ISO50

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ISO50 Playlist 1

Posted by Scott

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Track Listing:
School Of Seven Bells – Half Asleep
Gang Gang Dance – Egowar
Mahogany – One Plus One Equals Three Or M
Empire Of The Sun – Walking On A Dream
The Whitest Boy Alive vs Mylo vs Cut Copy – Otto’s Golden Journey (Andy Webb’s Dreamy Blend)
Phoenix – 1901
Air France – No Excuses
College – The Energy Story
Christ. – Cordate
Flying Lotus – Auntie’s lock/Infinitum (featuring Laura Darlington)
Flying Lotus – Roberta Flack (Mike Slott’s Other Mix)
The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Cornelius Remix)
Super Furry Animals – Some Things Come from Nothing
Engineers – Let’s Just See
Sigur Rós – Gobbledigook
French Kicks – Abandon
Blind Man’s Colour – Brother Sport (Animal Collective Cover)
Beirut – The Concubine
The Kooks – Kids (MGMT Cover)
Benoit Pioulard – Ash in the Sky
Bibio – Bewley In Grey
Daedelus – Experience

Unless you’re an RSS subscriber (if you are, click here to view player), you’ve probably noticed the new audio player at the top of the page. I’ve been wanting to add a flash based player for a long time because while the small single track player we have been using (and will continue to use) for music posts is good, it’s not something you can just turn on and let it play while you work. This new player is based on the JW Player framework and supports XML playlists and all the good stuff. It was a total pain to develop though, the documentation was a little thin in the skinning department so it’s been a very protracted process to say the least. I ironed out the last kinks over the past week so here it is…finally: the ISO50 Playlist. We’ll be refreshing the playlist often, usually with 16 or so song mixes probably every couple weeks or so.

The initial mix I put in tonight is just a collection of some of my favorites from the blog over the past year or so, nothing too specific or themed. Every song in the player (now and in the future) will be songs that we’ve previously posted on, so if you’re looking for more information on the song or artist just type it in the search box below (also new…well the design at least) and the relevant post(s) should come up. This is definitely a beta so give me the heads up in the comments if you run into any issues with the player as only a few people have tested it so far. On a related note, I’ve added a “featured posts” column in the hopes that it will make older posts a little more discoverable. I’ll also be adding a “featured categories” section next week as well in which I’ll try to compile some nice groupings of related articles on various subjects. As the blog gets on in years and the posts pile up, most of these additions are aimed squarely at highlighting older content, music and otherwise.

All of these changes and additions may get you thinking about the redesign I had discussed a while back. I haven’t given up on that plan, but it’s definitely taken a back seat as the process of finishing up my next album has sort of consumed me. I decided to make some incremental upgrades (like those mentioned above) using the current theme and then treat the redesign as it’s own phase a little later. Still contemplating that light background…

At any rate, the Playlist is here and I hope you enjoy! As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

48 Comments Leave A Comment

1

Spir says:

March 16, 2009 at 1:03 am

It’s really nice of you to share your music taste :)
I don’t have headphone right now but I’ll check it out later.

3

NAVIS says:

March 16, 2009 at 1:39 am

The play list is way cool. It’s really interesting to see the subtle progression of this blog. This is def. the coolest blog out there. Hence mine and many others continued readership. It has a delicate balance of great design and content.

And I think a new album is far more important than a new blog. Have you been designing anything? Or are you just working on the album?

6

kirkwood west says:

March 16, 2009 at 4:57 am

really? re-design? I’ve really enjoyed this design.

Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Unless your business model needs to seriously change. I wouldn’t suggest modifying the site at all. And then even then… you could integrate it back with the current layout.

resist your internal urge for perfection. don’t forget about all the problems you could potentially introduce by modifying everything. You’ve likely solved most of them with the current one.

7

Peter Totok says:

March 16, 2009 at 5:17 am

Hey Scott! I was a silent reader of yours for a long time but for now i make an exception. :) While I am listening to the playlist I decided to leave a feedback on this awesome feature. I am thinking about migrating them to my iPod at the moment. :)

Cheers from Hungary,
Peter

8

Clint says:

March 16, 2009 at 5:37 am

I appreciate this player so much. This blog has copious amounts of good music to work to. Now sans clicking every 4-5 mins!

