[Bumble2000]

Hi everyone,

Happy new year!

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new app built for the PlayBook called Think-4-U Music Player. Here are the key features:

Think mode:
Automatically learns how you listen to music such as your favorite songs and the favorite parts of the song (i.e. clips). This is perfect for people who really enjoy listening to music as they can sit back and let the app do the thinking for you on what to play next based on what it's learned. As you play more music, it will get better and better at picking the right songs for you in a way that might sometimes stun you.

Lyrics:
For mp3s that have lyrics enabled, the lyrics will be displayed during song playback. This is great to sing-along to their favorite songs!(For mp3s that you want to add lyrics to, we recommend using the open source free software called MPTagThat)

Auto-bookmarking
It's not just music. For larger files like audiobooks, the auto-bookmarking feature allows you to come back to exactly the same point in the book automatically. There is no limit to the number of audiobooks that you can set auto-bookmarks.

Auto-resume:
It also incorporates an auto-resume feature that allows you to keep track of which song you left off as well as the playlist without clumsily needing to manually having to remember it yourself.

Easy-to-use UI:
- Intuitive gestures enable you to navigate through your music with ease: swipe left for next song; swipe right for previous; quickly scroll through list of your music library using a velocity sensitive flick gesture; single tap on viewing area to toggle play/pause
- Tile layout of songs/clips reduces the chance of selecting the wrong song
- Separate screen when the song is playing prevents accidental selection of songs
- Welcome tour of the app is provided on first app invocation

Playlists
- Dynamic playlist: create a dynamic playlist based on the search results; for example, if you want to listen to the Beatles, start entering it the search box. As the results are dynamic, you likely get what you want after entering "Bea..."
- Folder-based playlist : Add the files to a sub-folder of the music folder and use it as a playlist
- "My Favorites" playlist: A built-in "My favorites" playlist is provided that allows you the ability to quickly add songs to a customized list

Wide variety of formats supported:
It supports a rich set audio formats including mp3, wma, wav, m4a, and aac. If it works with the native one, it will work with this app.

Real-time global search:
Dynamic search for all artists, songs, albums matching search text.

Introductory offer 50% off at $.99 US.

We hope you like it. Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your support!

Sincerely,
BumbleBee Computing

[taz323]

Looks like a good app, going to have to try it out.

[416to604]

i'll have to try this out, seems like a great concept.

[djenkins6]

I don't quite understand. From the description it seems like it only plays locally stored music? If this is the case it will be learning to play a selection of songs from my own songs. If they are my songs on my device then they are songs I already decided I like and bought....

Or am I misunderstanding and it's going to some Internet source?

[hemertwv]

So myself as an example I have my whole library 100's and 100's of CD's on my playbook some 4000+ songs, but I don;t listen to them all I listen to maybe 300 on a regular basis, but at family and friend gatherings or when we are out camping my playbook often becomes the music source and people like different music than I do. So I get to keep all my music but when it is just me it will play what music I tend to listen to,

Is that correct?

[djenkins6]

I'm the same, I have 100's of cds but I have them on a hard drive, I don't want to fill up the playbook, I want to access remotely. But.I could see using this to discover new music on the internet, based on what I like.

[Bumble2000]

I'm the same, I have 100's of cds but I have them on a hard drive, I don't want to fill up the playbook, I want to access remotely. But.I could see using this to discover new music on the internet, based on what I like.

Many thanks for all the interest in the app!

@djenkins6
Yes, only locally stored music. It will learn how you like to play. For example, which songs you like most in any given time of the day (e.g. maybe you like slow music at night and faster music in the morning) or maybe some songs are timeless (e.g. doesn't matter you just love it). It also learns the most pleasing play order for you (e.g. though you like all your songs, not every order of them is good for you). Also, will learn parts of the songs you like (e.g, you like to skip all the beginning of some songs or skip before before it ends because it is too repetitive). Etc etc.. your preferences revealed by how you play your music.

The more you use it, the more it learns what you like, when you like, what order you like, and what parts you like.

