Board Logo

Configurable playlist songs
deathrow - 5-10-2003 at 11:33 PM

First of all I want to give Kudos for this app...plainly, it ROCKS!!...

There is one thing that would be VERY beneficial for my situation. I am in the process of setting up the sound system for a new diner here in town...They want to play music and eJukebox is PERFECT for their needs. However there is one caveat.

There are different crowds that attend this diner. By day it is a more straight-laced crowd and by night it will (how do you say) be populated somewhat wilder folks. I would like the ability to change the list of songs that are available to be played but still preserve their popularity ratings in the database.

If an extra column was added to the database (call it say: "Active";) then a helper application could be written to list all the songs in the database (preferably by folder) and allow someone to check off which songs they want to be "Active". All that would need to be done to the program is every "SELECT" statement would need to include the clause "WHERE Active = 'True'" (for example)

(This would allow me to set up various folders of the music and have the owner select which ones were appropriate for certain times of day without loseing the popularity ratings that accrue over time.)

Obviously this could be incorrporated into the application but if you didn't want to then I could write a helper application to read the songs that are in the database and allow them to be Activated/UnActivated based on the folder they are in...


If this could be incorporated into the application then I would definately be registering 2 more licenses as soon as it is implement!!!

Please let me know what you think...

-Dr


jhlurie - 5-11-2003 at 06:17 AM

Perhaps I'm missing something. It may be a bit more work, but can't you already do this by creating a different playlist (.m3u or .pls) file for each "music mood" you want to cater towards? .m3u/.pls files can have hundreds, or even thousands of items referenced, and you can ake as many as you want, so its not like you are limiting things much. And although I've spotted a few minor bugs with how eJukebox references .m3u files from network drives, overall the program works well with them.

Admitedly "by directory/folder" would allow new music to be added to that "mood" easier--no list editing if its as easy as dropping files in a specific directory obviously--but the cost, on top of programming, would be to add a somewhat confusing item to the database.

Unless...

Are you trying to make the whole thing work like a REAL jukebox, where you intend to let the patrons pick the music it plays themselves off a public monitor (my playlist suggestion is catered towards the program picking the specific songs out of a large list, not a "customer" queing songs up--in other words like a sophisticated Muzak system controlled by the owner, whereas yours would be more like a physical jukebox). But you want different "crowds" to see different stuff under the "Albums" page? It that's what you are after then I guess it makes sense.



Also, I'm pretty certain that "popularity" statistics are only adjusted when you deliberately place files in the queue by double-clicking on them in the database. Songs summoned up by popularity mode seem to not change the future popularity. As for songs summoned by a playlist... I'm not sure.


Audiosoft - 5-11-2003 at 06:46 AM

deathrow,

You can easily accomplish what you are looking for by installing multiple copies of eJukebox. Just install one for the day time to the default C:Program FileseJukebox and one for the night to C:Program FileseJukebox2. Build the day database of songs using the database update on the first copy and build the night database on the other copy. Then just run either copy depending on the time of day.


deathrow - 5-11-2003 at 07:29 PM

Audiosoft...I noticed that this could be accomplished with multiple instances but there are a few things that go against optimal use of the program:

1. I would have to add the music to each database seperately

2. The popularity ratings would be completely independant (say for instance the song "Hotel California" was in both databases then when it was choosen in the 1st instance of eJukebox then the popularity would not be increased for the 2nd instance)

I would really like to use a single database (especially since I for most of my songs I have had to manually edit the information (album, image etc...)--and I would not look forward to having to do this twice.)

I don't mind writing a helper application to do set the "Active" songs that will run seperate from eJukebox but to do this the small change of having eJukebox only SELECT * WHERE Active = True would have to be done for all the database calls...

I realize its your program and so I'm not trying to tell you how to write it but I think this would be a GREATLY beneficial feature.

(To furthur my point this is what I am faced with:

I don't want Eminem's songs to show up in the playlist during the day (for some reason certain crowds think his "music" is satanic) but at different times I do want to show it...and I would like to do this with just one database for ease of maintenance....

Thank for you thoughts and quick responses....any other ideas that I might be missing???

-Dr


deathrow - 5-11-2003 at 07:33 PM

and btw jhlurie, yes i am intending on have people select the songs themselves and just let the popularity mode kick in when the playlist is empty...