The Daily Ping

There are few greater joys I have in this world than listening to music and I’ve become totally comfortable listening to music in either physical or digital format. Most of my time is spent listening to mp3s at work, so I’ve been able to give a lot of thought to a future that I’d love to see. Keep in mind I listen with Mediamonkey for mp3s I own and I stream via MOG, but this wish for a brighter future can apply to any app/service, if done right.

Basically, it comes down to one thing: merging what I own and what I don’t, but want to hear, in a smart way.

Right now, I maintain two music queues. In Mediamonkey, I queue up music I’ve downloaded or ripped and in MOG, music that I don’t own that I want to hear. I’d love to have a unified queue. If there were a plugin for Mediamonkey (or whatever) that allowed me to build and listen to my MOG queue through MOG’s API (which doesn’t exist yet). (Actually, I do have a third queue — one using ex.fm for random mp3s I found out on Bandcamp, etc., but this one is used significantly less often so I’m not counting it here. Though combining it with the other two queues would be super killer.)

But how would one build that unified queue? Through a unified search, of course! I want to be able to search for an artist and see all their albums, sorted by year. Set apart streamable, unowned albums in a different color or with an icon. Then, let me work with the music in the same way, whether it’s local or not. Of course, one should be able to specify if they want to search just locally or just remotely, as well.

I’d much rather have this than a service where you have to upload/match your collection (like Lala did, not so successfully), though a web app that did both would be fine by me.

Throw in the ability to purchase any album you stream and automatically add it to your library and you’re golden.

Anything else you’d like to see in your ultimate music app/service?

Posted in Technology, Television, Movies, and Music