Subsonic Android 1.3.1 released

[sindre_mehus]

Just released Subsonic Android 1.3.1, which is a minor update from 1.3.

What's new:

o Always display Select, Play, Queue buttons.
o Configurable dark or light theme.
o New/random etc album lists.
o Fixed bug with server settings not being updated on screen.

[jgladden]

Just tested it out... love it, nice work Sindre! Like your typical whining user, I do have a feature request though. I also just want to let you know your work is very much appreciated and loved!

I love, love, love random play. What would be a neat improvement however would be allowing random play of a particular genre (music folder). The reason this would be handy is say I have a death metal music folder and a easy listening music folder, random play as it currently works would draw from each and make for a less than desirable playlist.

Perhaps the ability to choose a music folder in the music library would be the first step (like in the web interface, including an option ALL). Once the particular music folder is picked you could then choose random and it would draw only from that particular genre (or ALL if selected). This might be a good diea for the web interface as well.

Currently I have to construct a few dozen playlist per genre (music folder) consisting of a few hundred songs each (randomly mixed). The issue with this method is I wind up with about 30 or 40 playlist and the large size of each one can take a long time to load and then I only get a small subset of the overall music folder.

Not trying to sound like I'm griping. I love the app and am excited to see it evolve. Thanks again for the awesome work!

[jgladden]

Also wanted to mention, random play does not work if mp3 are organized by genre / artist / album . Choosing random only selects random albums, which can not be played. Currently you must select one album from this random list of albums then select only the one album's mp3 for playback.

Ideally random would choose random mp3, rather than random album folders.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[wattershed]

The "random" Sindre mentioned is a part of the implementation of the "Random | Newest | Highest rated | Most frequent | Most recent | Users" links available on the computer web interface version when you select "Home" from the top frame of the web app.

I think he's still in the process of working on actual random playback of whatever's currently in the active playlist.

This, however, has also been a much-desired feature because I know sometimes I'm guilty of acquiring an album then completely forgetting about it until I look at the "Newest" list.

[sindre_mehus]

Yeah, I plan to add a "Shuffle play" option which has been requested by a lot of people. This will pick random songs from the collection.

I'll also (probably) add "music folder" to the server definition.

[barretta]

Nice work! The ability to search by "Newest" is long overdue. Also agree with the general assessment of the Random feature as it stands now. Not very useful when you have a folder structure of Genre>Artist>Album, etc. Sometimes, a whole Genre folder will show up as a random result, next to a bunch of album folders. In any case, this is by far the most usable iteration of the Android app so far. Very nice!

[lpadron]

Sindre,

Very appreciative user here . . .

Please consider adding a feature allowing BOOKMARKS of position on an MP3 track. This is used in AUDIO BOOK (or other SEQUENTIALLY accessed materials). It would be nice to have a "RETURN" point for re-starting VERY long MP3 files (i.e. audio books or POD casts).

Thanks for everything!

Lee

[GregAndo]

Hi Sindre,

Just wanted to identify that errors / notifications don't seem to clear after you view the error and click okay. I don't care too much about things not going to plan and an error being generated...if I have to retry something who cares...but its annoying when the error wont clear - even when I kill the program.

I too have Nexus One - it is running the early release of Froyo, but I was experiencing this issue on Eclair as well with an earlier version of the app. I have the SDK so if you are looking for logs (or someone to help code the Android app) let me know.

As everyone else says, these are great apps - this will be the future of mobile entertainment...something I have been looking forward to for some time...and with luck you will become the defacto standard. You will need to add video one day (I definately expect that will not be any time soon of course). Keep up the great work!