Subsonic Forum

I have over 20000 tracks in my folders and it is impossible to browser them through the current subsonic interface because they are not organized well in directories. I can navigate through them just fine on my local media software on PC because I have tagged all these tracks properly with Genre/Artist/Albumss etc.

It would be great if we could navigate via Genres then Artists within Genres and then albums for each of the artists.

Thanks,
Osho

oshogg wrote:I have over 20000 tracks in my folders and it is impossible to browser them through the current subsonic interface because they are not organized well in directories. I can navigate through them just fine on my local media software on PC because I have tagged all these tracks properly with Genre/Artist/Albumss etc.

It would be great if we could navigate via Genres then Artists within Genres and then albums for each of the artists.

Thanks,
Osho

Sorry to say this but: subsonic is not running on tags, but on folder structure - you need to sort out your file system to make best use of subsonic. How you sort your system is up to you, although the good old "artist\album" sorting probably works best. There are tools that can help you with that, but sorting by meta-data is not how subsonic is designed at the moment. That comes with a lot of benefits but requires the user to clean up good once.

Maybe this helps you a bit, as the problem you mention was encountered before:


http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2023

ff

Brand new Subsonic user here. I just switched from Jinzora to Subsonic and have to say that at first, I was sorely disappointed to find no browse by Genre feature either, because I have historically taken more care to correctly tag my collection than to order the directory structure. I also missing be able to slice and dice any which way to navigate my large collection.

On the other hand, I switched to Subsonic because I found Jinzora to be flaky, unstable, and slow. Perhaps some of Subsonic's strengths come from it's simple and clear use of the Media files.

I see that the "#" entries are below the alpha-entries. Is there a way top make the numerics and symbols ABOVE the alphas?

mudsharkymon wrote:I see that the "#" entries are below the alpha-entries. Is there a way top make the numerics and symbols ABOVE the alphas?

Settings > General > under 'Index' add a '#' (w/o quotes) before 'A' > Save.

It should immediately reorder everything after the save.

On a side note, I also tried the tip in the tooltip popup about adding a separate heading for 'The' bands, and it didn't seem to work. I'm thinking it might have to do with the fact that I have more folders starting with 'T' after 'The' and it isn't sure what to do with that? Not sure. Has anyone tried that and got it to work? In case it's theme-specific, I'm using Cool & Clean.

I haven't tested it, but you probably have to remove "The" from the list in "Settings > General > Articles to ignore".

sindre_mehus wrote:I haven't tested it, but you probably have to remove "The" from the list in "Settings > General > Articles to ignore".

The 'Articles to ignore' field was empty when I went to check. Not a big issue at all, I'm just hesitant to ignore the "The" article since I've grown used to looking for certain bands in the 'T's instead of the leading letter of the subject.

I'm certain the opposite scenario would throw off many users too :)

I second this feature request. I think the subsonic server running on the PC should index the ID3 tags of your entire music collection at install, and at set intervals it can check for new files to be added to the index (much like Winamps Media Library) to keep it updated. It can store this indexed music info in an easy to transmit/search compressed text format that can be sent to your phone. It may take some initial processing investment to index a large collection, but once its indexed, it can transmit searchable/sortable ID3 tag information about your entire music collection to your phone for storage on the SD card. This way your phone always has a master index of your collection, and doesnt have to connected to the server each and every time you browse a new area of your collection, which would improve the speed and feel of the overall experience on the app. Your phone may have to wait for one of these 'indexing intervals' to have searchable access too all your latest music, but the frequency of updating should be customizable, and it would be a small inconvenience for those of us who have meticulously organized Tags, but horrible file system structure. This would also allow you to browse your entire collection offline via this index.

I personally think this feature (the ability to browse your music collection via SubSonic by ID3 tags just like an iPod/native music app) is the only thing keeping this app from being an absolutely must have killer app. Pull this off and Apple might rip you guys off, its that good of an idea. I'd gladly donate more than i already have for this feature.

reading the ID3-tags? i believe that would only be practical for rather static collections, and checking/updating the id3 database would take ages. i'm saying this after cleaning up the mess that was my poorly tagged collection of course.

