The Music Player - We must have more tunes
 

I just got Wolfpack and five of my friends have done so as well. We haven't seen combat yet; we're training together with the intention to make our first attack a single-boat in-house affair before trying "real" online play. Long story short, I'm hooked.

The game being in beta, many incomplete features are easily forgiven, but there is one thing I'm genuinely disappointed about: The gramophone. Why can't this be a drop-in MP3 player? Is it primarily a copyright concern, or more of a technical matter?

Since I started playing SH3 a few years ago I have collected a truly massive playlist of period-correct recordings. About 60 hours of German, Italian, and French popular music, plus another ~14 hours of American music for SH4, the vast majority of which came from The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) meaning there are (in theory) no copyright concerns to speak of. I'd very much like to share this collection with my comrades, but streaming it over a 3rd party service just isn't the same as using the in-game world audio. I'm seriously considering buying another copy of the game, connecting with my laptop, and having a sixth "player" stand in a corner somewhere just to play music.

At the very least, it would be great for the devs to throw in some royalty-free music from the archive just to pad out the in-game player. I seriously doubt the estates of Rudi Schuricke, James Kok, or Peter Kreuder are scrutinizing Twitch streams for unauthorized use of their 1939 records. Hans Albers or Zarah Leander maybe, but not the more obscure artists.

If anyone has any better ideas than taking up a crew slot just to be a human gramophone, I'm all ears.

- Tabris

The obvious answer would be to allow a player, who is the possessor of the music to hear it, and ONLY him. This would allow those of us who never ever wish to hear "Tipperary" again to be spared it, likewise those who wish to play wartime material not to inflict it on German players for whom it may be more disagreeable. One could still leave the ability to play a handful of records in addition, for that "crew experience" of hearing Tipperary (I usually scurry the engine room where it can't be heard, thank Christ!)

Yeah, I'd support this. It would be simple to implement, I think. Given the choice between client-side customizability and a tiny selection of three tracks server-side, the former would be an improvement.