Select Songs Within Artist, Genre, Playlist and Continue to Play From that Selection

[j2p4h]

I'm sorry this post is quite wordy. Feel free to skip to the summary of my suggestion at the bottom. Please post if you would also like to see these features.

 

In the iTunes Miniplayer, you can select songs by an album, artist, genre or playlist.

 

When you select an album, you can choose a specific song from that album and play it. Thereafter, the rest of the album will play. Great. I love the behaviour of the Miniplayer in this case.

 

But what if I want to choose an item from a playlist and then listen to the rest of the playlist? Then I have to select a playlist and hit "Next Song" until I get to the one I want. This can be irritating for large playlists. Further, the Miniplayer behaves similarly if I want to play all the songs by one artist or from one genre.

 

A solution for this problem would be the following behaviour:

 

Let's say I have a playlist called "Top Songs".

 

I open the Miniplayer → I begin to type "Top Songs → "Top Songs" appears in the menu → I select "Top Songs" → A list of the songs in the "Top Songs" playlist appears

 

At this point, we encounter a different problem. Let's say "Top Songs" contains 1000 songs. It is unreasonable to scroll through the a list of 1000 songs in the Miniplayer to select the one you want. So, you type in the name of the song and press enter. Unfortunately, the Miniplayer's current behaviour leads to the creation of a temporary playlist that contains only that songs. So, the other songs in your playlist will never get played.

 

I would propose that this behaviour should be changed so that the temporary playlist contains all songs in the playlist (or genre/artist/album) you are searching within and that it begins playing that playlist with the selected song.

 

Alternatively, if a person does not want this behaviour, the Miniplayer's could be made to resemble that of Alfred's file navigator. Pressing enter on a playlist would play it and pressing the right arrow key would access a list of the songs within it. The same behaviours listed here can also be applied to playing "All songs in genre" or "All songs by artist".

 

In summary:

 

I would propose that the complete final behaviour would be as follows.

 

I open the Miniplayer → I begin to type "Top Songs → "Top Songs" appears in the menu → I select "Top Songs" → A list of the songs in the "Top Songs" playlist appears → I begin to type the name of a song → That song appears in the menu → I select that song → That song plays → The rest of the "Top Songs" playlist plays thereafter

 

 

[Vero]

I open the Miniplayer → I begin to type "Top Songs → "Top Songs" appears in the menu → I select "Top Songs" → A list of the songs in the "Top Songs" playlist appears → I begin to type the name of a song → That song appears in the menu → I select that song → That song plays → The rest of the "Top Songs" playlist plays thereafter

 

I'll provide a short response to a long question

 

We would love to add this, but Apple doesn't allow quick or efficient access to playlist content in iTunes, unlike the library XML which is much more accessible. Having said that, we're absolutely keeping an eye for any changes relating to AppleScript and control over iTunes.