Subsonic Forum

I'm doing two things I don't like to do but I'm not sure that I have the skill or creativity to get around it so here it is. The only thing that would make Subsonic be better for me than any other player I've touched is the addition of some sort of automatic playlist creation function (I know about the Random Playlist function).

I know that there are different ways to suggest music and I think iTunes Genius might be the most user easy way which may make it the best to emulate. I'm not sure exactly how Genius works but my guess is that is uses sales data (if you hit Genius on some Katy Perry song, it looks up other users who purchased that song and creates a list of the most purchased songs by those users). As Subsonic doesn't have access to sales data like Apple does, I'm not sure what a good solution would be. I doubt Subsonic users would want to be sharing their song play data but that might work. Another option, and I have no idea how legal this is, is to use an iTunes Genius file in the same way that iTunes does as it's saved locally. Similarly, there are other services that use "music fingerprints" to suggest songs (see MusicDNS). Otherwise, I have no idea how to make that work.

So things I hate doing:
#1 - Suggesting something that I have no idea how to do and can't offer much help to bring to fruiting.
#2 - Suggesting something that is similar to something a competitor offers.

To try and offset #1, I'll be donating some dough but don't expect it to result in me getting what I want; not because I don't think it can be developed but because I don't assume that I can throw money at people to get them to do something. To try and offset #2, I offer my ability to write algorithms and I'll try to be as creative as I can but I'm not sure that I can do anything that can't be done by any developer.

Anyway, there's my suggestion. I'll help in any way I can.

Last.fm has a get similar artist API here:

http://www.last.fm/api/show?service=119

I don't know if that would be possible to implement into subsonic but it is a neat idea. The best part is that it looks like last.fm api use is free unless a huge profit is being made.

It would be very easy to write, but only once the subsonic API and possibly the internals are changed so it actually has a way of searching by artist rather than purely by the folder the files are saved in

I think this is a fantastic idea! I have been using Audiogalaxy a little bit because of it's 'genie' function, which is very similar to genius.

It definitely doesn't replace subsonic, but a similar feature would be awesome!

Check this: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9504

+1 to this.
Only thing i really miss from AudioGalaxy while using this trial is genious/automatic suggestions from current playlist.
I saw the post by hakko, thanks! Might try that, but I wish it was officially supported =)

It's open source, doesn't cost a dime (you're not forced to "donate" to keep using it), and I don't think the playlist function has failed me a single time over the last six months. Actually, I do believe that the "official" 4.7 version has more known issues (that hasn't been fixed since August when it was released) than this...

Now subsonic is more aware of the metadata of files, not just directory structure this will be easier to do now. If people are still interested I could look into writing it

+1

This is the feature that I miss most from Audiogalaxy. Playing by similar artist / music style in a dynamic and persistent playlist or "radio" feature (like choosing an artist on Pandora or Spotify) would be a very welcome addition. "Genie" mode was extremely convenient as it was a button on the player, and was as easy to turn on as shuffle play. I know there are "similar artist" webs available that operate on a degree of similarity, which would be useful in implementing this, or similar thumbprints (similar songs) as previously suggested.

Alternatively, an "auto DJ" and/or dynamic playlist feature would be nice that could be built on metadata criterion, similar to what MediaMonkey or MusicBee offers.

I love this software! In my experience, the only thing I really miss here in contrast to other players is "endless playback" from my entire collection. I would definitely pay again for functionality like that in Subsonic! Keep up the good work!

I don't know if this fully does what you want, but DSub allows you to create a infinite shuffle list based off of genre and a year range. It's definitely not as good as a true Genie mode, but it comes a bit closer then the stock Subsonic app.