@hemertw. You are correct. You have complete access to your entire library. In fact, when you are with friends and family, the real-time search that is conveniently at the top makes it really quick to search whatever song, artist, album you want (just start typing a letter and it will match all songs, artists, albums that match that string). And when it's just you, it will play what you tend to listen to. Also, it is gesture enabled. So you can navigate through your songs by swiping left/right for prev/next; tap to play/pause and if your mp3 songs have lyrics embedded, you can double-tap to toggle the lyrics.

[sushistew]

i noticed it will show album art, can it show more than one picture at a time or scroll through them while listening maybe in future if possible?

[ls40098]

Went and made the purchase, looks quite nice actually. Is it possible to create custom playlists from the library? It looks as if its possible on the help screens but I'm not following or being successful.

tia

[Herve5]

Is there a way to recuperate the song ratings from e. g. an iTunes library? If yes, count me in!
H.
P. S. even if this involves some arcane file transfer, as this will basically be one-time -but for iTunes users it'll be vital...

[416to604]

hi bumble, so i purchased the app last night and spent some hours training the app by picking and listening to music on my playbook. i must say that "think mode" has been awesome so far, producing playlists that i like, just based on what i was listening to last night. i have a few suggestions for you though, that would make me retire any other music player if implemented.

firstly, i noticed that the play/pause button on the playbook doesn't seem to work with this app. as well as the auto-pausing of audio when headphones are removed from the 3.5mm jack. please fix these as they are vital to the usability of the app.

secondly, if its not too much of a hassle could you make the album search view similar to the stock playbook music player? (or at least add a toggle to switch between 2 view options) that UI is wonderful because us visual people love to search via album cover art, rather than text.

lastly, could you also add a full screen album cover art view or visualizations to the screen that is shown when a song is playing? this is just for aesthetics and i think would improve the perceived "polish" of your app.

all in all i'm loving the music player so far and would recommend the app to friends and family already. the small things i have highlighted above aren't deal breakers but sure would make the overall experience better. thanks for hearing me out!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

[Bumble2000]

hi bumble, so i purchased the app last night and spent some hours training the app by picking and listening to music on my playbook. i must say that "think mode" has been awesome so far, producing playlists that i like, just based on what i was listening to last night. i have a few suggestions for you though, that would make me retire any other music player if implemented.

firstly, i noticed that the play/pause button on the playbook doesn't seem to work with this app. as well as the auto-pausing of audio when headphones are removed from the 3.5mm jack. please fix these as they are vital to the usability of the app.

secondly, if its not too much of a hassle could you make the album search view similar to the stock playbook music player? (or at least add a toggle to switch between 2 view options) that UI is wonderful because us visual people love to search via album cover art, rather than text.

lastly, could you also add a full screen album cover art view or visualizations to the screen that is shown when a song is playing? this is just for aesthetics and i think would improve the perceived "polish" of your app.

all in all i'm loving the music player so far and would recommend the app to friends and family already. the small things i have highlighted above aren't deal breakers but sure would make the overall experience better. thanks for hearing me out!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

@sushistew Sure, that's possible. Just thinking what might the best way to implement it. Double toggling seems tiresome. If it doesn’t lag, maybe a slide show with ~10 second intervals?

@ls40098 You can create custom playlist by making a sub-directory inside the music folder. Put the files of your songs there. You can use the favorites button to add songs to the favorites playlist which is essentially a custom playlist. If you require more than one, it is doable but not a current feature. Another way, you can essentially create a custom playlist is to actually listen to a series of songs that make up your desired playlist on the player. Your playlist is then remembered by the player inside its adaptive playlist ‘web’. Go to Think play mode and when it plays, you find it at times reminiscent of your original playlist.

@Herve5. The good news is that the ratings of iTunes is stored inside your MP3 file. It is not necessary to interface with iTunes to get this information :-). Our thinking is that when you rate a song by putting some tag on it, this is static -- you may like that song now, but in the future you may not like it as much. And the evidence of how much you like a song is more accurately reflected by how much you still listen to it. That’s dynamic and what we hope to capture in the Think play mode. But our assumptions could be too simplistic :-) Let us give more thought to this.

