A note of discontent to the current developers

[Amirhamdy45]

Hello Poweramp Community,

This post seeks to express a collective sentiment of concern and frustration that i think many of us share regarding the app's development trajectory.

Over time, our forum conversations have been punctuated by feature requests, each an eager note in a long list of user expectations. Unfortunately, these requests have lingered unanswered, creating a sense of longing for the anticipated harmonies of updates.

Months have passed since the last app update, leaving us in a state of uncertainty. The developers' silence on their current projects has left us in the dark, craving a glimpse into the future of Poweramp.

While the app remains functional, the absence of fresh features has led to the perception of stagnation. The community's desire for innovation and excitement seems is now shifted to silence and is met with a static hum of the familiar.

Acknowledging disappointment doesn't diminish the app's strengths. Poweramp has been a reliable companion, and its existing features showcase a commitment to quality. However, the frustration stems from unmet expectations and a longing for continued evolution.

In navigating these quiet echoes, i invite the developers to join us in crafting a harmonious future for Poweramp. Let this post be a gentle plea for acknowledgment, transparency, and a shared commitment to the app's continued evolution.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and insights!

[MotleyG]

Ummm...

 

https://forum.powerampapp.com/ideas/?mode=popular

 

Perhaps you aren't following the forum topics here. Plenty of development, and many interactive conversation with the single developer. Is this a plea to have a specific request actioned? Or simply a post to vent some frustration at some inability to use a feature that you feel should exist?

[maxmp]

@Amirhamdy45 what unanswered requests do you mean? Can you please provide links to those? 

The target is 4 stable builds per year and much more often releases on beta channel/forum. If some feature takes xx months to implement, there may be appropriate obvious pause for xx months in the release schedule.

Reading further into your post - have you confused this forum (Poweramp/Poweramp Equalizer) with some other project/app forum?

[Amirhamdy45]

1 hour ago, MotleyG said:

Ummm...

 

https://forum.powerampapp.com/ideas/?mode=popular

 

Perhaps you aren't following the forum topics here. Plenty of development, and many interactive conversation with the single developer. Is this a plea to have a specific request actioned? Or simply a post to vent some frustration at some inability to use a feature that you feel should exist?

I assume you are refering to a beta  version which i didn't know existed , the last official app update in google play is 4 september of this year , here is some of the unaddressed feature requests:

1- A to B repeat playback

2-Support BPM (Beats Per Minute) tag

3-Allow speed changing without pitch correctio  or in other words add a pitch effect

4-Smart Playlist

5-Playback of users' cloud-stored content

6-more shuffle options customizations

[Amirhamdy45]

34 minutes ago, maxmp said:

@Amirhamdy45 what unanswered requests do you mean? Can you please provide links to those? 

The target is 4 stable builds per year and much more often releases on beta channel/forum. If some feature takes xx months to implement, there may be appropriate obvious pause for xx months in the release schedule.

Reading further into your post - have you confused this forum (Poweramp/Poweramp Equalizer) with some other project/app forum?

I don't have links as of right now but sure you will find those in the feature requests category 

here is some of the unaddressed feature requests:

1- A to B repeat playback

2-Support BPM (Beats Per Minute) tag

3-Allow speed changing without pitch correctio  or in other words add a pitch effect

4-Smart Playlist

5-Playback of users' cloud-stored content

6-more shuffle options customizations

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, Amirhamdy45 said:

I assume you are refering to a beta  version which i didn't know existed , the last official app update in google play is 4 september of this year , here is some of the unaddressed feature requests:

1- A to B repeat playback

2-Support BPM (Beats Per Minute) tag

3-Allow speed changing without pitch correctio  or in other words add a pitch effect

4-Smart Playlist

5-Playback of users' cloud-stored content

6-more shuffle options customizations

Many apps with support from entire teams can go years before getting a full release update. A few months in the case of Poweramp is not abnormal. Feel free to join the beta program and get updates even more often. The 6 items you have called out certainly don't change the performance of the app as it has ever been advertised. Some "nice-to-have" features maybe, but none that comprimise the integrity of a music player app that was built around best sound as the number one target.

[maxmp]

@Amirhamdy45 I guess there are comments / notes and/or further questions and discussion regarding these features on the forum? You can participate in the appropriate topics and move feature to a voted feature - that will bring it closer to implementation (https://forum.powerampapp.com/ideas/?mode=popular). I would say most of the items you indicated are already in the voting process.

[Amirhamdy45]

1 hour ago, MotleyG said:

Many apps with support from entire teams can go years before getting a full release update. A few months in the case of Poweramp is not abnormal. Feel free to join the beta program and get updates even more often. The 6 items you have called out certainly don't change the performance of the app as it has ever been advertised. Some "nice-to-have" features maybe, but none that comprimise the integrity of a music player app that was built around best sound as the number one target.

