Feature Request: Queuing Songs/Albums

I just bought a Fuze after being a loyal Creative MP3 player user. I am severely disappointed by the lack of ability to queue up albums and songs to play while I’m already listening to songs on my Fuze. This is basic Jukebox functionality. Any media player on my PC can do this. The Creative MP3 players can do it. Why can’t the SanDisk players? It’s astonishing that none of the SanDisk players do this. If I had known that the Fuze lacked this basic functionality, I would have never bought it.

(Don’t tell me about the “Go List”. That function is lame and broken. You can not add to it after you have already started playing it. And, you can only add one song to it at a time, not entire albums.)

So terrible. It must destroy the value in your device to have a single feature that wasn’t carried over from the mass exodus of Creative firmware developers heading to SanDisk. It’s a complete shame that they didn’t listen to you. 

There was a mass exodus of Creative firmware developers heading towards Sandisk? For real?

Oh! Basic functoinality of a mp3 player!  . . .  play mp3s?

But with all sarcasim aside, just create your own playlist and upload it to the device. Anyone spending so much time and effort on their mp3 player to edit and queue up songs and albums should just be using their pc.  If you want more features that mimic computers, why not get a pocket pc =)

@thoma wrote:

Oh! Basic functoinality of a mp3 player!  . . .  play mp3s?

 

But with all sarcasim aside, just create your own playlist and upload it to the device. Anyone spending so much time and effort on their mp3 player to edit and queue up songs and albums should just be using their pc.  If you want more features that mimic computers, why not get a pocket pc =)

Using the pc for this is antithetical to the concept of a portable media device. You don’t always know in advance what you will want to listen to. Since the go-list exists on the device itself there is no logical reason to limit it to individual files. A person is just as likely to want to add an entire album or artist to the go-list as an individual track. 

Sandisk seems to understand better than most companies that in addition to well performing hardware flexible and extensible software is also necessary for the best user experience. If someone wants to create a specific musical environment on the spur of the moment the player should not stand in their way, it should be able to accomodate them. The Fuze does an admirable job at this already, but there is certainly room for improvement. Allowing different levels of the database above individual files to be added to the go-list would increase user convenience tremendously. 

The GoList does need some work and tweaking for sure, but you can add songs to it even if you’re playing off of it.

  1. Start playing from the GoList

  2. Press down to get to the “Music Options”

  3. Go “Back to Music List” 

  4. Press <<| Twice to get back to “Music”

  5. Select whichever group you like and highlight the song you want to add

  6. Hold the center button.

There’s a slight bug with this though, the GoList you’re currently playing will not have the newly added song on the list. You have to reload the playlist to ave the updated song lineup.

That’s the inherent flaw in the Go List. Once you add a new song to it, you have to go and load the Go List again. And presumably, you’d want to wait til the current queue is finished playing so you don’t interrupt it. Ugh.


Using the pc for this is antithetical to the concept of a portable media device. You don’t always know in advance what you will want to listen to. Since the go-list exists on the device itself there is no logical reason to limit it to individual files. A person is just as likely to want to add an entire album or artist to the go-list as an individual track. 

 

Sandisk seems to understand better than most companies that in addition to well performing hardware flexible and extensible software is also necessary for the best user experience. If someone wants to create a specific musical environment on the spur of the moment the player should not stand in their way, it should be able to accomodate them. The Fuze does an admirable job at this already, but there is certainly room for improvement. Allowing different levels of the database above individual files to be added to the go-list would increase user convenience tremendously. 


 

Exactly… for example, let’s say you’re on a long road trip in your car and you’re listening to your MP3 player. You take a rest stop and decide to queue up a bunch of songs. I don’t want to whip out my laptop and setup a playlist to suit my current mood, and then upload it to the device. I just want to be able to instantly queue up a few albums to last me through the drive (or long workout… or long walk… or long train ride… whatever). This will be completely dependent on my mood right then and there. And every moment that I sit there and mess with the Go List, I’ll just wish I were listening to XM or my old MP3 player.

Message Edited by nmames on 04-23-2008 05:07 PM

We have added the ability to queue up albums to the Go list to the feature enhancements requests internally.

Have you considered to use the “Genre”  to queue up songs related to your mood in the interim.

If you select a certain album for playback,  it loads the album.  When the album is done, press the down arrow ,  Back to music list, back up one level and select another album.

There is the ever popular “Play All”  and “Shuffle”  available as well. 

sansafix wrote:  

If you select a certain album for playback,  it loads the album.  When the album is done, press the down arrow ,  Back to music list, back up one level and select another album.

 

There is the ever popular “Play All”  and “Shuffle”  available as well. 

That’s one of the things I like about the Fuze, navigating and getting where you want to go is fast. I have players from Rio, Samsung, Trekstor, Insignia, Toshiba, and others. None beat the Fuze as far as providing a direct path from point A to point B, wherever those points are. 

Thanks for considering the enhancements to the go-list, I usually listen to whole albums at a time, so picking out a few in advance would be great. 

@sansafix wrote:

We have added the ability to queue up albums to the Go list to the feature enhancements requests internally.

 

Have you considered to use the “Genre”  to queue up songs related to your mood in the interim.

 

If you select a certain album for playback,  it loads the album.  When the album is done, press the down arrow ,  Back to music list, back up one level and select another album.

 

There is the ever popular “Play All”  and “Shuffle”  available as well. 

Thank you. This feature would be greatly helpful for many people.

The problem with the “Genre” feature is that it requires proper labelling via the MP3 tags. As someone who ripped his considerable music collection almost 5 years ago, I’m not going to go through and check to make sure my ripping program and it’s online database properly labelled my 600 albums’ genres to my satisfaction (Is Uncle Tupelo under Alt-Country or Punk? Public Enemy under rap or hip-hop? etc.)

I’m pretty fussy with the genre tag, and it is immensely useful because of that. I keep the number of genres down to a reasonable number - a couple dozen. It took a few hours to get my original library tagged, but now its just a few minutes here and there. Before I put something on a player, I drag the directory to MP3tag and set the tags - it takes much less than a minute.

Now when I’m looking for some music on a player (any player that supports tags), I usually go to genre first and don’t have to do much scrolling.

@riolist wrote:
There was a mass exodus of Creative firmware developers heading towards Sandisk? For real?

When is an exodus NOT a “mass exodus”?

Okay, but back on track. This was requested months ago. I wish it had made it into the .15 update. Sansafix says they’ve added it to some “to do” list, but to just use the genre tags to play certain kinds of music, depending on your mood, in the meantime. While I personally DO keep my music tagged properly, lots of people might not, so Genre might not be a viable option. There was also a suggestion to just play one album, then when it’s done, play another one. Still doesn’t apply when I want to listen to a mix of 3 or 4 different artists (maybe of different genres, even). Analogy:

“I’d like some pancakes.”

“Here’s some flour. It’s just as good.”

“I don’t like plain flour, I wanted pancakes.”

“Well, you don’t need pancakes. Just eat the flour, then eat some eggs, then some salt, baking powder, and milk. At the end of the day, you’ll have all the same stuff. Plus, our engineers are busy redesigning the start-up logo of the serving plates, so the pancakes probably won’t be in the next firmware update either.”

… Maybe I stretched that analogy a little too thin.

Oh, and please don’t mistake my frustration over this device for a dissatisfaction with my Fuze. I love it, just as it is, and I really do appreciate the work going into keeping it updated and bug-free. I just thought this would be a higher-priority request than it has turned out to be.

Message Edited by SilverZero on 10-18-2008 12:08 PM