As a new user to both Plexamp and Tidal the past week I’ve been living in the app(s) and have some suggestions for a better user experience on desktop. As a user, it really feels that the app was built for mobile only and desktop use was an unfinished afterthought. The UI could be a lot better, and I think just looking at how Tidal does things could easily be pushed in the right direction with a few tweaks.
Artist:
Plexamp:
Plex, Tidal, and Apple:
I dont think there’s a lot of features missing from this page, but it could use some polish - even if we draw from the Plex web app’s UI. The artist ‘circle’ doesn’t mesh with everything else in square grid format, and artist information is wholly absent. The artist bio is currently pushed to the bottom of the page when it could and should be taking up the empty space next to the band photo along with style and other metadata.
Suggestions:
- Add thicker margins so everything isn’t so wide
- Make the artist name and info more prominent, this should be a showcase
- Use existing artist images to create some sort of cover photo or background
- Have suggested tracks higher, currently it’s buried at the bottom, with artist bio even lower!
- I think album art size is fine but the customization features to adjust size would be neat to find the perfect balance
Album:
Tidal (and Apple Music) attempt to center the album information, and then space out the track info they have so that it all fits within the user’s direct sight. Plexamp on the other hand has everything crunched into the left corner, with 90% of the page as empty space, and nothing directly where the user should be looking. There are also clunky context menus on the right of the page that act as a right click anywhere, while Tidal/Apple have the ability to add to playlist and ‘heart’ directly.
Suggestions:
- Larger album artwork & title(!)
- Thicker content margins, too much is on the edge of the app
- Space out track information horizontally
- Add ability to rate tracks directly with cursor, without the fly up menu (and not play track when clicking a star)
- Have album details together (no need to have the year twice, and the FLAC badge in the far right corner, circled in green on screenshot)
- Add ability to click Artist name to return to Artist page
- The album artwork could be more prominent in the ultrablur on album pages
- Add suggestions below like other albums from the same discography, just…LESS EMPTY SPACE!
Player:
The Tidal take on the player does a few things better:
- Larger album artwork
- Queue of current, previous, and upcoming tracks in a vertical column
- Ability to remove upcoming tracks or other context menu options
The current Plexamp player suffers from a big waste of empty space. The centered Back/Next/Related tabs look crooked next to the queue column. Having only “up next” populating the area next to an album with no star ratings hurts my user experience as someone who likes to listen to whole albums and see everything laid out, and as a desktop user it feels natural to want to ‘scroll’ back up to see what was previously played (this could also apply to mobile, wanting to swipe to scroll up and down)
Suggestions:
- Increase album art size for full desktop users
- Have flowing queue like Tidal (so users don’t need to go to the Album page or click the Back tab to navigate a single album), or use that empty space to show Related information
- Add ability to remove tracks from queue, and add ability to rate tracks with the mouse (currently clicking a star just plays the whole song)
- Space out track information horizontally (title, star rating, etc)
[/airing of grievances]