@416to604 Glad to hear you like it so far! Response to your points:
1. re: physical play/pause button. Great feedback! We've just added that into our development stream. It will be in the next update. Auto-pausing on headphone unplugging is also easy to do and we can put that in the next update.
2. Album art on the selection view. It is doable but it will take more time as the data management of album art is non-trivial. It wouldn’t appear all at once as album extraction is slow (1-2 sec per file), but will only need to be done once per file though. We doubt the stock music player does it real-time either (they must have some OS help). The second issue is potential lag in scrolling. If we can manage to solved these issues acceptably in our testing, we will release it in an update.
3. Full screen album art. If you can believe it, we actually thought about this a lot before implementing :-) Generally album art conforms to 300x300 resolution. This means full screen images would mean pixilation of the majority of album art, which we think looks bad. The other thought was as big as possible without pixilation. In this case, as the user switches from song to song, the image size will vary, which might be kind of distracting. So we stuck with 300x300. We’ll explore what’s involved in visualization.

[sushistew]

great to hear, i actually purchased the app before i commented and am loving it. i have my playbook connected to bb music gateway and blast my tunes.

[FF22]

I guess as a long haired, gray hair..... How would this app deal with Classical Music which in many instances is 3 or 4 LINKED movements or even more (Peer Gynt) as opposed to throwing together a random mix of tracks or tunes?

[Bumble2000]

I guess as a long haired, gray hair..... How would this app deal with Classical Music which in many instances is 3 or 4 LINKED movements or even more (Peer Gynt) as opposed to throwing together a random mix of tracks or tunes?

Hi F2,

We don't listen to complete pieces of classical music but we know it is long with one movement after another.

Here are 2 ways you can consider it. Let's say you listen to Vivalvi Four Seasons. You like the beginning of spring and the part of summer where it goes hyper. You can scrolling to the parts and listen to spring section first and summer section next. This series of clips is remembered. The clips you create are now a part of the playlist Web. You can create new link to other related classical music clip simply by playing them as you would because that's what you like. The playlist Web grows into something you no longer can predict but somehow it will still be pleasing we hope.

2nd way, just play the whole thing from beginning to end and never ever deviate from that. That's fine. It will always play it that way for you if it starts at the first movement. You can get to the first movement by starting think mode and the using the search to find the first movement or you can skip songs until you get to the first movement.

[Herve5]

@Herve5. The good news is that the ratings of iTunes is stored inside your MP3 file. It is not necessary to interface with iTunes to get this information :-). Our thinking is that when you rate a song by putting some tag on it, this is static -- you may like that song now, but in the future you may not like it as much. And the evidence of how much you like a song is more accurately reflected by how much you still listen to it. That’s dynamic and what we hope to capture in the Think play mode. But our assumptions could be too simplistic :-) Let us give more thought to this.

Thanks for this quick reaction!
Basicallly what I wish is a way to quickly find "all my 4~5-starred songs", for instance... without rescanning/relistening everything.
I do understand your way of "tracking the real user behavior", but if you could somehow deal with star ratings too it'd be quite appropriate for "translating users" I think...

[416to604]

thanks bumble.

[Bumble2000]

Thanks for this quick reaction!
Basicallly what I wish is a way to quickly find "all my 4~5-starred songs", for instance... without rescanning/relistening everything.
I do understand your way of "tracking the real user behavior", but if you could somehow deal with star ratings too it'd be quite appropriate for "translating users" I think...

@Herve5. Thanks for bringing this usage case. I think it is a good one. We will definitely consider this for a future update. Additionally, what do you think about the following feature ideas
- Auto-create a playlist of all 4-5 starred songs so that any new ones you rate with 4-5 stars will automatically be added to this playlist.
- Auto-synch wireless with the itunes library. So new songs added to your desktop get pulled onto your playbook effortlessly (this may require a proxy to be installed on the desktop)

Would these features be valuable?

