Beets Web UI

Beets Web UI is the visual representation of your music library in a web interface.

Why do we need it?

• It will allow users to "see" their music library in an accessible way. Currently the command line nature of the Beets UI defines the experience as query based. A Web UI would open Beets up to be a broader experience (ie. potentially see all artists, albums, tracks etc.)
• It would be a lightweight and user friendly way to introduce new users to Beets
• Potentially allows the user to access their library remotely

What are the origins of Beets Web UI and where can I read more about it?

• https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues/738 (subtask of the larger https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues/718)
• https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues/1355
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/beets-users/YXz-LAfQrRs/9yhroO5WLc4J

Technical requirements

• Play music remotely - on the server
• Play music in the browser
• An interface to the importer
• Ability to run jobs in the background

UI User needs/requirements

Please help by adding your thoughts here

• Browsing and querying items (like the current interface) and also albums, ideally with a nice album art display
• Reports
• Charts and statistics (Potential to use http://d3js.org/)
• Ability to drill down into the metadata of a track - http://auraspec.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api.html#tracks ?

Suggested development approach

Lean UX approach

1. Discovery - User research and requirements gathering
2. Alpha - Wireframes to evaluate hypotheses through user testing which is then refined through iteration, and compiled into a "click-able" prototype, which again is tested and iterated.
3. Beta - Working UI that gets refined through wider use
4. Major release.