Dedicated Podcast / Audio Story / Audio Book category on the home screen and for scanning.

[xbmbmx]

Hi!

I have been using Poweramp as my main audio player over many devices for a few years now.
The app is very complete and has almost no shortcomings.

One feature I have missed is a dedicated spot for non-music audio content like podcasts, audio stories and audio books.

When I open the app, it would be nice to have a dedicated "Audio play" or "Audio book" or "Podcast" menu entry and category. The distinction would be nice because it would completely separate my music from the non-music audio content, just like the current streams entries are completely separate from music content. (I love the streams feature too!)

This would allow the "shuffle all" button in the songs category to never encounter an audio book/podcast during shuffle playback (an issue I face from time to time now). Ideally, in settings for scanning, you would be able to add "music" folders (what is currently in the app), and folders for non-music content (so, a new selection menu). All audio files that are scanned from folders listed in the "non-music content" selection menu, end up in the Podcast/Audio book category.

For the rest, the category could behave like the songs category (meaning: still showing album art, still allowing shuffling, still allowing rating etc etc) but it would be ideal if they are "truly separate" from music content - so it doesn't come up during playing songs in shuffle and so on.

P.s.: My English is not that good, I'm not intending to sound "imperative", it is just a suggestion of a feature I would love to have available in Poweramp. The app is amazing!

[andrewilley]

Hmm, Poweramp is at its heart a MUSIC player, not a podcast / audiobook player, but I would have thought the existing folder system should allow you to do what you need. I'm suggesting using folders by the way, in preference to embedded Category tags, as I find tagging information can be pretty unreliable in podcasts/etc. 

I would suggesting organising your audio files in this sort of layout:
/Audio/Podcasts/subfolders/etc
/Audio/Audio Books/subfolders/etc
/Audio/Audio Plays/subfolders/etc
/Audio/Music/subfolders/etc

Set 'Folders Hierarchy' as your default Library View, and you can then drill down into whichever section you like from there. You could even use two master folders instead of one Audio folder (enabled separately in the Music Folders menu) called Music and Spoken Word (or something similar), and nest everything else in subfolders underneath those two names.

As for shuffling only the music content and not the podcasts/etc, open the Music folder so you can see all of its subfolders, and tap on the 'Shuffle' icon in the header area. Note: that will result in shuffling by subfolders first, and then their contents; if you want to shuffle songs completely randomly from any Music subfolders, enable Settings=>Library=>Shuffle=>'Shuffle All Songs in Folder Hierarchy'.

This works very well for me anyway, and I listen to a lot of podcasts and audio dramas too.

Andre