Feature description:
Within playlists, having the ability to select custom speeds for individual tracks that are bound to the specific playlist instance of the track.
Ex. A playlist of:
[
slower_song.flac,
on_pace_song.flac,
too_fast_song.mp3,
]
May receive modifiers of:
[
1.1,
1.0,
0.90,
]
That would change the speed of the respective song for that playlist. It should not change the track’s speed outside of the playlist.
Problem solved:
When doing some kind of sport or activity where it is beneficial to have a standard tempo or cadence (running, rowing, cycling, etc.) it would be great to be able to “normalize” the BPM of a playlist so that the transitions between songs remain on tempo.
This could be solved by creating playlists where all tracks are the same BPM, but it would offer flexibility to include songs that might be just too slow or fast.
For what it is worth, an old MP3 player of mine had this feature, and it was divine. I’ve been looking for it ever since
Brought benefits:
Could be good for people who don’t want to have a buzzkill tempo drop during the hard part of an exercise, or for people who run fitness classes who want to keep an intensity going between tracks but don’t have the skills to edit tracks external to their phone.
I will admit this is niche and lands more in the “I’d love it” bucket.
Other application solutions:
Other than an old MP3 that I had which did this, I’ve not seen the feature anywhere. I treasured that MP3, but it’s extremely limited internal storage makes it impractical to use for lossless music.
Additional description and context:
For simplicity, and to prevent users from accidentally modifying a song permanently within a playlist, it would make sense to have the feature behind a toggle in the playlist settings. Default to “off”.
When the feature is enabled, a change in playback speed is saved for that track until a further modification is made or the feature is disabled.
Disabling the feature resets all tracks back to regular playback speed, but saved speeds could still be remembered if it was ever toggled back on.
I don’t think any UI changes would need to be made other than the toggle to enable the feature.
