Using Plexamp - some observations on carplay and general

Plex Labs
1

Have plexamp running on my iphone and in carplay.

I note across the top panel I can’t select albums, only recent, artists and playlists. I realise that there is only a certain amount of screen real-estate so maybe it would be good to be able to select the views in settings for appearance in Carplay.

Not sure what the outlined/filled star does on the carplay interface either, would like to be able to rate songs (have done this with siri before) but unsure what this actually is (why only one star - I like and have a 5 stars model).

I have also noticed that I don’t really understand how the “artist radio” works. Kinda expected it to show me “random songs from that artist” rather than songs from artists like that artist? I suppose this is why you can just hit play from the artist page. I kinda get the radio idea but I wonder if it needs to gel a bit more with the “sonically similar” and “related” concepts.

Last thing I have noticed (in Carplay but not sure if it is a wider issue) is that when loading/caching fails for a new playlist, it might start the first song play that, realise it doesnt have the others so loops the one song while still showing it is trying to play the rest of the playlist. Think the best failure mode is to play another different song - just play something to prompt the listener to realise/notice the error (possibly another setting!).

Other than these minor issues, very happy it is getting stable and good, so please pat yourselves on the back.

2

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

CarPlay lists are quite limited (they don’t allow paging or alphabet-jumping, and when in motion many times they are limited to a dozen or so items). Hence we didn’t (and don’t) feel like trying to list all albums is a good fit for the UI.

Again we’re pretty limited; it’s a tri-state (love/hate/neutral, or 5 stars, 1 stars, unrated if you want to think about it that way). We can’t do a more detailed UI for rating.

That is how artist radio works everywhere in Plexamp (seed artist + similar artists). If you want just tracks by the artist, use the shuffle button on the artist page.

That is a new one to me, have never heard of this failure mode.

3

Agree on the shuffle button, my point was more that what are conceptually similar features (ie. give me something similar to what I am listening to) are called quite different things around the app (radio vs related vs sonic). Maybe some standardisation around the term radio would help.

On the last one I will see if i can catch it with a video, basically it seemed to be where it wanted to show me a playlist, started it then realised it didn’t have it cached (only had the first song).

Moreover thanks for the quick response, perhaps a requested features public backlog rather than running it through the forum might help keep track of dupes/reduce your effort :slight_smile: