be referencing background playback. Still, a shame Apple don’t simply reenable the album shuffle functionality. But then, it took them years to recognise that a second mouse button could be useful ;-)
Keep up the good work!
Darren
hey,
I love the app definitely worth the two bucks…But i was wondering…cud you add like an option where you could pick like 4-5 albums then the app would shuffle randomly between all the songs on those albums cuz my mom uses the ipod like a cd player and she loves that option…I think it would be a sweet add-on…
Cool
Albumshuffle
HI Albumshuffle,
If I understand what you are thinking you can do this reasonably easily without the Albummixer app– if you are happy with the albums sitting within a playlist.
First, create a playlist of your 4-5 albums (either an ‘on the go’ playlist within iphone) or a ’smart playlist’ within itunes (see http://www.smartplaylists.com/ and http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1801); then after you’ve added that smart playlist to your iphone in the sync process then choose the playlist within the menu, then choose to shuffle tracks.
Michael, in followup to my findings earlier, it seems I was wrong. The playlist of some of my tracks is out of order. One of the parent playlists does have an ’select by last played’ option, however even then the order is neither track number or last played date. I can send you some evidence if you want to email me (via openid??) or tell me how I can get in touch.
Darren
I have a feature request (I hope this is the best place to put it): I was wondering if it would be possible to use AlbumMixer as an album browser in addition to an album mixer. By this I mean, within a filter instead of just shuffling the albums, display the albums and let me choose one to listen to. This is one of my pet peeves with the iPhone iPod app, you can’t browse a playlist (or genre) BY album, only by song. I want to choose an album from within a playlist (say, Car Music or Bedtime Music, or something).
Thanks for a great app!
Kurt
Thanks for the feedback, Kurt. That’s an interesting idea, and I’ll look into it. Apple is a little touchy about apps that re-implement iPod functionality, but since the iPod app doesn’t do this, it should be ok.
Hey Mike. I’m getting a crash on launch in iOS 4.0.2. I’m not near my computer right now, but I can send you a log file later tonight.
Thanks, Ray. I should be able to get the log from Apple. If not, I will email you.