When your team members want to rehearse music to get ready for your worship services, they often turn to the Services mobile app for Android or iOS. Loading up the playlist of audio recordings in the mobile media player is one of the most common ways to learn that music. Today, we've added a new Now Playing view to the mobile Media Player that focuses on whatever file is currently playing, with some new buttons optimized for rehearsing.
Car-Friendly Interface
One of our main goals with this redesign was to make it easier and safer to rehearse while driving, when your phone is farther away than normal. This led to us giving the song title and key the most prominent text treatment under the artwork, with the arrangement name, tempo, and file name smaller underneath. It also led to much bigger button controls to play, pause, and jump around in the song.
Jumping, Looping, and Skipping
When learning a song, you often need to hear the same section many times. We still have the looping button to the right of the timeline scrubber that lets you set in and out points for the player, to loop that section continuously. But if you don't have time to set up a loop, or you're driving and can't pick up your phone, you can now use the 15-second jump buttons to jump forwards or backwards as many times as needed.
If you have a file that you always want to skip completely, tap the playlist button in the bottom right to toggle to the old playlist view. Swipe left on any file and it will always be skipped in this and even any future playlists.
And More
We've made a few other improvements, too.
- Prevent auto-lock. Because the new 15-second jump buttons are only available in the player and not on your Lock Screen when the app is closed, we'll prevent your device from sleeping if it's plugged into power while on the now playing screen.
- Airplay button. In iOS, you now have a more convenient way to connect to other speakers with the AirPlay button in the bottom toolbar.
- Playlist & Metronome. You have quick access to view the metronome or the playlist view using the buttons on each side of the bottom toolbar. If you prefer the playlist view to the now playing view, switch to playlist view, and the app will remember that for next time.
- More Album Art. Previously, if there was artwork embedded in your file, we'd display it after the file was downloaded. Now in addition, if your song arrangement is linked to a popular recording, we'll show its artwork even if your files don't have their own artwork.
We hope this new media player makes rehearsing with Services easier, and if you're driving, safer than ever!