Read from Metadata *not* folder structure?

[ls1norcal]

My music collection is organized very well, which subsonic works great for my album collections. I have one folder that I reserve for "singles" when I dont need the entire album, and all the MP3's sit in the root folder. Subsonic doesnt "see" these because they are not in a folder structure. I understand that I can just create a folder in a folder...but then there
is no organization whatsoever in the app.

Is there a way to fix this, or is folder structure the only way?

[GJ51]

Subsonic really likes the folders. With storage as cheap as it is, you should be able to just create a folder called "Singles" and place a copy of the tracks in their for Subsonic. Thus you'd still have your structure preserved for other programs, and give Subsonic what it wants as well.

[bile]

Sure, you could just reorganize all your music but what reason is there not to offer listing by metadata? Ampache does it just fine as do most every other native player. The metadata is there for a reason. It should be used in more than the track listing after selection.

[supra92]

I agree that there is a market for that, and indeed a great number (majority?) of apps serve that purpose quite well. As Gary notes, Subsonic is really a folder/hierarchy-oriented app, and as such is geared to those who utilise those for their library organisations. Perhaps that makes it a niche product in that sense, but I think it's a fairly sizeable niche considering that Subsonic excels at bringing order to the 'chaos' that would be thousands upon thousands of artists and albums. Typically when people have libraries of music that large, they tend to organise them in the operating system's filesystem by the Artist -> Album method.

Understood about the singles or 'misc' mp3s at the top, but not sure I fully understand why it's so critical that they reside in that very top root folder as opposed to a simple folder under the root called "Misc." or "Singles". You could even enclose it in brackets or etc. so that Subsonic nicely stows it away in the "#" section at the bottom. Seems pretty painless to me...

Cheers,
Supra92

[bile]

I've got a very specific directory structure which is used to derive metadata so it's not like I can't use Subsonic in the directory structure manner. However, you end up with underscores everywhere for spaces as a result and other random quirks. Compilations and tributes don't show up correctly because original artist is not something understood by the listing code, etc. There is a lot you can do with meta.

There is no reason it can't do both. Index all the metadata and offer listings based on it.