Sort by Genre/Artists/Album

[menno]

I run my server on Linux and can sorta bypass this whole
issue by mp3index which makes dirs like

/Sorted_by_Artist
/Sorted_by_Genre

Thats the dirs I enter when connecting to my linux server BUT....
Subsonic does not play dirs with subdirs, example ->
I go to

/Sorted_by_Genre/
and see the folder
/Pop

Now I press and hold /Pop and the option that pops us is "Play Album"
I click it and nothing happens.....

I would like to see Subsonic to be able to queue all songs in Pop coming from their subdirs....

If you fix this my genre problem is solved and this must be easier to implement, I still would like to see a database though, that in the end is the only way to make this a serious alternative to other sound systems.

[Astal]

Yes, please give a choice to use the traditional folder structure or metadata derived view (similar to Jinzora, foobar2000, etc).

[wiseadam]

Maybe it's just me, but the larger my library got, the easier it was for me to create Genre'd folders and split the artists, rather than a huge 1 folder Music\Artist

By doing it this way, I can add multiple folders in Subsonic that are all already genre based. So now I can select the Genre folder on the left side and only see Artists in this Genre.

Sure, not all the artists ID3 tags are perfect, and this is only because when tagging say using Amazon, it never comes up with a set generic genre. I don't mind having 6-7 genre's, but when it turns into 20+ because someone thinks it's Indie instead of Rock, or Emo instead of Indie.....F all that, I have better ways to spend my time.

My folder structure works great, and it wasn't done because Subsonic was lacking in this feature, it was done for my own sanity.

X:\\Music\Genre\Artist\Album

I also agree with the idea of a pool of donations to request features not implemented yet. Would really help to get the developers the time to work on these features.

[vancamp]

For many, this requested feature isn't about people avoiding creation of a "genre" directory level (I have 18 )... it's because often times there isn't a one-to-one mapping between the two views. This primarily happens when you have multiple artist albums, or when a single artist has music that belongs to multiple (clear) genres. I always re-tag any music I get from elsewhere, but I still have those 18 genres (and my only "rock" genre I use is a catch-all called "pop").

As long as you want to be able to keep an album together as an album, you will have issues with a pure directory approach.

[kitzingmarko]

I honestly like the iTunes approach. iTunes maintains a flat artist directory structure. First thing I see in iTunes is the genres, then the artists, then the albums. I really got used to it and it works fine for me.
I would be happy, if the subsonic server would provide the possibility for this. Looks like another API-method to me. The clients then could make this configurable.

[cnliberal]

This is another +1 for this feature to be added. My current folder structure is:

Artist/Date - Album/Track - Artist - Title.extension

I agree with what many people have said in this thread. Many artists "hop" genre's within a career or even album. Look at Hootie, Darius Rucker. Alt Rock to Country. A computer file system wasn't built to handle this. A relational database is the only way to handle this. And since SS already has many ID3 fields in it's DB, it's just natural for it to show this in the GUI. Also, the idea of hashes for a file is intriguing. Again, it might take some time on an initial setup, but after that, adds/moves/changes are all SS will have to scan.

I personally don't like that when I click on an artist, I see their albums listed as the folder is listed. It makes it even MORE difficult on the app I use on my iPhone (iSub). It's a fantastic app, but sometimes I want to play an entire album, and I need to know the date the album was released in order to find it with my preferred method. I can't always type into the search field to find what I want. It's just easier/more fun to scroll through albums. It's interesting that iSub uses the ID3 tag for song title, but not album. It's not the developer's fault as this is what SubSonic presents to him.

Also, another HUGE +1 to the idea of a compressed txt (or preferably, a compressed SQLite DB) that has all the ID3 tag info contained. This would make scanning a collection LESS bandwidth intensive on the phone/SubAir side. Again, SS could keep a copy of the last DB changes and only send an incremental file. Say, run a full ID3 scan every week, and incrementals every night that are stored until the next full. Then SubAir, or iSub could just grab the individual incremental updates when a user requests an updated DB. It'd also be better due to iSub needing you to update the Artist/Album/Song tab independently. Of course, the API would have to be updated. And this request is most definitely NOT a small one but I think a very necessary one. If every other app out there can do this, why not SS? I'd be willing to pay another $25 for this.

[idealog]

I have just joined the forum solely to express my interest in this feature. If it is feasible, I would love to be able to search (and/or navigate) by genre. My ripped CD collection is now at something like 1400 titles. Even if filing by genre were feasible (and I don't think it is), it would be a huge task to reorganize everything. And in any event - I would suggest that this sort of data storage structure centred approach is what the catalogue/metadata model, as supported by ID3 tags - is meant to avoid.

(Incidentally, I notice that it is possible to have Subsonic generate a random playlist based on genre. Is it possible to extend this to provide some sort of half-way solution that provides a list of albums within the chosen genre? Or is filtering on genre too memory intensive given the current indexing appraoch? Just a thought.)

Anyways, it's not a 'deal breaker'. Subsonic is still far and away the best web based media streaming solution I have found, so hats off to Sindre!

[parlance]

Personally, I love the organization by folder structure rather than meta-data. It's a lot easier for me to ensure things go into a folder with a sensible name than to tediously tag everything and make sure all the tags are consistent; we don't all listen to pop music so we can use auto taggers to get correct meta-data.

That said, I think the ability to browser meta-data IN ADDITION to being able to browse by folder is a good idea because of the simple fact that the same file cannot appear in 2 folders at once, though it could appear in 2 different genres and etc, allowing certain types of organization that would otherwise be impossible.

[phen13]

iam also looking forward for a ID-Tag Order function.

Order by Genre/Year/etc would be a very good idea.


Celebrating a 90th Party would be nice, when i can order my music with filter year = 1990-1999.

