I've just been setting up a Playlist for my band for an upcoming gig
By default, our Playlist has Autoplay disabled, next song Auto-Loads, and we manually trigger Start/Stop.
I had a few songs in the setlist that we do want to Autoplay as soon as we get to them in the playlist.
I followed the instructions here - https://stagetraxx.com/user-guide/playlists/#autoplay-repeat
If you only want to enable Autoplay for some songs in the playlist, you can swipe the song to the left and select the Autoplay button
This is where I ran into a "What the..?" situation. Now, I confess, this may just be a 'me' thing, but bare with me...
So I follow the instructions and enable Autoplay on the song I want to, well, Autoplay. I see the little down arrow on the right edge of the song in the Playlist and assume that I'm all good for that song to Autoplay.
I test by playing the preceding the song in the playlist. I get to the song I set to Autoplay, and it just Loads but does not play.
A bit of head-scratching later, I realise that if I want a song to Autoplay, I have to enable autoplay on the preceeding song in the Playlist.
Software UX logic makes me feel that this implementation is quite unintuitive. If you set Autoplay on a song, then that song should autoplay, not the one after it in the Playlist.
What if I decide to re-org my Playlist at the last moment and move a song into the spot above the song I want to Autoplay? Now I have to change the Autoplay to that new song, which is quite unintuitive, because the Autoplay isn't 'remembered' for the actual song we want to autoplay.
I appreciate that this might well just be a 'me' thing and if you've been using ST for a while, you just learn this and get used to it.
If I could suggest a way I would like to see it implemented, it would be:
- You set Autoplay on a song that you want to Autoplay.
- That is stored in the Playlist logic, so that if you change the preceding song, it is the playlist that knows that irrespective of the preceeding song, this song is to Autoplay.
- The visual indicator (down arrow on right) - it would be great if it was something that spanned both rows, maybe an arrow that starts with the preeding song, and ends on the song that will Autoplay.
If I've misunderstood something, or not considered certain scenarios, I apologise in advance. I can also appreciate that even if there was a level of general agreement, it isn't something you'd likely want to change in ST3 and mess up the behaviour of existing Playlists. But if this could be reconsidered for ST4, that would be great.