Talk:They Might Be Giants (App)

Song availability

For those of us who have not yet joined the iPhone craze, will the songs on this service be made available anywhere else? --MisterMe 08:46, 22 January 2013 (EST)

It doesn't look like it. However, it doesn't seem that there will be anything exclusive, given that there is a permanent "get" button that links to iTunes. --Oldpinebox 09:49, 22 January 2013 (EST)

That's good, because one of the best parts about good ol' Dial-A-Song was that anyone with a pre-cell-phone telephone (especially "from work" where it was "free"!) could access the latest weird brain dropping from the Johns. Nowadays, it's one thing to sign up and pay for the IFC, but releasing exclusive material on an iPhone app definitely excludes those of us who can't justify upgrading to a fancier smartphone just to acquire one band's rarities...but we'll see, I guess. --MisterMe 12:03, 22 January 2013 (EST)

Huh? Why don't you have an iPhone? You know this thing also works on iPad, right? ~ magbatz 14:34, 22 January 2013 (EST)

That's a joke, right? Ha ha. As for the permanent "GET" button, I'm sure it could be hidden on a song-by-song basis when applicable. None of those links are actually embedded in the background image. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 15:07, 22 January 2013 (EST)

Via Tumblr, John F. reports that "yes we are working on an android version too." - Mason

at this point, it doesn't look like anything will be quite exclusive; there isn't anything about exclusive material in the description, and that would be sort of silly, anyway. i think if anything there might just be some stuff that's hard to come by (like commercials and things like that, not necessarily demo-type things), and possibly new things a bit before they're released, but "brand new" probably just means very soon post-release (e.g. nanobots ep). if anything, i'd guess they're mostly using album material and clock radio/podcast tracks. if there is anything exclusive — and i'm saying this as a person with an iOS device — that would be superlame. but i think that would be sort of a waste of material, anyway. -Apollo (colloquia!) 14:13, 23 January 2013 (EST)

Three years on, I can see now my "fears" (such as they were) turned out to be unjustified. Never has a single rarity unavailable elsewhere ever popped up on the playlist. I have since gotten an Android device and this app was one of the first I installed. They do seem to have certain songs that make the playlist over and over again, which kind of confounds me when there are several hundred songs to choose from. Ah well. --MisterMe (talk) 15:26, 10 February 2016 (EST)

Number of songs depends on usage

For some reason, I was able to select "Lost My Mind" for the past three days, even after exiting the app. That meant that up until a minute ago, there were six songs I could cycle through, and all of them would play properly. But when I paused the song and then cycled through all of them, it disappeared. In a puff of smoke, in an unceremonious way...

So it seems that the songs are kept temporarily on the iPod/iPhone/iPad itself, and aren't always deleted when new songs are added. I am hesitant to decide whether this is a programming glitch or an undocumented "feature", and if it's important enough to actually include in the article. --98.109.221.23 15:57, 27 January 2013 (EST)

i'm fairly certain the songs are temporarily saved on the iOS device; flans mentioned that if you "stand in a place with good wifi" only when you're starting it up (not thereafter) each new day, or something along those lines, the songs should play properly. i don't think it would do much harm to mention it in the article, though it's hard to say exactly what's going on. either way, they do seem to be aware of it, at least. -Apollo (colloquia!) 19:00, 27 January 2013 (EST)

Formatting

I'm no expert on Wiki formatting, but I want to know if there's a better way of displaying the tracks that play on the app. A new song is added every day, meaning that in a relatively short amount of time, this page will get out of hand (the list will become long and cumbersome). I like the historical aspect, but is it possible to have this list be hidden, with a "Click to Show" function or something like that? Perhaps just display the songs that are currently in rotation? I'm just trying to think proactively for the future, before we have a year's worth of songs listed on the page. Anybody have ideas/thoughts on this? --Mosesofthecows 10:51, 5 February 2013 (EST)

we're planning on making a subpage for the past songs sometime soon, so the main app page will just list the current songs. -- 10:55, 5 February 2013 (EST)

wouldn't it be p cool to do something where the subpage listed all the songs but the main page had a sampling of the past, say, one or two weeks, via transclusion of some variety? i don't like the idea of having only the current songs, since a wider context is pretty integral to anyone's understanding of the app. five songs is very few — that isn't even a week. -Apollo (colloquia!) 18:38, 10 February 2013 (EST)

