Why can't iTunes enqueue?

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erugalatha Author

Level 1

40 points

Why can't iTunes enqueue?

... why no enqueue in iTunes so I can line up a list of songs to play?

(and Party Shuffle is not the same as enqueue.)

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.6), 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Mar 7, 2009 2:33 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 7, 2009 3:15 PM in response to erugalatha

My answer would have been Party Shuffle. Why is it not the same?

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Answer 2

erugalatha Author

Level 1

40 points

Mar 7, 2009 3:36 PM in response to Matthew Smith

With Party Shuffle you have to drag and drop the song into the postion you want it to play. i.e. you spend time setting your play order up beforehand but you might want to hear something different 10 minutes later.

With Enqueue you click on a song and enqueue it and it plays NEXT - after the current song - enqueing songs is much more on-the-fly and easier.

In a party situation people could walk up to your laptop and choose and "Enqueue" option on a song and it'll play after the current song finishes (and after other enqueued songs). Multiple people can just choose what they want to hear and they'll play in the order they were chosen - first come first served.

With the "Play next in party shuffle" option it should read "Play NOW in party shuffle".

NEXT and NOW are not the same when it comes to enqueuing music.

Any way to add an enqueue option through scripting? I like iTunes but it ***** a bit without enqueue.

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Answer 3

Mar 7, 2009 3:59 PM in response to erugalatha

What about the "Add to Party Shuffle"? It adds it to then end of the list currently in party shuffle.

Having just wrote that I think I understand what you want. You may have Party Shuffle set up to automatically play music. You want it that someone can choose a song to play. If no-one else has chosen songs to play that have yet to play it will play next. If others have chosen songs you want it to play after those songs. But you don't want them added to the end of the list in Party Shuffle because not all those songs were chosen by people but selected by iTunes to play. Is that what you want?

If so, won't setting Party Shuffle to show 0 upcoming songs do that?

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Answer 4

erugalatha Author

Level 1

40 points

Mar 7, 2009 4:38 PM in response to Matthew Smith

Yes, do you know those old jukeboxes from the 60's/70's etc.? You put a few cents in the slot and select a letter and a number for your song. Then your song got enqueued after the songs other people have already enqueued. If no songs were currently "bought" by people then it played randomly anyways.

Setting party shuffle to show 0 and using Add to Party Shuffle kinda works for what I want ... but then people cannot see what's coming up and what other people have already enqueued.

I just think this part of iTunes could be so much more user friendly. Other than that iTunes is great. Am just looking for a friendly enqueue mechanism.
Maybe it's just I don't understand party shuffle too well. 🙂

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Answer 5

erugalatha Author

Level 1

40 points

Mar 7, 2009 4:44 PM in response to erugalatha

P.S. if you add in the use of a Remote to this scenario it's almost impossible to enqueue songs.

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Answer 6

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Mar 7, 2009 4:53 PM in response to erugalatha

Set Party Shuffle to display 0 upcoming songs.

*Add to party shuffle* adds the song to the end of teh current list (which is now has no songs).
*Play next in Party Shuffle* plays it after the current song.

With Party Shuffle you have to drag and drop the song into the postion you want it to play.

You can but you don't have to.

With Enqueue you click on a song and enqueue it and it plays NEXT

As does *Play next in Party Shuffle*.

With the "Play next in party shuffle" option it should read "Play NOW in party shuffle".

Why? It plays after the current song is finished, not immediately.

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Answer 7

Mar 7, 2009 4:57 PM in response to erugalatha

No matter what you set upcoming songs to it will always show enqueued songs even if the number of enqueued songs is greater than the requested display. So if you set it to 0 and 5 songs have been enqueued by using Play Next in PS or Add to PS, those songs will still display.

Also, if you have it display a certain number of songs and people have been using Add to Party Shuffle, clicking on the Refresh button in the bottom right of the Party Shuffle pane will remove any non-enqueued songs from the list, bringing the enqueued songs forward, and then if there is still less than the displayed upcoming songs it will add more. If there is more enqueued songs than the number of upcoming songs to display it won't add any more.

