[JimR]

THIS IS A RECOMENDATION FOR A FUTURE ENHANCEMENT - not sure if this is the right place

Since many people use Spotify, YouTube, Amazon etc to stream music it would be great to have a way to link a song in MS to the song in one or more of these sources.  It seems it would be easy to just add a tab as is done with AUDIO files that simply provided a hypertext link.  Currently you can do this in the Notes for songs but you can't click and follow the link (you need to cut and paste).  If this feature already exists let me know otherwise I think this would be a nice enhancement.

[Zubersoft]

You can't access Spotify, YouTube or any other music service with a simple hyperlink. It doesn't work that way. Instead, you have to go through their available SDKs, perform account authentication, and then stream the audio through their API, meaning the existing audio player implementation wouldn't work at all with that. So on top of the standard UI and database changes that will be needed to support this, I also have to make significant changes to the underlying audio player and mechanism for streaming audio. So it will be a large undertaking. It's still something I want to do, but their is no solution for playing back audio through Spotify on Windows, for example, as there is only an Android and iOS SDK available. YouTube is even more limited, as I think I will be able to support playing back YouTube videos through Google's API (which also isn't available on Windows), but not audio. I don't even know if Amazon has an SDK for accessing audio through their service, as I haven't researched that. Each service requires a complete separate integration and implementation, so adding a new one isn't a simple thing.

If you are saying you literally want me to just support a hyperlink that will launch a web browser outside MobileSheets to follow the URL so it can play audio in the background, that's not difficult, but I imagine that's not really the solution you are looking for. On a side note, you can already accomplish this using a smart button. Just create a new smart button, set it to a URL and it will launch the URL when tapped.

Mike

[JimR]

You can't access Spotify, YouTube or any other music service with a simple hyperlink. It doesn't work that way. Instead, you have to go through their available SDKs, perform account authentication, and then stream the audio through their API, meaning the existing audio player implementation wouldn't work at all with that. So on top of the standard UI and database changes that will be needed to support this, I also have to make significant changes to the underlying audio player and mechanism for streaming audio. So it will be a large undertaking. It's still something I want to do, but their is no solution for playing back audio through Spotify on Windows, for example, as there is only an Android and iOS SDK available. YouTube is even more limited, as I think I will be able to support playing back YouTube videos through Google's API (which also isn't available on Windows), but not audio. I don't even know if Amazon has an SDK for accessing audio through their service, as I haven't researched that. Each service requires a complete separate integration and implementation, so adding a new one isn't a simple thing.

If you are saying you literally want me to just support a hyperlink that will launch a web browser outside MobileSheets to follow the URL so it can play audio in the background, that's not difficult, but I imagine that's not really the solution you are looking for. On a side note, you can already accomplish this using a smart button. Just create a new smart button, set it to a URL and it will launch the URL when tapped.

Mike

Actually, a simple hyperlink would work, at least in my use case.  In my case I'm playing in big band and we get music with specific arrangements.  So when practicing it would be great to pull up the setlist, click on the song, and click on the hyperlink for the backing track. I don't need the MS player.  Maybe others don't have the same need but works for me.

[Zubersoft]

Then the existing smart button implementation will work for you - give it a shot. Create a new smart button, set it to URL and enter the URL. Then tap the button to execute that URL.

Mike

[JimR]

Then the existing smart button implementation will work for you - give it a shot. Create a new smart button, set it to URL and enter the URL. Then tap the button to execute that URL.

Mike

Thanks, that works.  The only issue is when you hit the button and it opens the browser window it automatically minimizes MS.  Same thing that happens anytime you have MS open and you do anything with the File explorer.

[Zubersoft]

Take MobileSheets out of fullscreen mode and then you won't have that behavior.

Mike