I also tagged my 160+GB Music with all common Tags(Artist, Album, Trackname, CD, Tracknumber, Genre,Cover) and dont know why not to use.
Reading ght IDTags isnt Magic. To get the Cover subsonic allready reads the Tag.

And to Rename/Remove the Files, that it fits the Subsonic commen Structure isnt very handy.

Hope, that ID3 Tag function will be added soon.

Best regards,
Patrick

[ShinyJim]

I would settle for 'genre' to be included when you use the search tool (little box, top of screen), along with 'Artist, album or song title'. As has been mentioned, Subsonic is already reading those tags, so why not 'genre' too.

Yeah, it would be nice to have an amazing menu structure on the left panel, allowing to you view artists by genre, year, rating, shoe size, etc... but maybe that's asking too much.

The whole idea of structuring with '//Music/GENRE/Artist/Album/Tracks' is plain crazy to a true music lover. Here's why;

Even if you confine yourself to the base genres (rock, jazz, r&b, rap, country, blues, electronic, reggae, classical....etc), most artists have at least some crossover or fusion. When tagging my tunes, I just fill the genre field with all the genres that apply, usually starting with the dominating genre (in my opinion). eg;
Goldfrapp: Electronic - Trip-Hop - Synth Pop - Glam Rock
Emmylou Harris: Country - Country Rock - Outlaw Country - Bluegrass - Folk
Gogol Bordello: Rock - Punk - Gypsy - Eastern European

By using this method, I can just search for any genre, and any music which has aspects of it will be found.

This is what the artists themselves do! Go read any bands bio on their website: they'll probably list half-a-dozen sub-genres.

Music Genre is an immensely subjective and slippery thing, that cannot be considered along with the absolutes of 'Artist' and 'Album'.

As has already been correctly pointed out, tags were invented to cope with this problem. Let's use them! EMBRACE THE TAGS! Of course, all of the rest of your music should still be arranged '//Music/Artist/Year/Album/Track# - Track Title', in my very humble opinion.

My collection?
According to the wonderful SubSonic; 1,280 artists, 3,350 albums, 43,706 songs, 219.34 GB. All fastidiously tagged and bagged.

Love Subsonic. Will love it even more when this little genre issue is fixed. Although saying that, I have NO idea what is involved in getting something like Subsonic to work at all....

[ebasta]

+1 for this feature.

Although, I would really love a browse by ALBUM as a priority. I have a large classical selection and browsing to a recording of (i.e.) Beethoven Symphonies is rather difficult if I cannot remember the conductor on each version. Plus the display of only 25 albums in the search result is making finding music rather difficult. All of my music is religiously in a /ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK-TITLE structure and I have a consistant and complete tagging discipline.

Compilations are also an issue when browsing by folder structure because the compilation folder is arranged by /COMPILATION/ALBUM/TRACK-TITLE - no ARTIST parent folder.

I agree that folder structure browsing should be included but any modern system should be tag/keyword driven - for browsing and searching.

As for resources - if the complete database index was compressed and delivered via a text file - wouldn't that file be rather small - say around 2mb to 5mb at most for a moderate collection? And smaller difference files could be sent as changes occur. I don't see that as a bandwidth or resource issue at all.

[humbug]

-1 on this feature. Honestly, not to piss anyone off, but I'd rather have the programmer/s focusing on something else than implementing this. I've been building a large digital music collection for a long long time, and ever since the first round of portable mp3players arrived I've been frustrated that they're based on id3-tags instead of folder structures and filenames. Ofcourse a system that uses both filenames/folders and id3-tags will be slower since it has to handle more information, and this especially in a client that's working over the net. And, adding a large collection of music files to a player that reads and sorts according to id3-tags takes a very very long time, and since it can't be done in realtime here the collection would have to be rescanned again and again and again.

I think implementing a id3-scanning system would take loads of work and possibly slow down the application, and that's why I'm posting to say that not all of us are interested in, or even want, this feature.

[ebasta]

@humbug I have to respectfully disagree. I was using Giantdisc for a while, back in the day, and it was remarkably fast. I don't remember exactly, but the communication from the palm pilot to the server, I believe, was USB 1.0, USB 2.0, Bluetooth and wLAN - all comparable speeds to modern devices and network connections. The Giantdisc concept was/is a headless server with the a Palm device as a remote. The modern smartphone could handle this easily.

I cannot comment on the difficulty of expanding Subsonic to be tag based as I am not a programmer, but I do agree that Subsonic is building some kind of tag-based database anyway - so the functionality of searching this database to generate a browsing list and ultimately used to pull a music/video file must be a reasonable wish.

Although I agree that the simplicity of a folder based music server is a beautiful concept, the functionality must be seen as limited and old fashioned with the modern devices. (As far as the Android client goes, ignoring for a moment the risk and amount of work involved, could there not be two versions - one for tag based and one for folder based browsing?)

I have not tried Ampache yet, mostly because I really, really like the server design and Android client of Subsonic, and the community here seems to be very helpful - all extremely valuable and important things.

This is in no way a complaint or a trivial bashing of anything, I really like Subsonic. It should be seen as friendly feature suggestion to be able to integrate my music collection into my more mobile lifestyle.

[Slivvy]

Ok so I am like most of the people on this thread and tag reliant. I have a fresh copy of all my music in their crazy folder structure setup with subsonic. Is there some free software out there that will automatically re-organize my entire folder tree to go /artist/album/title.mp3 ?

Maybe iTunes does that but I actually rarely use that lol

[DroidGnome]

Just checking back after a few months to see if this was implemented yet or if we're still restricted to folder only views?

Someone I work with mentioned Subsonic can in fact use tagging but I don't see it mentioned anywhere..... I think he might have gotten confused with another music streamer... but figured I'd check just in case.