3R3 wrote:reading the ID3-tags? i believe that would only be practical for rather static collections, and checking/updating the id3 database would take ages. i'm saying this after cleaning up the mess that was my poorly tagged collection of course.

Winamp and iTunes both do it. They periodically check for any new or changed files that need to have their ID3 data indexed. It doesn't have to re-index everything, only files that are new or fail a Hash check. It was brought to my attention that SubSonic already indexes your ID3 data from your collection at the server, so its really only a matter of having the server transmit this index to the Client on the Phone and have the phone use it as its main browsing source. The web interface for subsonic already uses Indexed ID3 data, its not hard. This is a MUST HAVE feature. For anyone who gets their music from Torrents and has to seed their files continuously to maintain a good share ratio, its just not feasible to have a well organized collection on a file system level... tags are easy to mass edit or auto-fill and organize via Winamp/itunes/windows media player/whatever. All other media players/librarys use the ID3 data (album/artist/album artist/song title/track #, etc) to build their browsing interface... If the search function on the SubSonic android client wasnt so crappy, this wouldnt be a big deal, but for SubSonic to compete it NEEDS this feature. If this feature gets implemented i would never use any other music client, or device.... this would make subsonic truly amazing.

ok, i agree that every media player out there reads ID3 tags and also is able to incremently check for changes. but for subsonic to be able to do this, it would have to constantly monitor the filesystem. and since its written in java i dont know if that would be feasible performance-wise...remember, all the meadia players who can do this are not written in java and probably have some way to call OS functions for that, which makes it fast.
I dont know if this is really set in stone or if java apps can make such calls without hogging the entire system, but i dont want my server to feel like starting up even when its running.
That other thing, the index, could probably be compressed to death and sent in a few seconds, since its mostly structured text with numbers, very predictable hopefully, so that would not be the problem.

3R3 wrote:ok, i agree that every media player out there reads ID3 tags and also is able to incremently check for changes. but for subsonic to be able to do this, it would have to constantly monitor the filesystem. and since its written in java i dont know if that would be feasible performance-wise...remember, all the meadia players who can do this are not written in java and probably have some way to call OS functions for that, which makes it fast.
I dont know if this is really set in stone or if java apps can make such calls without hogging the entire system, but i dont want my server to feel like starting up even when its running.
That other thing, the index, could probably be compressed to death and sent in a few seconds, since its mostly structured text with numbers, very predictable hopefully, so that would not be the problem.

hmm interesting, i didnt considered the whole java issue. Hopefully he can find a way, even if it involves calling a C library or app from the java server. It doesnt have to monitor the file system CONSTANTLY, it should be a configurable incriment... like every 30 minutes. So yes, ur phone might be 30 minutes behind (worst case) of ur actual collection (and thats why its configurable too), but you wouldnt have to have java constantly opening the file system. A small inconvenience for being able to browse your subsonic collection as seemlessly and smoothly as an iPod. I cant stress enough how much i'd be willing to Help/donate for this functionality. I might just have to start my own app :-X

Use http://musicbrainz.org/ Picard program to have the better tags for your collection. Picard can help you if you define hard strong directory structure and automatic move and organize your music and free subsonic from this task.

pr1nc1p3 wrote:Use http://musicbrainz.org/ Picard program to have the better tags for your collection. Picard can help you if you define hard strong directory structure and automatic move and organize your music and free subsonic from this task.

I appreciate the workarounds, but this is the feature request forum. Im aware of my options for renaming file/folder data from ID3 information. I prefer not to do this so i can continue to seed Torrent files. Besides, well organized file structure (no matter how much info you put in the folder or file names) will never be as robust or intuitive as browsing by ID3 information like an iPod or Winamp Media Library do. MUST HAVE THIS FEATURE IN SUBSONIC OMG OMG OMG OMG hint hint, nudge nudge developers What if i want to browse by Genre? am i going to have to put the Genre of each album at the beggining of its folder name? bleh... lame. What about by year? by Album Artists (not track artist) ? etc etc etc

This is a make-or-break feature for me. I was using SimplifyMedia before which provided a genre/album/artist browse interface, but now SimplifyMedia is no longer providing their service. Absolutely need to be able to browse by genre etc.