Music Queue
Music Queue is different from most other music players out there: while others are mostly mimicking the same old interface over and over again, it tries to go its own path aimed at the mobile music listener.Music Queue is a free player for your Android phone that you can download on the Android Market.
How to use Music Queue
If you use Music Queue the first time, you might be confused about its non-standard interface. But don't be afraid; it is quite intuitive once you've played around with it.
Music Queue always shows you five songs: The top song is the one currently being played, while the others are the songs that will follow up. Click on a song to see its album and artist. In that list, you can drag songs around to change their order.
If you don't want to listen to a song right now, just swipe it horizontally to remove it. If you don't like all four songs following up, just hit the button on the bottom left to get new ones.
The list will usually be filled up with random songs, however, there's a way to choose which songs come into the list next.
Switch to landscape mode to get a list of all your songs. To play one of these songs right now, long press it and choose "Play now".
Most of the times though, you might not want to interrupt the song currently playing or you want to choose several songs. If you prefer that, just click on a song to enqueue.
Enqueued songs will be the next ones to enter the list from the bottom - instead of random ones.
Use your keyboard to filter the song list for a specific song or artist. If you hit menu, you can even enqueue all filtered songs, e.g. all songs by an artist.
Back in portrait mode you notice that the button on the bottom right has a number: That's the number of enqueued songs. Click the button to see their names.
Now start dragging and playing around - have fun!
Why I created Music Queue
I created Music Queue because I was fed up with the other mobile music players out there. While many of those music players have a huge number of cool features and are easy to use, they didn't seem to fit my (and probably other people's) style of listening to music on the go.
Other music players allow you to easily find a song you want to play by letting you go through lists by artists, albums or songs. That's great, but what happens after a song is finished? The next one of the album gets played. Okay, some people listen to a whole album and then switch to the next one, so that's great.
But I'm not that kind of a music listener. I like to listen to different kinds of music all the time, I don't want to stick around with one album. Fair enough, those players have playlists. But who has a playlist for every situation and has the time to keep them up to date? One week you like some songs, but the next week you like other songs. Playlists tend to get old fast and are just a waste of time to create and maintain.
So what are we left with? We either scroll through tons of songs after each song to find the next one (not really what I call relaxing on the train) or we use the shuffle/random mode. The latter is what I always used to do, and after every other song I found myself skipping through the next three to firve songs because I wasn't in the mood for those. And that's exactly where the "big innovators" have brought us:
On the one hand we are in the 21st century and have "gorgeous" (to quote a fruit company's CEO) touchscreens, while on the other hand we are still using the same music controls as in the age of the discman when you barely had an LED showing you which track was playing. How come? It's because those nice and big touch screen have been wasted for the sake of the album art! And I'm not kidding when I'm talking about discman controls, since the << and >> buttons are the ones still used today to skip through your tracks.
Design ideas
While creating Music Queue I kept those things in mind:
- The player should be made for mobile use. It's target are people on trains and buses; people that are on their way to work, school or hobby
- There is no need for a fancy view of which song currently is playing (it's about the music after all) - it's more important what songs come next
- Queueing songs should be easy (keyboard filter) and the default - it's better to organize the next couple of songs than to always alter and interrupt the current song
- It should be fun to use
I'm aware though, that this isn't the perfect solution for all your music whishes. It's just one approach how to do a mobile music player and I'm sure there are many other cool ideas from other people that are yet to come. My goal with this player is just to show the world that there is something beyond the traditional players we are used to. They are all more or less the same based on the fact that a single company dominates the music space that shouldn't.
I'm not saying that the other players are useless: They do have their (limited) use case, as my player has its own. I'd even recommend you to have different types of players installed and use them in different situations.
So please go ahead and enjoy a new music experience. Let me know what you think by writing me an email or commenting on the Android Market.
Ideas for improvements
Version 1 of Music Queue is just a first shot with the goal to have a fully usable player. There is still a lot of room left for improvements though, so I compiled a list of features that I might implement in the future.
- Smart instead of random playing: Songs that are swiped out often won't appear as frequently as other songs anymore. This would ideally also include related songs (e.g. of the same artist/album).
- More ways to enqueue songs in landscape: e.g. album names, recently played or starred songs
- Black and/or white list: Exclude songs permanently or only allow certain folders (especially needed if you have fun sounds on your phone too)
- Binary search list: The same search method as found in computer science. This would be highly experimental:)
- A home screen widget
