‘Link’ feature in media players

Most media players like Windows Media Player and Winamp allow you to assemble a custom playlist. In WMP, you can quickly compile a list by right-clicking a bunch of song names and selecting Add to Now Playing.

I frequently turn on the Shuffle option when listening to playlists. But sometimes I don’t want it totally randomized. I’d like it if some songs were grouped together – if song 1 was played, I’d like to hear song 2 and song 3 played right after. Then after this group is played, the rest of the songs would continue to be shuffled until another group is played.

So how do we group songs in a playlist? I believe that media players can create a feature similar to the Link option found in Adobe Photoshop.

The link option in Photoshop

Sometimes in Photoshop, you’d like to perform a single task on several different layers at once. Say you want to move both Layer 1 and Layer 2 up by 20 pixels. You don’t have to perform this task separately. Photoshop makes tasks like these more efficient with the Links option – you simply check the Link icon next to the layers (which groups them together). Then moving one of these layers moves the entire group.

But how do we create more than one group?

Again, we can turn to the brilliant engineering of Photoshop. When you press the Link button next to a layer, it is hidden when the linked layers is unselected.

For example, if we take a look at the image above, we can see that both Layer 1 and Layer 2 are linked. However, the Link icon would not be displayed if both these layers are unselected – such as by selecting Layer 3 or 4.

This means that if we currently have an unlinked layer selected (Layer 3 or 4), then Layer 1 and Layer 2 from the first group would not be selected, and thus no Link icons would be visible.

Then, if we check the Link icon on any other layer (Layer 3, 4, etc.), the layers from group 1 are not part of this second group since their link icons are not visible.

You should note that a layer cannot be linked in more than one group.

Application to media players

Media players can adapt apply this link feature to their own playlists by allowing users to tick off songs. All the ticked songs would then be grouped together. So whenever Shuffle stumbles upon a song that is part of a group, the entire group is played before the media player continues to randomly select another song to play.

What I’ve learned from studying business plans is that what works for one thing (company, software, etc.) can successfully work for a completely different thing. But the opposite can be true too. As an innovator, I think that media players can really use this feature if it’s implemented properly.

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