12

Bret says:

March 16, 2009 at 6:58 am

Beautiful. How did you know that, much like Clint above, I was having to re-maximize your blog to cue up the next track every few minutes?

13

espy says:

March 16, 2009 at 7:06 am

Very nice player! The music selection is also very appealing :D

I do have a request, though.Could you try and prevent the player from tracing debug information several times per second? I work with the Flash debug player a lot, and at the moment I can’t work while listening to your player because it keeps spamming my trace stack with timecode information :D You could try just sending the trace output to an empty JS function:

Flashvars for JW Player:

tracecall (undefined): name of a javascript function that can be used for tracing the player activity. All events from the view, model and controller are sent there. Set this to flash to utilize the internal Flash tracing mechanism and to arthropod to use the Arthropod debugger.

So that’s probably just 2 lines of code.

Anyway, that would be awesome, but either way: very neat player. The time you’ve invested in it has definitely been worth it :D

Thanks!

15

Karl Peterson says:

March 16, 2009 at 7:18 am

The skin is killer and the featured posts look really good. Now I’m inspired and I want to make some updates to Sidearm. Too bad I have to work. :(

I’m glad you got JWPlayer worked out, it can be a pain. Does anyone know of other skinable and free, flash audio players?

16

Bram says:

March 16, 2009 at 7:50 am

Nice player & great tunes. The problem I have with it is that you can’t browse your site without it discontinuing the play (and having to start from the beginning). It might be a nice feature to have it expandable into its own window to avoid that.

18

Jefta says:

March 16, 2009 at 8:28 am

i already love the play list! i took some time for me to apprieciate Jakub’s posts but i’m a convert, and this player makes it all easier!

19

Bas says:

March 16, 2009 at 8:56 am

Beautiful skin!
And hadn’t heard of that player, but it looks like it has rock solid code. Great.

Always liked the sound of Phoenix, btw :)

22

Joaquim Marquès Nielsen says:

March 16, 2009 at 9:53 am

Great idea. I’ll be looking forward to discovering a lot of new music here :) There’s just one little thing I have to complain about: if the artist and track name is too long, they’re cut off to the right of the player :( Would it be possible to add some sort of ALT text, so that if you hover the cursor for a few seconds above each track, it will show the entire name?

23

Robert Canales says:

March 16, 2009 at 10:03 am

Call me a big dork, but I would truly be interested in a future post detailing some of your experiences in wrestling with the JW Player skin. I’d love to implement a simple player for several of my sites and have always found flash skinning to be the major roadblock.

Thanks for all the visuals and autidory stimuli.

Cheers and have a great day!

25

Ryan says:

March 16, 2009 at 11:05 am

Hey I don’t know if anyone pointed this out but one thing I noticed is that when you try to change the volume on the player it looks like you’re going to skip to the next track (the Next button gets highlighted). Once you’ve gotten used to how the player works its all good though.

But wow, what a great idea… caught me totally by surprise that this site could get any better!

26

De says:

March 16, 2009 at 11:15 am

Hey Scott – it’s a sweet idea, an you’ve executed it very well. However, for your benefit I’ll give you some critique. As mentioned above, we can’t see the name of the track if the artist name is too long; maybe a “now playing” section somewhere on the player that scrolls with the artist and track name?

Also as previously mentioned as well, a “shuffle” button would be heaps good, especially how everyone has been talking about how they use it to work with – it would give it a bit of nice shuffly difference.

But really, you’ve done an excellent job.

27

Daniel Carvalho says:

March 16, 2009 at 1:01 pm

I normally don’t listen to the tunes posted here and so tonight I just decided to go down the playlist and start listening.

Must say, not a fan, songs are incredibly synthetic and very chaotic. Far more electronic than I thought your tastes were. Hopefully we can see some of the new Tycho (sample clips of course) stuff to listen too.

