RP3 Beta Player
Welcome, brave victim!
- If you've already been using the beta player, see the 'New Features' section below.
- The beta player requires that you be logged in to a RP user account. If you don't have one, you can create one when you start the player. We'll need a valid email address in order to verify your account.
- You need to have at least 100 songs rated 7 or higher (on the RP account you're logged into on the player) in order for the 'play something I like' or 'my playlist' functions to work properly.
- For best results, the '7 & higher' songs should be by a wide variety of artists. There will be additional checks on that in future versions.
- The player will start about 4 songs behind what's playing on the website. It will skip past any songs that you've already heard (via the beta player or beta apps -- songs you've heard via the old player or currrent apps may be replayed).
- You can skip anything you don't want to hear. That's right — there's a skip button! If you're playing a PSD song, it will skip to another PSD song in the same category. Otherwise it jumps to the next song on the playlist.
- Click the 'Music' tab above for your personal play history (everything you've heard via the new player or one of our beta apps). You can quickly rate any song on that (or any other) list by clicking the 'your rating' display.
- Song info is accessed by clicking the song title. Note the tabs for additional content on the song info window (lyrics, comments, rating).
- Click the rating heart to jump right to rating the song. Click the song title for song info, comments, lyrics, etc. That window has back/forward buttons to step through the songs you've heard.
- Lots of new stuff under 'PSD'. Don't let the skip button seduce you away from PSD!
- While playing a PSD song, 'Return to Main Mix' will appear as an option on the PSD menu.
- Please no email about the beta player. Let's keep all of the discussions here: RP3 Beta Player.
- The beta is running on a development server that may or may not have enough resources to keep up with the demand. That's part of what we're evaluating.
- The first thing to try when the player behaves unexpectedly (aka breaks...) is the 'restart player' button.
- If it stays broken, it's quite likely a server-side issue. Wait a while & try again.
- The player is designed to be very resistant to short network glitches and outages. That works pretty well most of the time, but is still a work in progress.
- Bug reports are very welcome here: RP3 Beta Player.
- We've added an option to have the player open in a browser tab rather than a popup window. This is helpful if you use Chrome to 'cast' RP to a Chromecast-equipped TV. On most browsers, it also shows a little speaker icon on the tab that lets you quickly locate the player.
- We've added a keyboard shortcuts for a number of functions:
- Start/stop: spacebar
- Skip: right arrow or right angle bracket
- PSD: m = mellow, r = rockin', g = groovy, ? = random, i = i like (your favorites)
- Volume: +/- or arrow up/down
- We've also fixed a number of bugs, many of which were pointed out in the RP3 Beta Player forum topic. Thanks!
- Coming very soon: an intermediate player size with the album cover.
- Still on our radar: a big improvement in memory usage (though that should be better than it was).