MusicCabinet - artist radio, genre radio & related artists

[precipitous]

I just updated to the new MusicCabinet Version 7 Beta on my Ubuntu 12.04 computer. The upgrade went very smoothly. It is worth noting, though, that In order to get it to work I had to uninstall OpenJDK 6. At first I had both OpenJDK 6 and OpenJDK 7 installed...

Media scanning went very smoothly. The only problem I noticed with it is that if an artist name starts with a character such as Ö they get filed in the # section...

I like most of the cleaning/re-arranging that was done, for example getting rid of the More tab.

One thing I absolutely do not like, though, is the new system for selecting random tracks. The problem is that once I select Random > By Track, there is no way to edit the list, or quickly add it to the "play" area at the bottom of the screen. Clicking the buttons for either Enqueue or Add Last is not a very good work-around as that each time I click I am prompted to send the track to my external player (Songbird). Under the old system I would setup the number of random tracks I wanted and they were automatically added to the play area at the bottom. I could then remove the tracks I did not want to hear, add more tracks, etc., then click Play. This would then send the whole set to Songbird...

Another HUGE problem I have is that I am no longer able to use Songbird (I have not tested any other external players yet)... When I try, instead of the set of tracks in the "play" area being sent, I get one of the tracks sent as many times as the total number of tracks in the "playlist". If I have 20 tracks selected I get one of them sent to Songbird 20 times!

The only other thing I don't like is that when I set the view to "Playing" the artist/album displayed no longer updates automatically to keep up with what is actually playing. I have to click the Playing button in the main toolbar everytime I want to refresh the view to the current track being played. This is very annoying...

I REALLY love what you are doing with MusicCabinet, though, and am sure that over time these minor problems will get worked out. Even with them I am still convinced that it (MusicCabinet) is the BEST friend Subsonic ever had!

[hakko]

Thanks for your response!

I'll look into the external player handling. I actually forgot to check that completely and it sounds really broken. Random songs does look like this, right? http://imgur.com/6cpt3 (well, without the fat orange rectangle) but it's the external player that stops you from using the "Play all" button? I meant it to be easy to either choose a few songs or the whole bunch, but I guess the external player issue screws it up.

I also guess that you're using the "reluctant artist loading" mode in the left frame? It behaves slightly different than the normal mode regarding sorting artist names into groups, I should fix that. I just felt that it was better having that option like it is right now than not at all. And I had to go back to work (= less spare time) so I wanted to release 0.7 to get feedback meanwhile from the brave ones willing to test it.

I thought it was annoying having the main screen change content all the time when browsing around while listening to music, that's why I removed the auto update. : ) But I guess that should be configurable.

I'm working on fixing what you've all reported even though nothing new has been released yet. Thanks!

[precipitous]

Thanks for your response!

I'll look into the external player handling. I actually forgot to check that completely and it sounds really broken. Random songs does look like this, right? http://imgur.com/6cpt3 (well, without the fat orange rectangle) but it's the external player that stops you from using the "Play all" button? I meant it to be easy to either choose a few songs or the whole bunch, but I guess the external player issue screws it up.

I also guess that you're using the "reluctant artist loading" mode in the left frame? It behaves slightly different than the normal mode regarding sorting artist names into groups, I should fix that. I just felt that it was better having that option like it is right now than not at all. And I had to go back to work (= less spare time) so I wanted to release 0.7 to get feedback meanwhile from the brave ones willing to test it.

I thought it was annoying having the main screen change content all the time when browsing around while listening to music, that's why I removed the auto update. : ) But I guess that should be configurable.

I'm working on fixing what you've all reported even though nothing new has been released yet. Thanks!

@hakko: I feel like an idiot. I did not at first see the Play All, Enqueue All, Add All buttons at buttons at the top of the list of random songs... I guess that is one issue solved!

With regard to external player issues, let me know if you need help testing anything... In the mean time the internal Flash player works fine. I just prefer using Songbird because it has an equalizer, its volume control is more sensitive (and responds to mouse wheel events), and I really like the information available in its MashTape add-on when playing tracks...

I would love to be able to have the ability to turn Now Playing auto-updating on or off. Again - let me know if you need help testing anything.

Thank you for including my black theme in this release. I really love the way MusicCabinet is evolving, and can't wait to see the next round of improvements!

[hakko]

Oh that's good! I like easy solutions to problems.

The external player error sounds very re-producable though so it should be fine. I'll let you know if I can't figure it out. But normally, the errors that are hard to solve are ones like "sometimes my web playlist stops responding and I don't know why" etc.

