Last week, I wrote a blog post about RV’s new agile approach to web development, and I explained that our philosophy will be to "deploy new technologies early and iterate often." Well, we’ve deployed another new technology now – namely our media player - and I wanted to discuss it since it’s such a central feature of our website.

Beta Caveat

Before I give a brief explanation of the features and thinking behind our new media player, I want to state the caveat that the player, like the rest of our site, is in beta mode. It’s functional, but it will become more polished in the weeks ahead.

Pop-up vs. On-Page Dilemma

If you’ve been shopping on electronic music download stores for a while, you probably know there are two basic types of media players: those that work in a pop-up window and those that work on-page. The pop-up approach allows you to enjoy uninterrupted playback while browsing through different pages of a site, but it has the downside of requiring you to toggle between two windows. On the other hand, the on-page media player approach prevents the window toggling issue, but it requires the use of frames or extensive Flash to give you uninterrupted playback. These frame and Flash solutions can have serious downsides in terms of crippling a site’s ability to change in response to your needs.

All of these considerations basically create (what Eddie B calls) the "pop-up vs. on-page dilemma."

Our Solution to the Dilemma

Our solution to the pop-up vs. on-page dilemma was to give you a media player with the positive elements of both approaches! How? …by combining a pop-up media player with an on-page playlist manager. Each item in our shop or network has a clickable "add to playlist" icon that allows you to add that item to your playlist manager. Then, when you’re ready, you can click the "play all" button to have your playlist play in our media player.

Your playlist manager appears on-page and stays in sync with the media player, so (after we’ve added a few more features) you’ll be able to manage your playlist without toggling between two different windows. Moreover, you’ll be able to browse different pages of our site without interrupting playback, and we’ve avoided the hefty disadvantages of having a Flash- or frame-based site.

* As a footnote, I should mention that our new site also gives you the ability to play previews immediately on the page (for instant gratification), so you’re not forced to use the media player.

Simplicity Rather Than "Feature Creep"

When developing our media player, we wanted to avoid "feature creep." When you’re developing a new product, the tendency is to keep adding new features (thinking you’re making it better when you’re actually overcomplicating things). It takes a bit of discipline to keep things simple, and I think we’ve done that with our new media player.

The media player header shows basic information like title, artist, total time, elapsed time, and a thumbnail image. It includes basic features like play/pause, skip forward/backward, and the scroll bar for targeted playback. It also lets you rate the currently playing item and buy a full playlist with the click of a single button.

In general, we’ve tried to keep the player simple, clean, and usable.

Shop and Network Usefulness

Our new media player works for both shop and network items. The value of the media player for our shop is obvious, and we also thinks it’s a very useful tool for the network. For example, you may not want to take the time to download a bunch of mixes from our network, so you can just add them as a playlist in our player. Then, you can needle drop your way through them and see which ones you want to download. Very handy

Further Improvements

Our media player will continue to improve over time. In addition to working out some of the current kinks, we’ll be adding volume control and needle drop features. We’ll also be further improving the playlist manager so that you can reorder playlist items and select items for play without going to the media player.

Your Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback about our media player and any other aspects of our new site. If you have any thoughts to share, feel free to email them to support@resonantvibes.com. Our aim is to suit your needs, so the formula is simple: You tell us what you want, and we adapt to give it to you

Eddie B

Tags: Customer Support, Media Player, Resonant Vibes