| Unified Listening Experience |
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General information |
Bid/Request full detail for Instatone Series A improvements v1.0
Unified Listening Experience
What's Wrong Now
Shoutcast Overplay/ Redundancy
1.) Radio stream is currently defaulted to Shoutcast through iTunes upon clicking the “listen” button of the Instatone Radio. A song on demand now plays on top of the Shoutcast stream (concurrently).
2.) To only hear the song on demand, the user has to go into default player (i.e iTunes) and stop the stream, as it is a separate output and application from the Flash player.
3.) Additionally, when a user plays a song-on demand within the site and chooses to play an additional song-on-demand, they play concurrently.
4.) This occurs frequently when the site has a featured band module on the home page that provides play buttons for several songs (5).
What We Want
User experience requirements:
A. The default listening experience of the radio needs to be streamed within the site itself.
1.) When the user clicks the new button "Play Radio", the Instatone radio stream plays through the site. There needs to be a link under the button to "listen through iTunes”. Therefore, the user now has the option to either listen to the radio through the site (by default when clicking play radio), or listen to the radio through iTunes.
B. Only one song can play at a time through the site:
1.) Once the default radio listening experience is through the on-site flash player, playing a song-on-demand should automatically stop the radio stream, while the song-on-demand is loaded into the flash player, and begins to play.
2.) If a user is playing a song-on-demand (from the charts, for instance), and then chooses to play another song-on-demand, the first song needs to stop and the second song gets loaded and plays, eliminating the problem of two songs playing at the same time.
3.) If a user clicks "play radio" while a song on demand is playing, the song on demand stops, then the radio starts playing.
4.) When a song-on-demand completes, the user would then click "play radio" to resume the radio, or play another song on demand.
Note: Other functionality of the site needs to remain intact or rewritten for the new experience as needed... for instance, we currently have a kill refresh script on the left panel such that when a user begins typing a review, it does not refresh to the next song played until user completes his review and hits GO, then the review you are currently typing gets logged to the correct song.
C.)Currently all music (radio plus songs-on-demand) need to be played and rated through the single flash player (left panel)
1.) Currently, songs are being played (and rated) through both the left and middle panel. We want all songs (radio songs and songs on demand) to be played and rated through only the left panel.
Additional (UI) Requirements:
1A.) Change the `LISTEN’ Button to say`PLAY RADIO’.
1B) Change favorites button to "add to favorites"
1C) Change fanclub button to "join fan community"
1D) Create new button and functionality named "send to friend" that allows users to forward the link to the song to friends through email.
(These buttons and related functionality are mocked up in a separate document available upon request. Also see the speed enhancements and Ajax section below: What We Want #5 for additional requirements).
2A.) Player module needs to show time remaining (out of total song length) for the song playing
2B.) Player module should show the bands hometown, state.
3.) Player module should still show song ranking out of X rated songs as is currently displayed.
4.) Band Members to get alerts when s/he gets a new song review. They should also have the option to turn off that preference. The default should be that the alert is sent automatically
6.) The song detail panel must also show the date and time the song had its “debut” on Instatone radio. Debut is defined here as the exact time song was initially uploaded to Instatone.
7.) Player must be compatible/integrate-able with Drupal 4.7 (Must be compatible with the Audio Module or you will need to rework/rewrite the audio module to accomplish goals.
8.) IMPORTANT _ Player must be able to play multiple formats of music - MP3 (any codec/channel including joint-stereo and regular), M4A. Also MONO or STEREO.
9.) The player should be able to play at any bitrate. We would like to set the bitrate of the stream via an admin screen.
10.) The player should NEVER quit. If it encounters a bad file then it should skip that song and move onto the next. Upon encountering a bad file, it should report the “bad song” to the member and administrator (along with an error explanation if possible).
11.) The Instatone Radio will need to have a station identification – “You are Listening to Instatone Radio" or any other one we may record, provided as MP3. Admin needs to be able to set frequency of station ID.
12.) The playlist is already generated hourly so it will need to hook into the new flash radio unified player.
13.) Player must track number of concurrent listeners, number of tracks played, and show as a playlog webpage.
Usability and speed enhancements with Ajax based song actions
What's wrong now
A.) Rating System:
1.) Currently, when the user clicks one of the 5 stars to rate the song playing, the selected stars change colors to represent the number of stars selected. However, the rating does not get submitted upon this event. The reason the rating is not submitted at this point is that the rating module is connected with the comment field that has a “go” button to submit the comment/review. Clicking GO now serves to submit both the rating and the review. Additionally the star definition labels show only a tool tip (after a couple second delay on a mouse roll-over).
B.) Reviewing/Commenting:
1.) When the song that is being reviewed ends before submitting the review, the user ultimately submits the review while the next song is playing. The system then incorrectly adds the review to the currently playing song instead of the previous song that is actively being reviewed by the user.
What We Want
1.) When clicking a star from 1-5, the rating should be automatically submitted upon clicking, while the color of the number of stars selected changes.
2.) As the user rolls the mouse over a star, the star should immediately display the definition of the star ( Ex: 4 stars = “radio-worthy/high rotation etc.). The definition should appear above each star, in red text, as you roll over them.
3.) Additionally, upon submitting a rating, create an alert to member saying “thank you for influencing the radio!” message.
4.) Upon publishing a written review, the song detail page should load showing the new review. Additionally we want a “send a private note to band” button that emails the comment to the band instead of publishing it on the site. (see mockups, available upon request)
5.) Submitting a rating, adding a song to favorites, recommending a song, and joining a fan community should not refresh the page, or pause the music. Instead, an AJAX style expansion window should be used (see mockups, available upon request)
6.)In the case where the user has already rated (or reviewed) the song, the charts and reviews should be changed to yellow stars and show the rating the member made instead of the red average star rating,
7.) Members must be able to change or DELETE their rating or review of a song anytime after submitting it.
8.) We need the stars to show their previously submitted rating, and the comment box needs to show their previously submitted text review. We must accomplish this without losing any of the ratings or reviews that have already been submitted. Need mockup
9.) The review field should show the song name (and band name) being reviewed (in light grey at the top, like a watermark).
10) Band Names and Song Titles that are “too long” for the allotted space should reduce in font automatically to fit.
11.) If the song being reviewed from the radio ends and a new song from the radio begins to play, the review being submitted is connected to the song that was originally playing when the review first started being written. In other words, if the cursor is in the review field while one song from the radio is playing (showing that songs grey "watermark"), the review text field stays the same even if a new song from the radio begins to play. The watermark stays the same until the user clicks go. At that point the review text field watermark reflects the current song on the radio.
NOTE: WE HAVE MOCKUPS IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SEEING NEW USER INTERFACE TO MAKE BID. PLEASE INQUIRE |
Column by:
Michael Dorofeeff
Order materials are published without editing, but with saving style and spelling of the Author
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