Any development team in the world must have a roadmap that leads to a vision that they want to achieve somehow and by saying "The 6 items you have called out certainly don't change the performance of the app as it has ever been advertised." you are actually proving that your goal is just to make the app as advertised and any other new side features are just addons that users might or might not get to see . I'm a web developer for example and we never really call a website or a web app finished unless the company is facing real financial problems and can't afford to pay us for what we do   , there is no finish product in the digital world you are not selling swiss chocolate  . I also have an objection on the feature voting system , it seems that even the most requested features get max around 20 to 70 votes which is really super low considering the users of the app , my suggestion would be to make the voting system cross plaform  . You have a subreddit that has many people in it why don't you post votes there to? Or maybe imbed the voting system into the app insuring that each user will see the vote even if he never heard of the forum  because these numbers are a joke for real 

[andrewilley]

The feature voting system was only introduced about three weeks ago so is quite new. This website is the official Support Forum, and any app user is very welcome to join here and vote if they want. There is already a link to these Forums via the 'Get Support' page within the app, and there is also a link to the Website on the Play Store's product page.

If you want to spread the word around other social media platforms, please feel free to do so. However from keeping an eye on the Poweramp Facebook group (~6,000 members) the vast majority of users seem more interested in asking for the "best" EQ settings, and showing off screenshots of their favourite skin or what they are currently listening to. I suspect that 99.99% of users simply download the app as it is, and play music.

This Forum membership currently stands at about 95,000 users - but of course you can't force them to be active or vote, the messages here just represent a small snapshot of the most dedicated users.

Remember that Poweramp has just one developer, and it is entirely his project. He does take note of what users ask for, but at the end of the day it's entirely his decision as to what he works on. Any sort of major feature addition might take many months of work to code, test across multiple devices and various Android versions, beta test and then release to the Stable product. For example the recent facility for displaying synchronised Lyrics and reading of LRC files (plus associated API) probably took the best part of six months to get to the stable functional state that it's now in.

The six items that you mention would probably take the best part of a year to fully implement if Max dropped everything else - most of the work being in items (4) and (5). All six are available for voting already anyway, among about 45 of the other most common requests, so please add your voice to the process. That will help guide Max in terms of knowing what features are more popular than others. I do recall that (3), Speed and Pitch adjustment in addition to the existing Tempo, is something that was planned for the next time he is working on the EQ code.

If you want to try the latest beta builds, you can either download them manually from here first (using the Downloads tab at the top of the page) or receive them automatically from the Play Store by subscribing to the public beta channel, which you can do via https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.maxmpz.audioplayer.

Andre

[Fitzian]

This is just a delightful microcosm of democracy, isn't it?

Of a couple hundred million eligible voters in the states, around 30-40% just do not turn out to vote.

You know what? Voting is now compulsory. Your music player will only playback a series of rhythmic claps (shave and a haircut) unless you submit a vote for every ballot measure. /s

[Amirhamdy45]

41 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

Remember that Poweramp has just one developer, and it is entirely his project. He does take note of what users ask for, but at the end of the day it's entirely his decision as to what he works on. Any sort of major feature addition might take many months of work to code, test across multiple devices and various Android versions

This a ton load of work for one developer to carry on , so in this case its quite understandable  , is he planning to expand ? Or maybe take volunteers ?  

[andrewilley]

10 hours ago, Amirhamdy45 said:

This a ton load of work for one developer to carry on , so in this case its quite understandable  , is he planning to expand ? Or maybe take volunteers ?  

I think you now see the reason why things may take a while to happen. Max did try employing someone else to develop a fairly isolated area within the code a good few years ago, but I understand that it didn't go well. When you've been solely responsible for coding something for close to 15 years, I guess it would not be easy to bring someone else on board whose skills and style match your own.

And at the end of the day, purchasing a Poweramp licence allows you to use the app "as provided", and receive bug fixes if any issues or compatibility problems with new versions of Android occur. It does not absolutely entitle you to receive new features - although they are a very nice and welcome bonus of course. And for more than a decade every licenced user has been provided with all sorts of new features and options.

Just as a purely personal opinion, I've felt for a while that it might perhaps be a good idea to spend maybe six months devoted to tackling a bunch of the simplest and easiest core requests - cherry picking the "low hanging fruit" items if you don't mind me slightly mixing a metaphor - rather than spending an extended period of time on one more complex feature. For example, the excellent new Lyrics interface and API is a great addition to the app - but it took quite a while to code, test and refine with real-world file examples. With the benefit of hindsight, that sort of fairly specific, relatively isolated, new feature might have been a great candidate for the new Add-On Pack system. However in that same period, maybe a dozen somewhat more trivial, but equally long-standing and regularly repeated, requests for the core app might have been addressed.

