Fwd: Re: Improving user experience: managing music on multiple volumes

[i.ivanov at epfl.ch]

Hello team,

As I was authorised to spam you (details below), I am writing this  
e-mail.. As a reply to Edward, I may say what Mr Schneier said about  
Cloud: This is your data on somebody else's hard drive. I believe, as  
a user I should have the right and the means to control the flow of my  
personal data (yes, even the music playlists and the related usage  
metadata), and I may prefer not to use cloud. Not because I have such  
a trust to my personal workstation, which, if compromised, would lead  
to the same uncontrolled leak of my personal information (FYI,  
MacBookPro m2010, Mavericks). Not because I am a criminal. And not  
because this material: http://slideshot.epfl.ch/events/cops makes me  
feel happy about how well informed I am...
So I think the software should be fully functional even when used  
(long term) offline. About the necessary bandwidth for streaming  
lossless - it may not be available everywhere. And, yes, I know about  
the trend that people listen only lossy music (often MP3 at 128kbps), so  
nobody cares about the quality.
Please, see the attached mail.

Thanks to Edward for replying and thanks everybody for working over  
this project.

Regards,

Ivan



----- Forwarded message from hades at hades.name -----
     Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 11:15:28 +0200
     From: Edward Toroshchin <hades at hades.name>
  Subject: Re: Improving user experience: managing music on multiple volumes
       To: i.ivanov at epfl.ch
       Cc: ralf-engels at gmx.de

Hi Ivan,

Thank you very much for your mail.

Your idea appeals greatly to me personally, since I have a large music
library and often listen to the music with my laptop.

However, currently the world is trending towards cloud services (like
Google Play Music) and mobile devices. In couple of years, the number of
smartphones and tablets will double, and the number of desktops and
laptops is going to remain the same.

So, unfortunately I must say that in appreciating your idea I am quite
outdated :).

Please feel free to forward your email (probably with my comments) to
amarok at kde.org, if you want an opinion of our team.

Thank you again for your mail, and have a nice day!
--
Edward

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:49:14PM +0200, i.ivanov at epfl.ch wrote:
> Hello Mr Engels, Mr Toroshchin,
>
>
> I am ex-linux user, currently an Apple one. I have an idea how to
> improve the user experience from the software used for playing music.
> I wanted to write it to Apple, but then decided to first give it to
> the open communities :) So in the following text I am talking about
> iTunes, but this might be the player you are developing (which is the
> same player I loved when I was on Ubuntu).
>
> ===============================================================================
>
> I would like to share with you my idea: it is about playing music form
> different physical volumes, some of which aren't permanently attached
> to the computer. Let's assume that we have MBP with small SSD, and a
> large external HDD (or NAS). All the music in ALAC format is present
> on the external disk, and some of the music is on the local disk, in a
> compressed format.
> The idea is that iTunes checks if the external volume is present. If
> yes, and if the song we want to play exists on the local HDD with
> lower bitrate as well as on the external disk with a higher bitrate -
> the better one (higher bitrate) is selected automatically (in the
> playlist however there is only one item). There should be an
> indication what is the file format and the bitrate of the song
> currently being played.
> If at launch (or after a user command for re-checking the availability
> of the volumes) iTunes see that the external disk is not present, only
> the playlist with existing items is displayed (i. e. only items
> pointing to files on local disk).
> An easy way to create a local compressed version from a file, which is
> on the external disk, will be also necessary, in order to completely
> avoid any user interaction with the filesystem.
> As SSDs still aren't so large, I think this enhancement will be an
> interesting feature.
> ===============================================================================
>
> It is interesting for me to know if you find this idea useful.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ivan

--
Edward


----- End forwarded message -----