Browsing by artists and folders structure

[cianoz]

Hello,
I just discovered Subsonic while looking for an Audiogalaxy replacement (damn Dropbox). But I'm surprised by the library organization chosen here. Unless I've not well understood how Subsonic works I see that essentially the whole organization of the library is based upon folders structure. If that is true then I think this is an awful way to handle music. The organization should be done by the program using meta-tags, not by the user using folders.

The most (all?) of other media server allows you to browse your library using meta-tags like artist name, genre and other. As far as I see Subsonic doesn't allows you to browse by artist, that is a very basic and important feature, IMHO. It forces you to organize your music by artists using folders, and that is not an efficient way to do this (not for all, for sure).

The second problem I've found is that if you have songs at the first level of your library any of them are shown if you use a mobile app (I've tried 3 different apps). You are forced to move all your songs in a subfolder, but this can create a mess with other media players you're using.

Could anyone tell me if it's me that has not understood how it works or if my notes are correct?
Thank you.

[bushman4]

You are correct.

The music cabinet variant of Subsonic replaces browse by folder to be browse by meta data.

You are also correct that the mobile API does not "see" files in the root of a media folder location.

Glenn

[cianoz]

Thank you Glenn
Not happy for how things work but thank you for your reply.

[hakko]

I think that files placed in the root of a media folder are visible since version 4.7, but since it was pretty newly introduced, few apps have kept up.

In MusicCabinet, browsing through the apps is also done by meta data (not by folders), so it doesn't matter if files are placed in the root folder or deep down in a directory structure. They must only be tagged with artist/title to be visible.