Anyway, that's just my $0.02 on the subject, and as mentioned earlier this is entirely Max's project and it is his decision as to how he prioritises his time.

Andre

[6b6561]

11 hours ago, Amirhamdy45 said:

I'm a web developer for example and we never really call a website or a web app finished unless the company is facing real financial problems and can't afford to pay us for what we do

How much work do you do for a client that has paid for his website and you are not expecting any more pay from him? With Poweramp you are getting the quarterly stable updates + betas.

The new setup with paid feature packs sounds like a good idea, this will generate some income for the developer and hopefully speed up some of the requests.

Lyrics as Andre said would have been a good candidate for a feature pack, this was something that I was eagerly waiting for and would happily paid for.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, 6b6561 said:

Lyrics as Andre said would have been a good candidate for a feature pack...

I do feel that broadly themed Add-On Feature Packs would be the ideal way forward.

For example, I don't think a random selection of a dozen bitty features across the user interface, Library, database, and audio output would be all that appealing as a purchasable option.

On the other hand an "Advanced Player Screen Customisations" pack would be much more targeted and could include vote-toppers such as selection of the functions available in the row of Viz/Sleep/etc icons (finally including that long requested A-B Repeat button), User-customisation of the formatting of the Title/Artist-Album lines with %tagname% style strings, High-Res icon, Sleep Timer enhancements, etc. They don't all have to be completed at the point the Add-on Pack is first released; it could be made available for purchase with just a couple of those features, and further features could be added over time - in the same way that the core app will still get new features added. That would provided regular new incentives to purchase the Add-On as people's desired features get included, while offering a nice value-added bonus for early purchasers. 

Andre

[Amirhamdy45]

6 hours ago, 6b6561 said:

How much work do you do for a client that has paid for his website and you are not expecting any more pay from him?

None because its not my project and the only motivation for me as a developer to do something for someone else would be money unless i have a personal interest on the subject matter , usually clients pay for an extra 6 months or more after the website is said to deliver what it promised for maintenance and stability updates but that is in the case of a freelancing one time job  but for me personally i work full time so me and my team are expected to add new features that matches the business and if i have time i might work on some side projects . In the case of Poweramp it was actually a little of a surprise to me to learn that there is only one developer behind it all and since the business of Poweramp is not subscription based i have to guess the developer have some real passion for what he do and i bet that can't be the source of income that he relies on mainly but it is quite complicated because music players in general are not subscription based unless it is a streaming service so most companies that release these types of products usually have other products along with it and a development  team

Edited December 16, 2023 by Amirhamdy45

[Amirhamdy45]

7 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I think you now see the reason why things may take a while to happen. Max did try employing someone else to develop a fairly isolated area within the code a good few years ago, but I understand that it didn't go well. When you've been solely responsible for coding something for close to 15 years, I guess it would not be easy to bring someone else on board whose skills and style match your own.

And at the end of the day, purchasing a Poweramp licence allows you to use the app "as provided", and receive bug fixes if any issues or compatibility problems with new versions of Android occur. It does not absolutely entitle you to receive new features - although they are a very nice and welcome bonus of course. And for more than a decade every licenced user has been provided with all sorts of new features and options.

Just as a purely personal opinion, I've felt for a while that it might perhaps be a good idea to spend maybe six months devoted to tackling a bunch of the simplest and easiest core requests - cherry picking the "low hanging fruit" items if you don't mind me slightly mixing a metaphor - rather than spending an extended period of time on one more complex feature. For example, the excellent new Lyrics interface and API is a great addition to the app - but it took quite a while to code, test and refine with real-world file examples. With the benefit of hindsight, that sort of fairly specific, relatively isolated, new feature might have been a great candidate for the new Add-On Pack system. However in that same period, maybe a dozen somewhat more trivial, but equally long-standing and regularly repeated, requests for the core app might have been addressed.

Anyway, that's just my $0.02 on the subject, and as mentioned earlier this is entirely Max's project and it is his decision as to how he prioritises his time.

Andre

Although i really like the new lyrics API because of the new support for .lrc the timed lyrics extension  but i do agree with you that 6 months is a long time .  But i think the developer is more focused quality rather than quantity . It's really quite unfortunate that he is working alone and i hope i could be of any help but i am mainly a web developer and although  i have some experience in programming and frameworks , i lack knowledge of audio Programming and android development  . But i hope max will consider hiring new people even if it previously didn't work out i believe that this is the only path forward if he wants to reach a new milestone with this app and also building and integrating multilple teams in the future might add new sources of income if some teams were assigned different projects other than Poweramp and i really do get that its quite hard to work with people when you spent 15 years professionally coding but i also believe success requires some compromise.  For starters he needs to search in the  criteria of professional android developers and this takts alot of interviews and can canidate filtering to there but he will eventually get there