Playlist collaboration

Vedeja

In our band (as I imagine many other) we work together to create our playlists. I don’t see a way to allow multiple users with their own Apple IDs to collaborate on building a playlist. I know I can export the playlist and share it but that is not the need. Also, to clarify, audio files and lyrics are not interesting in our case, only song and playlist ”simple” information.

AnthonyB

I imagine you'd need a cloud-based platform if you started to want multi-user collaboration on any part of ST. I won't speak for Peter but I can't imagine that occuring any time soon.

peter

Collaboration like that indeed requires a server side component. iCloud does just that for the syncing of your devices. But collaboration between multiple accounts where each account could also edit data is completely different beast. I don't think I could implement something like that just with what iCloud offers. And that would mean I would need to run my own server infrastructure which needs to be quite beefy given that a lot of users have multi gigabyte large libraries. That would only be possible with a subscription based pricing model that I would like to prevent.

So bottom line, not in the near or middle future.

Vedeja

Thank you @peter, as a software developer it makes total sense.

Still, it is possible to manually share a file on one’s iCloud, with any other person. If ST had a concept of ”remote playlists” that could be added by means of a file url..?

peter

Vedeja You can already export a playlist as a playlist file and then bounce around these files via email or an icloud share or whatever you prefer. But it is a rather manual process exporting and then importing the file.

Vedeja

Yes, and a manual process I would not trust my drummer solving. 😊 I’m curious, would ST regard a remotely shared playlist file any different than a local one, when it comes to reading/writing it?

Anyhow, won’t push this further. I just want to let you know I feel it would be a feature that would add value to an already great app.

peter

ST does not care where a playlist file comes from. The processing is always the same.

Vedeja

peter so why not allow adding a playlist that references a shared url, such as an iCloud hosted file?

peter

I don't know what you mean. Playlist files are only used for importing exporting. The app works with a database. Files are only an interchange format.

Vedeja

peter that clarifies it. I thought the files I see on ICloud were the ”database” but I understand now that after import of such file, ST handles its own database closer to the app. Thereby, my idea falls short(er).