New Artist Layout & better use of Library Statistics

[KissCool]

Enable "Thumbnail Broswer / Album Artist"
Central Panel layout: Artwork / Group by Album Artist (When albums are grouped by artists: show artist picture)
Select an Album Artist in the Thumbnail browser.
Here what you get:

So, a quite useless layout, too much unused space.


This layout could look like this:

- Artist Picture from "Artist Pictures\Thumb" folder.
- Artist name, then a short bio from last.fm
Library statistics:
- Top titles (Most played songs)
- Top album (Most played albums)

It's a quick mockup. The Top Titles could display a popularity meter.
Forgot to display a "show all" option for the top album. This way, you can easily switch to your usual layout (Artwork or Album & Tracks)
This layout could display more info: Album name and album rating under the cover, total albums, total tracks...


About the 2 colors used in the track title (Top Titles), made a small request here:

i've done this (using %mix fg/bg) for the "Now Playing" Panel and "Playing Track" panel. Its in the next 2.1 update which i will post later.
Doing it within virtual fields as a formula is much harder. Not sure if i will do it and it will be at a later date that i look at it.

I'd really like to get this formula.
Would look really nice in the main panel.
eg.: <Title> %mix(<Subtitle>,0.5) ->

About Library Statistics:

3) Artist, Guest Artist, Display Artist and library statistic.
eg .: a track with two "artist" fields, let's say Artist X et Artist Y. When I'm playing this track, I'm assuming to get a +1 "play count" for each artist, X and Y, and not for a virtual artist called "X; Y". if I wanted to do so, I would have named only one artist field "X & Y". But maybe it's not a bug, and MusicBee still using Display Artitst, whatever we are trying to do with the Artist, or Guest Artist field.

for 3, its using display artist. I will have a think about what makes best sense but not promising to change that

IMO display artist should be just that. Only used for display.
Don't you think that if users are going to the trouble of using MB's Multiple Artist Splitter to tag their tracks correctly, MB should at least be using the Artist/Artists/Guest Artist info supplied?

I'd like to know what artist split function users think about this.

[Alumni]

Good idea, I've always wanted to see something done with that blank space.

[SimonBRT]

The mockup looks excellent.  Some of that looks similar to to the Last.fm Bio/Recommendations/library statistics sections of the Playing track tab.  I wonder if another approach to this could be to combine some of that info (could even be an embedded theatre view?) and then allow the thumbnail browser in the Playing track tab.