And you shouldn't thank me for including the black theme! Everyone who asked for it should thank you though. I still hope that this will become more of a collaborative project, I mean, I'm normally working full time so I have limited time to put into the project. That's why I get happy when people contribute to it (good ideas, well defined error reports, a new theme like yours etc). There's definitely room for a skilled web interface developer to start cleaning up the user interface, make a html5 playlist for example.

[jfmus]

what i meant was: the compilation cds should be displayed only under the album-artist-tag (for example "Summer Hits '94") in the left frame. additionally each single track should be displayed on the page of each corresponding artist. on an artists page there will be his albums and the single tracks spread over different compilations. that way every track you own from one artist can be found by clicking on the artist, but the artist-list in the left frame won't be spammed.

I don't think "Summer Hits '94" is an Artist Mine will all be sorted under VA ("Album-Artist-Tag" if "is-compilation"=true)

But sorting the songs with "Artist-Tag" != "Album-Artist-Tag" on the artist frame is a design decision. What if this artist isn't existing (No albums - tracks on compilations only).

Jake,

I am seeing a problem with this "design decision"....When you search for artist, you only get the Album Artists returned. I have my singles set as Multiple Artists under Album Artist, and use Singles as the album name. This keeps full albums from being mixed in with singles. Why your current setup is not going to work, is if you do a search by Artist, none of the singles with Various Artists, or Multiple Artists in the Album Artist Tag will be returned. I rarely look up songs by name, I look up the artist and scroll through them. Having the Album artists show up on the left hand is great, but there needs to be a way to see artists that are tagged as compilations without opening up every compilation to find a song. I would be happy with a filter on the left to display the various artists the same way the genres are set up. But definitely need a way to search for them.

Example: Also to underscore the problem with this. I have one song by Cab Calloway. Minnie the Moocher....Cab Calloway does not appear in the left hand Artist view, and does not return a hit when searching for Cab Calloway. The only way to get a return in a search is to type the name of the song or album title. If I was a user, I would type the artist when none appeared, I would assume that it does not exist in the library, and that would be it. Also, when you do the search for Minnie, you get a Various Artist returned, and still don't know if it is Cab Callaway until you add it to the playlist.

jfmus

[hakko]

Ok, how about this approach (I haven't written this yet, I'm just asking):

On an artist page, the albums that you have are always listed first (chronologically sorted according to your pref).

Then, if there exists tracks on albums by another album artist (= compilation albums, split albums etc) by this artist with track names that doesn't match something that's on an album that you have, those tracks are listed, separated by the album they're on? I guess if you have a full album by an artist and one of the tracks from that album appears on a compilation CD, you don't want the compilation CD displayed. While if you don't have the full album, but only a compilation album, you'd actually like to see it.

It does also make sense to be able to search for all artists that you have a single track for, and then have them displayed but only with this "appears on" with compilation albums listed.

[jake-]

Jake,

I am seeing a problem with this "design decision"....When you search for artist, you only get the Album Artists returned. I have my singles set as Multiple Artists under Album Artist, and use Singles as the album name. This keeps full albums from being mixed in with singles. Why your current setup is not going to work, is if you do a search by Artist, none of the singles with Various Artists, or Multiple Artists in the Album Artist Tag will be returned. I rarely look up songs by name, I look up the artist and scroll through them. Having the Album artists show up on the left hand is great, but there needs to be a way to see artists that are tagged as compilations without opening up every compilation to find a song. I would be happy with a filter on the left to display the various artists the same way the genres are set up. But definitely need a way to search for them.

Example: Also to underscore the problem with this. I have one song by Cab Calloway. Minnie the Moocher....Cab Calloway does not appear in the left hand Artist view, and does not return a hit when searching for Cab Calloway. The only way to get a return in a search is to type the name of the song or album title. If I was a user, I would type the artist when none appeared, I would assume that it does not exist in the library, and that would be it. Also, when you do the search for Minnie, you get a Various Artist returned, and still don't know if it is Cab Callaway until you add it to the playlist.

jfmus

I don't think there will be a one-fits-all solution for this. So we should agree on a best practice for the way the tags should be filled for compilations, best of albums, singles... Displaying them in the left pane or artist pane is only some coding (sorry hakko ) when the database is filled in a consistent way.

Search should always find entries in the artist tag (Cab Callaway). But I think that's how it works now?

