Artist/folder structure question

[Andy L]

Hi, I've got back into Subsonic since the closure of Audiogalaxy and using DSub as my Android client, find that it works a lot better than it used to. My music collection is stored on a NAS and the folder structure is organised like this:

Code: Select all

1950-59
-> Song 1.mp3
-> Song 2.mp3

1960-69
-> Song 3.mp3

...

2010-19
-> Song 4.mp3

Artists
-> Artist Name 1
-> -> Album Name 1
-> -> -> Track 1.mp3
-> -> -> Track 2.mp3
...
-> -> Album Name 2
-> -> -> Track 1.mp3
-> -> -> Track 2.mp3
...
-> Artist Name 2

The 1950-59, 1960-69 etc and Artists folders are all added as separate folders in Subsonic. I appreciate this may be a 'quirk' of Subsonic rather than DSub but when I select the 'All folders' view in the DSub media library, only the artists, albums and tracks within my Artists folder show up. If I choose to view the folders that contain individual songs (e.g. 1950-59), nothing will be displayed even though the tracks in those folders will appear when I do a search for them. I'm not sure why, in a view entitled 'All Folders', that those folders don't show up at all?

If I could get those folders to show up, I'd be happy to browse my music by folder as it's organised on my NAS but is there also any way of sorting your collection by tags rather than folders? I searched in the documentation and forum but couldn't find a way to do so (although I believe it is possible).

[hakko]

Files placed directly in the root of media folders are not shown, so you'd have to add the parent folder as a media folder to see them. The only way of browsing by tag that I'm aware of is using this forked Subsonic server that I've written: http://dilerium.se/musiccabinet/ (which has it's own set of pros and cons)

[daneren2005]

Right now browsing my tags is not supported. It has been on the todo list for a while. The normal Subsonic server provides two different ways to look at the data: by folder, and by tag. Hakko has redone it with his mod so that the same methods that all of the clients use (the by folder ones) do it by tags instead of by folder structure. The behavior you are seeing is a problem with the way it is presented from the server, so there isn't much I can do about that part from the client side.

[Andy L]

Thanks for the replies - I deleted the folders in my original post from my Subsonic library and simply readded the parent folder in the end. However, the individual songs within the 1950-59, 1960-69 etc folders are sorted by ID3 track number (in each song, I'd inserted the track number as it would be on its original album even though I don't have the rest of the album in my collection) even though they're all named in the format <Artist> - <Title>. It's frustrating having a folder view which then sorts the files within by tags when I simply want them to be listed in alphabetical order by artist name!

I've now deleted the track number tags for those individual songs but I might try MusicCabinet anyway (I'm a heavy user of last.fm but only on the scrobbling side). Are there any known conflicts between DSub and MusicCabinet that I should know about?

[hakko]

Are there any known conflicts between DSub and MusicCabinet that I should know about?

Adding songs to playlists is not supported? Also, MusicCabinet groups songs by Artist -> Album -> Songs. If you have a lot of odd files floating around in a folder system, this might not map perfect. If you decide to try, it would probably be best to use the "Various Artists" album artist tag for those files, and to tag them with album names like "1950 - 1959" etc. The fact that you keep them in a folder together does not make MusicCabinet interpret them as an album if they have different artist and album tags.

[Andy L]

I've installed MusicCabinet and it seems excellent so far, good work! Browsing by Artist tag works how I'd expect it to on the web player and sorting in DSub seems more logical too for folders with individual songs within them (by artist).

My only gripes are having to press Media Folders -> (Folder share name) every time you go back to the Library view in DSub in order to view your music - I'd like your previous position within the folder tree to be remembered. Ideally though, I'd like to be able to group songs by Artist -> Album -> Song in DSub too, like on the web player. Hoping this could be added in future...