[Herve5]

@Herve5. Thanks for bringing this usage case. I think it is a good one. We will definitely consider this for a future update. Additionally, what do you think about the following feature ideas
- Auto-create a playlist of all 4-5 starred songs so that any new ones you rate with 4-5 stars will automatically be added to this playlist.

definitely valuable, provided I can rate them here through Think4U

- Auto-synch wireless with the itunes library. So new songs added to your desktop get pulled onto your playbook effortlessly (this may require a proxy to be installed on the desktop)

less valuable, but it's probably just me (I try to abandon iTunes, which is very difficult on macs) -indeed I think there are here on BB apps that specifically do this kind of sync and only it...

[Bumble2000]

definitely valuable, provided I can rate them here through Think4U

less valuable, but it's probably just me (I try to abandon iTunes, which is very difficult on macs) -indeed I think there are here on BB apps that specifically do this kind of sync and only it...

@Herve5. Many thanks for your feedback. It is greatly appreciated!
@416to604. re: "the play/pause button on the playbook doesn't seem to work with this app. as well as the auto-pausing of audio when headphones are removed from the 3.5mm jack. please fix these as they are vital to the usability of the app". We totally agree and have completed these work items. Instead of waiting to complete additional feature before uploading, we're going to upload a new update with these two work items now as I do think you are right that it adds to the usability of the app. We'll let you know as soon as the update is approved.

[Beakman]

I don't quite understand. From the description it seems like it only plays locally stored music? If this is the case it will be learning to play a selection of songs from my own songs. If they are my songs on my device then they are songs I already decided I like and bought....

Or am I misunderstanding and it's going to some Internet source?

You're thinking too much, which this app can help you with Kudos to the developer for making an app and having way more talent than I can ever hope for, but bring this feature to it's obvious conclusion - that eventually your whole music collection will sound the same. We see this more and more with Amazon suggestions, blog suggestions, advertising in general. Pretty soon everything will be grey and we'll all agree it's great.

[sushistew]

quick review i made

[mikeywilliams]

I bought this app because of the following claim and it's supposed ability to auto resume. Quote:

"It's not just music. For larger files like audiobooks, the auto-bookmarking feature allows you to come back to exactly the same point in the book automatically. There is no limit to the number of audiobooks that you can set auto-bookmarks.

Auto-resume:
It also incorporates an auto-resume feature that allows you to keep track of which song you left off as well as the playlist without clumsily needing to manually having to remember it yourself."

But I don't see that it works.
I have an audio book in say 12 chapters.
I am half way through chapter 3 and press pause and then exit the program.
What I expect is that when I next restart the program that it will resume where I left it. This does not happen. It opens with the list of all 12 chapters and no indication which one I was listening to.

Am I missing something?

[Bumble2000]

I bought this app because of the following claim and it's supposed ability to auto resume. Quote:

"It's not just music. For larger files like audiobooks, the auto-bookmarking feature allows you to come back to exactly the same point in the book automatically. There is no limit to the number of audiobooks that you can set auto-bookmarks.

Auto-resume:
It also incorporates an auto-resume feature that allows you to keep track of which song you left off as well as the playlist without clumsily needing to manually having to remember it yourself."

But I don't see that it works.
I have an audio book in say 12 chapters.
I am half way through chapter 3 and press pause and then exit the program.
What I expect is that when I next restart the program that it will resume where I left it. This does not happen. It opens with the list of all 12 chapters and no indication which one I was listening to.

Am I missing something?

Hi mikeywilliams,

Thank you for reporting the issue that you are seeing and giving us an opportunity to understand and resolve it. Your expectation on how it should work is right and exactly the scenario that we have tested (and have just re-validated). We're eager to get to the bottom of the difference in behavior you are seeing. If possible, it would help us greatly if you could send our support address ([email protected]) an email with one or two chapters of the audiobook that mentioned.

Thanks in advance!

[mike williams1]

I've emailed you.

They are in fact audio lectures (mp3s) in a series rather than an audio book. I assume the autoresume should work the same.

Thanks for looking into it.