I focus on single artist albums and get compilations in ss for friends and family only So I hate the left pane getting filled with "one-hit-wonder artist feat. someother" but I understand the problems of jfmus and vollbr0t and I think I have to to swallow the bitter pill.

jake-

[vollbr0t]

in no case i want those "one-hit-wonder artist feat. someother"-artists in the left frame!
i just want to be able find all songs of an selected artist.

i know, it's kind of an antagonism.

maybe it is doable with an automatic search (and display of the results) whenever the user visits the page of an artist... something like that

[jfmus]

in no case i want those "one-hit-wonder artist feat. someother"-artists in the left frame!
i just want to be able find all songs of an selected artist.

i know, it's kind of an antagonism.

maybe it is doable with an automatic search (and display of the results) whenever the user visits the page of an artist... something like that

I am in complete agreement with not having all the one hit wonders in the left pane. The way I got around this in the old subsonic version was to have full albums in one folder, and singles in another. When you switched the folder output in the left pane, you got the artists for the singles, albums, or all. Any chance of having a dropdown or switch that would recognize the difference between Full Albums, and individual artist tracks based on tags. Maybe anything tagged with Various Artists would display the actual Artist field in the left pane, but when you were in full albums only (Album Artist Tag other than Various Artists) they would be removed in the left pane. Since the underlying structure is using the Album Artist tag, not sure that it is possible, but just throwing it out there. Also, as far as the search engine goes....with looking at some of the code and doing the testing with the Cab Calloway file, it seems that the search engine is returning the Album Artist tag, not the Artist tag when searching.


jfmus

[hakko]

I've made an update to include tracks from compilation albums into the normal artist view (full albums are displayed first, thereafter compilation albums). Also, searching for an artist that only has tracks on compilation albums should now return those tracks. See viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9777#p44081. There are some small bugs left here, this is more for conceptual feedback.

[vollbr0t]

Great update!!!

Maybe the compilation-tracks of an artist could be displayed more compact, at the moment you have to click every compliation-album to see just one track of the artist. So when you are looking for a specific track you have to work through all the compilations. But that is just a detail. I like the general style it is right now!

Another thing i noticed: through "Related Artists" it is possible to get to the page (with artist-infos & all his tracks) of an artist you only have compilation tracks of. But there is no other way to get to this summary-page. I think it would be cool if the general searchresults of an artists name would lead to his summary-page too!

Thank you for your work hakko

[precipitous]

Some thoughts on the "Playing" view for the currently playing track (based on what is presently available in version 7 beta)...

I would love to see the layout and format for the "Playing" view for the currently playing track be altered to include the following:

1. The artist information should default to the full expanded text, instead of just the first sentence or two.
2. The cover art and information for the album should be at the top of the list of albums by the artist, not in the spot is normally occupies when browsing the collection.
3. The cover art for the currently playing track should get blown up even larger than it does now.
4. The text for current track should be in a larger font and/or bold within the list of tracks on the album.
5. The "Playing" view should automatically update to show the currently playing track/artist without the user having to re-load the view.

I would love to know if other users agree with me...

Hakko - do these seem like good and do-able changes?

[hakko]

I can't decide really. On one hand, I like the idea of having a specially crafted "now playing" view (theoretically, such a view could have backward and forward arrows that moved to the artist biography for the previous track in the playlist and the next. and surely a lot of other things). I can totally see it coming out as pretty nice. On the other hand, it's kind of against the current very simplistic interface where the same components appear in a very similar fashion, no matter which page you're on.

I think that right now, I'm kind of waiting for the right moment to give the whole interface some more thought. The current playlist feels very outdated for example. And I think that before I've settled for some kind of long-term plan, user interface updates are low priority compared to new features for discovering music.

Also, there are still bugs in 0.7 that need attention. Actually, I'll probably have to postpone the decision of what feature to add next completely for a month or so, there's quite a lot of time-consuming small fixes to be done before 0.7 becomes stable and reliable. And I'd rather have it become more mature like that, than adding more new bleeding edge half-finished ideas to it.

[vollbr0t]

Something seems to be wrong with last.fm scrobbling. I don't know on which conditions this happens (maybe a restart of the subsonic-server?), but sometimes the scrobbling stops working. The user has to reactivate the scrobbling, then it is working again.
Does anybody else have problems with the scrobbling?

[precipitous]

Something seems to be wrong with last.fm scrobbling. I don't know on which conditions this happens (maybe a restart of the subsonic-server?), but sometimes the scrobbling stops working. The user has to reactivate the scrobbling, then it is working again.
Does anybody else have problems with the scrobbling?

I experienced this for the first time this morning. I had just updated from the first beta release of version 7 to the one hakko posted yesterday, so I don't know if it was an actual bug, or if scrobbling normally has to be re-activated each time I install an update...