Background Music Interface

Background music usually annoys me. I feel like this is a common thing. Multiple instances of background music playing simultaneously are especially annoying.

I wish that operating systems dedicated a special sound channel specifically to background music. This channel should have a special volume control and should only be accessible by one application at a time. If a game or something wants to play background music, but you've already got Pandora on, then there should be a little popup which requests permission to give the background music channel to the new application. If you say no, you continue listening to what you had before (perhaps with sound effects from the new application, which should also be controllable.) This would have the added effect of discouraging people from using background music where it's unnecessary, because it would annoy users to have to give it permission.


It's important to have some options avaliable (figure out what people want to set the defaults):

• remember old choices (have a checkbox labeled with text like "Always let Pandora play background music")
• for power users, have a priority list set up
  
• have three modes: automatically give new applications permission, with an option to switch it back; always request permission to switch; and always play both (normal mode)

It's these kinds of tweaks that make interfaces nice (or not). Flashy may sell, but these kinds of things are what make people really love your program.