Browse by Artist

[mrmondo]

Similar to the request 'show all songs by artist' I think Subsonic really needs a browse by artist view.

It's nearly impossible to find your music unless you have folders setup exactly as subsonic likes it.

The left hand panel should have a artist list (similar to almost all other media players) that you can click on and albums + tracks are shown in the centre view.

[baxtr]

I see this requested a lot. could you explain how you do have your library set up? I have mine set up in a music folder, with artist name folder and all their albums within their named folder so in subsonic it lists it exactly how you are wanting it to. I guess I am missing how others, as yourself, are saving your media that it does "NOT" show up as you are requesting. Is it that you just have multiple single tracks in a folder that you wish subsonic to "tag read" and sort? or am I missing something. I am really just curious because of the way I have my music sorted I do see a browse by artist layout. And if you don't have that, I do understand the request.

[vancamp]

You see this requested a lot because it's the way tags are supposed to work. There are several things that this helps with... the one where people have unorganized collections is only one. For my collection (which is organized as you say, in folders nested: genre -> artist -> album -> track) the most important ones are:

1) it allows albums with multiple artists to correctly identify them, while still remaining in an album folder,
2) it can be used to provide multiple different tags for the same track, without messing up your file structure or copying files
3) it can handle character sets that your OS may not like, or names too long
4) it can handle artists that might be classified in multiple genres (perhaps even on the same album)

Some of these advantages may not be useful for everyone, but people with large music collections will likely run into some of them. And the real request should be to be able to browse from:
Genre -> Artist -> Album -> Track. But you pretty much need the ability to browse: Artist -> Album -> Track if you're going to add the Genre step. It's really not correct to only browse from:
Genre to Album.

[mrdrew]

+1 for this request!!!
It's standard for all music players to view by: album, artist, genre, folder, etc. Many different ways to look at your music.

Here's a good example.
Billboard Top 20 Hits 1970
20 songs by 20 artists. Subsonic needs all those tracks in one folder. Buuuuuuttt what happened to my stuff is that at one point, it got arranged so that each artist got put into their own artist folder. Now the 20 tracks are 20 folders, and subsonic can't handle it. I have to go in there, find them all, and stick them back into the same folder.

MediaMonkey has some nifty file working extensions that allow that. View by album, select them all, right click > File Operations> Move > Move to specified folder.

The mp3s are marked with correct id3 tags, but subsonic can't find them when they files are literally organized into folders.

[baxtr]

Thank you Vancamp for the explanation, I totally understand where that would be useful with my large collection even though I have it nested as you stated

+1 from me as well