28

Marcos says:

March 16, 2009 at 2:35 pm

This is simply outstanding! Simple and Sophisticated,not as overwhemling as KCRW!

CHEERS!

32

Ryan says:

March 16, 2009 at 8:31 pm

Oh and another thing I forgot to mention earlier…
Though I do appreciate this idea immensely, is there anyway the album information of the songs could be more accessible for those of us who would want to seek out some of these songs for our own libraries?

33

Scott says:

March 16, 2009 at 8:48 pm

thanks everyone for the feedback, as I continue to develop the player I will try to work in all these requests.

espy-
thanks for the heads up…I will add that flashvar, hopefully it turns that off.

Bram-
yeah, I am going to add the option to break it out, just wanted to focus on getting the embedded version running solid then move on to that stuff.

daniel-
you’re right, when I am working I usually listen mellower stuff (b&s, smiths etc..) but the blog is where I like to indulge in the more synthetic stuff. but I really think most of the selections on that list lean heavily toward the more organic end of the electronic spectrum.

ryan-
yeah, I noticed that pretty late in the development and it didn’t make the cut, so it’s on my list of bugs to get sorted.

as for shuffle, with jwplayer, afaik you actually have to regenerate the XML playlist to shuffle so I was going to hold off on that until I got the player running. I will read up on it again, but I don’t think it has the ability to shuffle internally, you basically have to regen the xml in a random order, then load in the “shuffled” version.

as for the artists names / more info / buy song…these are all deeper features which I need to research further, I know it’s possible, but again, this is a bare bones beta right now. for now, just type the artist name or song name into the search box below the player and the related post will come up, which usually has links or more information on the artist.

as for the width of the player and the artist names not scrolling. this is also a function that is not stock on the jwplayer (although I read it may be included in the future version). At any rate, I am planning on changing the width of the center column on the site, and/or repositioning the player … in either case, the player will be wider and allow for more information to display horizontally.

now it’s time to build a CMS so Jakub can start posting some lists.

34

Jeffdoe says:

March 16, 2009 at 10:23 pm

Great use of the JW Player! Simple yet powerful stuff. I bet JW will be excited when they realize “the one like iso50” is rockin it!

36

moody says:

March 17, 2009 at 12:05 pm

I have a question (friggin love this new playlist feature btw!)

Been workin on a personal website/portfolio thing lately and being the music addict that i am, having a music player on the site seems crucial. But is it legal? I mean do you need to get permission from the artist/labels beforehand? I don’t want people downloading anything, just a neat little player with my favorite tune at the time running as the visitors are browsing the site.

Cheers / m

38

E dub says:

March 18, 2009 at 8:14 pm

It’s a great idea instead flipping around to old posts. Just wish the music continued when you browsed a new page.

39

RyGuy says:

March 29, 2009 at 7:58 pm

Cool player Scott!! I just had a quick question. How do you host all these mp3’s? Doesn’t this kill your host with downloading all these mp3’s?

Thanks,

RyGuy.

40

Jayden Lawson says:

March 31, 2009 at 6:11 am

Well done Scott. I’ve been compiling a selection of music from the ISO50 blog for well over a year now. Let me know if you ever need a user-submitted playlist :)

41

Sean says:

April 1, 2009 at 6:04 am

Fantastic playlist! Such a great way to find out about new music. Can’t wait for some new Tycho…

42

Ben Debnam says:

April 6, 2009 at 2:47 am

This is amazing (listening to Playlist No.2), I missed the article re: Playlist No.1 as I have been away…

Any chance the listings for the playlists could remain online for the people that missed the first playlist?

43

misfitsherry says:

April 6, 2009 at 2:38 pm

i quite like the dark background as well
i think this site is beautiful
subtle changes are always better than abrupt ones
like those of facebook…for example
:)
keep up the great work

47

James Macfarlane says:

July 13, 2010 at 11:45 pm

Really enjoying listening to your playlists, it’s opened me up to completely new genres of music. Funny enough, today I have had an increase in my creativity while listening to your music. = )

PS — Although I love your tee shirt designs, it would be awesome to see some of your more colourful and warm designs make it onto a tee shirt.