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Answer 8

erugalatha Author

Level 1

40 points

Mar 7, 2009 5:10 PM in response to Chris CA

OK, so the answer to my question is "why can't iTunes enqueue?" is. IT CAN ... but ... you gots to know what you are doing!

With a combination of "Add to party shuffle" and "Play next in party shuffle" it's doing what I want it to do now. I'm displaying 5 songs and after I add to party shuffle I can then select that song in party shuffle and select play next in party shuffle and it will move up the list.

Thanks for your help.

Now how to do this with the remote thingy?

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Answer 9

Mar 7, 2009 5:16 PM in response to erugalatha

Unfortunately the Remote app does not work with Party Shuffle other than telling you the currently playing songs. I have sent feedback to Apple that they need to include party shuffle functionality, like viewing, play next and add to. You might want to give feedback too.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

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Answer 10

Mar 12, 2009 1:11 AM in response to Matthew Smith

Ask and it shall be so, or at least close to it.

Version 8.1 had renamed Party Shuffle to iTunes DJ.The Remote app for iPhone and iPod Touch now works with iTunes DJ. It is also possible for guests (with their own iPhone/iPod??) to request songs, but I haven't tried it out.

From some initial testing it seems requesting in the Remote app, queues requests before any automatically added songs.

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Answer 11

Mar 19, 2009 4:21 PM in response to erugalatha

erugalatha wrote:

With the "Play next in party shuffle" option it should read "Play NOW in party shuffle".

NEXT and NOW are not the same when it comes to enqueuing music.

I am having the same issue. I came from the glory days of Winamp and curse Apple time and time again about this. More so back then than now, I would shuffle my entire library, but if the moment struck me for a certain song, as it often does, I could simply hit the J key for the "Jump to File" dialog, type the name I want, and click or key the enqueue option, closing the JtF dialog. This way the song was queued, and I could easily queue more to keep it going, or after it burnt the queue it would just go back to shuffling. It was so quick and efficient that it allowed me to use my laptop as my MP3 player in my car relatively safely.

The problem with iTunes DJ is if you are playing from your library, and you click "Play Next in iTunes DJ", it immediately throws you into the DJ playlist. Does Winamp have a killer patent on this simple feature? 🙂

Message was edited by: bbechtel16

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Answer 12

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Mar 19, 2009 5:03 PM in response to bbechtel16

The problem with iTunes DJ is if you are playing from your library, and you click "Play Next in iTunes DJ", it immediately throws you into the DJ playlist

If you are playing from your library, nothing is playing in iTunesDJ.
Therefore when you select a song to *Play next in iTunes DJ*, it does just that.

If you are playing from your library, why are you adding things to play in iTunes DJ?

Play iTunes DJ then browse your library and add stuff to iTunes DJ and it will do that and it will still display your library.

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Answer 13

Mar 20, 2009 5:22 PM in response to Chris CA

Chris CA wrote:
If you are playing from your library, why are you adding things to play in iTunes DJ?

Play iTunes DJ then browse your library and add stuff to iTunes DJ and it will do that and it will still display your library.

Because I'm looking for the easy functionality of an efficient feature that Winamp implemented over 5 year ago.

Thanks for the suggestion. That would work, kind of. I guess that's a good as it gets in comparison to Jump to File/Enqueue. Honestly I don't think it's worth the hassle.

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Answer 14

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Mar 20, 2009 5:56 PM in response to bbechtel16

Because I'm looking for the easy functionality of an efficient feature that Winamp implemented over 5 year ago.

I'm suggesting you play from iTunes DJ instead of the the library.

That would work, kind of. I guess that's a good as it gets in comparison to Jump to File/Enqueue.

You can play a file immediately or add it to play next or add it to play at the end. What's different?

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Answer 15

Oct 15, 2009 12:46 PM in response to Chris CA

It´s actually quite close to the functionality of Winamp, which is good.

Is there any way to make iTunes DJ not add stuff automatically?
I created an empty playlist, and selected it as source, and it seemed to work.

Perhaps a small but nice feature would be to create an empty Playlist
which is was only available from the "Source:" in iTunes DJ, that was named: "Don´t add anything automatically".

Anyway, nice that the functionality is available.

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