Since TMBaB is smart enough archive news (whether by item count or by date, I know not), we could auto-pluck all the dead songs older than n songs/days and deliver them to an archive page. Then, if the current wiki software still can do that Show/Hide magic trick (as seen on the Shows page in years past), and if the show/hide tag can contain a {{subpage}} and not just unformatted text or something, then we could display the recent out-of-rotation songs and tuck all those older ones away right under it. And if not, or if even the hidden archive would become to unwieldy, we could just link to the archive. Either way. It does make sense, though, for people to be able to see the song that was just removed yesterday on the main app page. ~ magbatz 19:42, 10 February 2013 (EST)

Hey, this page is getting kinda long. Maybe it's time to start a /Archive page. —Oldpinebox^Talk 01:24, 18 May 2013 (EDT)

i'm pretty sure tmbab just archives news when an admin says "move n items to the archive pages". but yeah it is time to make a subpage, guys. -Apollo (colloquia!) 09:58, 18 May 2013 (EDT)

that subpage thing might be a cool idea, jussayin Apollo (colloquia!) 17:10, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

28th of January update

After being stuck since the 8th of January on Tubthumping, I tweeted TMBG asking them to update the music on the app, to which they replied it'd be sorted "this am". All tracks were updated, with In Fact being the first song to play. The page only has In Fact as being new that day, though, rather than an entire new rotation, and I don't know how to change that. I think the same tracks as on the current rotation were added, except for Electronic Istanbul which is new today. --Dr John Oakland (talk) 13:41, 29 January 2014 (EST)

Wiki shoutout

Don't know if anyone caught this yet or not, but the app description in the Google Play store has shoutouts, by name, to a couple wiki people. Just thought that was really cool. — User:ACupOfCoffee@

Brad and I assisted with QA during development of the Android app. :) -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 09:01, 24 October 2014 (EDT)

Long, Long Page

With the app having been available for 3 years now, this page is getting rather unwieldy with the list of all the songs that have been featured on it. Is there a way to condense this information, or perhaps make it "hidden" until someone clicks on it to see what's been on there in the past? --MisterMe (talk) 10:04, 27 January 2016 (EST)

It's even longer now, four years later. Not sure who actually cares (even I am not sure I care), but it does seem to be quite awkwardly long. Hmm... --MisterMe (talk) 15:09, 21 January 2020 (EST)

Is there supposed to be a big space after "Songs that have been featured on the They Might Be Giants app are listed below, with the most recent at the top:"? --ColorOfInfinity (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2020 (EST)

End of the Songs of the App?

Does anyone know why the app hasn't updated with new songs since April 12, 2016? It's only been playing "Bee of the Bird of the Moth", "Circular Karate Chop", "2082", "Seven Days Of The Week", and "Careful What You Pack" since then. I've checked the app's page on iTunes, and that says nothing relating to no new songs.

The app seems to go through periods where it stops working, but eventually starts back up again. This may just be one of those times... --MisterMe (talk) 18:52, 24 April 2016 (EDT)

Still stuck with those same songs :( --67.180.95.36 05:08, 5 June 2016 (EDT)

First new(ish) song in almost 4 months! Appropriately, it's "I Haven't Seen You In Forever" :-) --MisterMe (talk) 13:04, 5 August 2016 (EDT)

🛑 The app songs stopped getting refreshed again. It's been Youth Culture for weeks. --Nehushtan (talk) 01:11, 4 November 2019 (EST)

🛑🛑 Still stuck. The official tmbg social media outlets still have entries promoting the app (as recently as a month ago). I would think that implies that it's not been abandoned but neglected. --Nehushtan (talk) 20:04, 28 November 2019 (EST)

The app seems to be finally back up and running again. I have no idea why it was off for more than a year but I'm glad its back! --plumdizzyrat (talk) 06:38, 12 December 2020 (EST)

🪗 🎸❗--Nehushtan (talk) 18:27, 12 December 2020 (EST)

History

Quite unilaterally I decided to delete the entire section of historical data from the main page. I almost created a subpage for the existing 2013-2019 list, but figured if anybody wants to see that it'll be available in the page modification database. --Nehushtan (talk) 06:24, 30 June 2021 (EDT)

I kind of want to see if we could do a daily or weekly or whenever update to show what is currently on the app, as it is becoming a venue of newer songs, it could be fun to advertise what's new on there. --jimmyZenShinsThreeHundred11 (talk)

Daily update

Instead of listing the entire history of songs played on the app, let's just list the current cycle of songs. Someone could update it everyday with the new track. I've got it started. - HotelDetectiveInTheFuture🪗 talk 🎸

Are you the someone who will keep it updated? Otherwise it seems fruitless to try keeping track of information that will become outdated every 24 hours. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 18:07, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

I guess so. I will try my best to keep it updated. But other editors could pitch in if they notice a song is missing. - HotelDetectiveInTheFuture🪗 talk 🎸