Genre Radio Question

[rob63]

Hi,

Love the app, using with Win7 and iSub and now using with Win8.

Quick question: I noticed when using iSub and I select a folder genre, for example "trip-hop" I get a list of artist folders - Bjork, Emiliana Torrini, Sneaker Pimps, etc. like you would expect. However, selecting the genre radio brings up songs by artists not listed in the folders such as Gorillaz, Luscious Jackson, Röyksopp, Stereo MCs, etc. Is this because Last FM genre tags match for these particular songs and not for the artist(s) in general or maybe a bug (feature) or what?

Thanks.

[hakko]

Last.fm tags are returned as a value between 0 and 100 (you can get an indication of this with the new tag editor introduced in the latest build).

When you browse artists by genre in iSub, artists with a tag value > 25 are returned, and who are also the main artist on at least one album. (artists who only appear on compilation albums don't appear)

In the artist radio, songs from artists with any tag value (even < 25) can be chosen. Songs from artists with high tag values are more likely to be chosen, though, so if you have a whole lot of trip-hop artists, artists with low tags values very rarely will appear. In the artist radio, songs from compilation albums are also picked, so it might be that you have some tracks by artists who only appear on compilation albums.

So, it could be a bug, but it could also be explained by the rules above. I'd guess you either have a lot of compilation albums, or not "enough" trip-hop music to create a varied playlist from artists with high tag values.

[rob63]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm leaning towards calling it a bug since some of the artists-songs are clearly not of that genre and they are not on compilation albums. Also, and this was asked before, is it possible to add the album art to these genre-radio playlists? Only the generic iSub cover is displayed.

Thanks!

[hakko]

The next time you get a track that doesn't fit the genre radio, could you check in the web interface if the artist is associated with that genre at all?

Another rare (but possible) issue is that there are multiple artists with the same name, in totally different genres. They have to be manually edited.

Thanks for reminding me of the cover art thing.. I added an issue to keep track of it: https://github.com/hakko/subsonic/issues/29 (but as you can tell, the list grows faster than I'm programming)

I'm glad to hear that somebody else listens to Emilíana Torrini btw!

[rob63]

Will do. Thanks for all your hard work with this app, really adds a new dimension

Look forward to the next release.

[rob63]

I figured out the issue and it's with last.fm. The genre tags for some artists are too broad. For example, checking the tags for The Doors, most are '60s, classic rock, psychedelic or what you would typically categorize their music. Clicking on "more tags" there is also "soul" which does apply to some of their songs, but "southern rock"??? So if I choose genre "soul" and genre radio I would get Amy Winehouse, Marvin Gaye, Sade and artists that don't really fit like the Doors and the Police in the playlist. Just a thought but perhaps in a future update there could be some weighting to exclude genres for an artist that are atypical. That way the playlist would be more cohesive.

[hakko]

How much "soul" music do you have, and how much music in general? The more music you have, the better it works. But it's probably never gonna be perfect as all tags are in the end entered by regular users, not professionals.

You could use the pgAdmin III tool that comes with your postgres installation to tweak this.

This is how to show artists/tags with low weights:

Code: Select all

select a.artist_name_capitalization, t.tag_name, att.tag_count from music.artisttoptag att inner join music.artist a on att.artist_id = a.id inner join music.tag t on att.tag_id = t.id where tag_count < 25 order by a.artist_name, t.tag_name, att.tag_count;

To go wild and delete everything that's low weight, you could run (on your own risk, and make backups to be able to go back! you can't undo this)

Code: Select all

delete from music.artisttoptag att where tag_count < X;

Choose X for yourself.