Hiya
I was just thinkin about MJ the other day, as I often do, think I'm in love with it. It's really bad, I see it when I close my eyes
Anyway, for the two paths you were considering you were basically saying keep it the way it is or turn it into a multimedia center.
I was thinking about it and I reckon if you turned it into an Audio center instead of a multimedia center then you would have the best overall answer and would totally take over the market.
Right now MJ is the best Audio jukebox, turn it into the best audio app fullstop.
Basically my idea is just to cover every audio need people might want to do with getting music to their computer/finding the songs/playing them/getting them off their computer again.
when people download a song they dont know it's quality - offer an enc spot type function to check the mp3 and see if it's good quality. Whether or not you approve there is a lot of illegal music that people get and then use MJ to organise. If they're breaking the law to get it that's not your problem, your not helping them or aiding them. But giving those people a tool to check the quality of the music is something they would all love.
For people ripping music, give them hiss and pop removal functions. The ability to detect if audio tracks blend in together and the option to rip the whole album as one track if they do (Feurio I think it is offers this). Also maybe an option to automatically create .m3u playlists for all albums made, as well as .sfv files.
People then want to make sure it's all tagged nicely and you already offer this with great tools. Automatically guessing the format that file names are in might make it faster (just break all the songs down at the spots where -' s are found. If all songs have matching number of parts after being broken down then compare which parts all match throughout the album to give you artist and album name, track numbers can also be worked out easily in this way. The part that changes with each track would be the title. The only part that the user would then have to choose between is which part is the artist and which is the album name.
Some more advanced 'rename from properties' options might be useful. Giving a fixed syntax is nice but when the songs have missing fields this can result in really ugly looking file renames - maybe offer a smart mode where people can give priorities to different rating schemes and the properties of each song is analysed, if fields are missing from the first naming pattern then use the second, if fields still missing the third etc.
After people have the music and it's on their computers they then want to play it. You already have by far the best organiser program. You also have DSP studio etc. This could be extended to give functions like tempo, etc so people have more control over the actual music itself as it plays.
Some tools to manage the collection as a whole could maybe be useful to, tools to find duplicates (already done as a plugin and highly useful but is definitely something people would want the jukebox to do as standard if they have a big collection.
Tools to check the whole database and organise the songs better might be appreciated by alot of people. Maybe tools to organise the songs by genre/year etc.
I know this can already be done by clever use of renaming schemes but I think a LOT of people, myself included, would be worried about doing it this way. I'd be too worried I'd make a mistake which would result in my whole collection being messed up. A simple wizard on the other hand that asked me how I wanted them organised on my hard drive, maybe: genre/year/artist - album etc then it does the rest for me would definitely make me feel more confident as I'd be relying on you guys having done it right rather than on myself having done it right and I'd much rather rely on you guys to be honest, you know your stuff VERY well.
This would obviously have to try to look at songs as a whole album if they were already grouped together as such and try to keep this when moving them. It would have to be smart too so that if there were any other files in the current folders (covers, .sfv's etc) it would also move these.
The final thing people would then want to do is to burn their music. You already provide options for burning standard music or data cd's but this could be taken much further to allow for songs to be mixed together when burnt, to be burnt at a faster tempo, pace etc for people who use it at clubs where they want songs faster, or for people who teach dancing, or for people who just want a faster version of the song to listen to.
I know there are smart ways of doing this already using the write to disk feature or something but most people will never use features if they are complex. If these could all be done on the fly for things people might want to do often then it would make people use it more.
Like in the olden days, to make audio cd's from mp3's they first had to be decoded to .wav then burnt. Sure this worked but it was annoying, everyone JUMPED fast at the first burning software to offer direct mp3 to audio cd burning.
Make it the ultimate, all in one audio center.
Just try cover every audio need people will ever have and throw it into MJ. Take over the audio market fully.
Anyway, I know this is long - SORRY!!!!!
Love you guys