Messages

1

Questions / Re: Show all songs in music explorer like in music section

« on: July 31, 2023, 12:19:02 AM »

I have now added this as a feature request, as I couldn't find anything similar in the Wishlist.

The request is here:  https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=39691.msg214655#msg214655

2

MusicBee Wishlist / Link Two or More Tabs by Selected Artist/Track

« on: July 30, 2023, 01:09:22 PM »

For any open tabs, an option to link any of these tabs together so that selecting a track from any artist/album artist in one of the tabs will automatically select the same artist/track in the other linked tabs.

This would speed up the process of navigation and alleviate the current situation where you tend to get stuck permanently in one view (as it's too much trouble to switch between views and have to search for the artist again in each tab).

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For example:
You may have the Artwork tab and the Music Explorer tab both open and pinned. The Artwork view is perhaps the best way to browse the library to find an artist you want to look at, but for exploring within the artist it's usually better to switch to the Music Explorer tab instead.

The problem is, when you open the Music Explorer tab you then have to search through the library for the same artist once again within this tab before you can dig any deeper.

It would be much quicker and more convenient if you could link these two pinned tabs in such a way that selecting a track in one tab will mean you are automatically navigated to the same track in the linked tab (whenever you choose to open it).

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Consequently I tend to get stuck permanently in the Artwork tab and rarely get to use the other views, so their functionality is largely abandoned.

It would be helpful if any number of pinned tabs could be linked as described, so that selecting an artist/track in one tab automatically selects the same artist/track in any linked tabs. Meanwhile, any tabs that are not linked would behave as normal.

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To save PC resources, there's no need to synchronise across the linked tabs until one of these other tabs is actually opened.
Effectively, you would just say:
- on opening a LINKED tab you are automatically navigated to the same artist & track as in the tab you just came from

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This feature is common on share trading platforms. You may have half a dozen charts open in different mini-windows on-screen, all displaying different types of info about the same stock. You would typically have these tabs/windows linked so that selecting a new stock in any of them will instantly change all the other tabs to display info on that same stock. Obviously you wouldn't have to change all of them manually every time you choose a different company to look at.
It's a completely intuitive way to navigate a large database.

3

Questions / Re: Show all songs in music explorer like in music section

« on: July 30, 2023, 12:12:46 PM »

Thanks again. I tried using 'Selected' instead of 'Playing' in the Track Info panel. It works, but it's a bit weird having the info split between two artists within the panel (especially after a dozen years having it the way it was)
So it kind of fails a bit on the intuitive front!

Regarding the Track Details tab - I normally have 4 tabs pinned:  

Music (Album Art view)  - The one with all the album covers, plus the genre browser
             (Best tab to use when browsing the library, but only gives limited information)

Track Details (Album & Tracks) - The view with individual lines of info for every track
            (provides as much detail as you want on individual tracks without getting too cluttered)
            (however this view is too clumsy for browsing the entire library)

Music Explorer - Cleanest way to browse within an artist when you don't need detailed track info

Now Playing - For when you want to see lyrics etc.


As I say, I find the first three very useful in their different ways, but I tend to get stuck permanently in one view as it's too much trouble to keep switching between the tabs and having to find the artist again whenever I want more track info or a broader view. This is why I think it would be ideal to be able to link any pinned tabs together by Album Artist.

Still, I've taken your kind suggestions on board and will try to incorporate them for now in my browsing activity.

4

Questions / Link the Music tab with Music Explorer tab by Album Artist selection

« on: July 30, 2023, 11:09:47 AM »

Thanks for your reply.

I've given this a go and, while it's not as intuitive or automatic as I would have liked (for example, you have to actually play a tune before clicking the artist), it certainly gets me halfway there.
Hopefully after a while I might get used to it.

In the meantime I would like to put forward the tab-linking as a feature request for the future.
It would be really helpful if Track Details tab could also be linked.

5

Questions / Re: Show all songs in music explorer like in music section

« on: July 29, 2023, 08:22:44 PM »

Is it possible to link the two tabs, Music and Music Explorer -
 – So that selecting an Album Artist in one tab will instantly select the same artist in the other tab?

Both of these tabs are useful for their different features - I have them pinned and use them both to search through the library for relevant artists & tracks. But whenever you select an Album Artist in the Music tab, if you want to then zoom in on that artist in the Explorer tab you have to search for the same artist all over again in this tab as well.

When compiling a playlist, switching back and forth and having to search for every artist twice over is a bit of a pain.

I think the post above is referring to something similar… that it would be useful if there was an option to link these two tabs so that a change in the selected Album Artist in one tab will instantly be mirrored in the other tab.

The same goes for the Track Details tab, which has different information on display – It would be useful if this could also be linked by Artist or Album Artist selection.

6

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Show all tracks OMITTED by Auto-Playlist

« on: September 14, 2021, 01:20:35 PM »

This does appear to work - Although I found you have to first go to the settings for the original playlist and untick the box for limiting the number of tracks (then re-set again afterwards).

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MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Show all tracks OMITTED by Auto-Playlist

« on: September 14, 2021, 12:20:40 PM »

Fair point.

8

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Show all tracks OMITTED by Auto-Playlist

« on: September 14, 2021, 09:56:38 AM »

Thank you for the suggestions, it's good to know that it is at least possible to uncover the tracks that are being omitted by a playlist. However this is still rather cumbersome - If I have 15 auto-playlists already, it means creating another 15 just to help me tweak the first 15.

It seems to me it would be a very simple thing (and apologies to Steven if I'm taking your work for granted here) to add an item to the drop-down menu that says "Show all omitted tracks."

This would enable me to tweak the playlist on the fly, or to turn up any tracks that may have been mis-tagged in the first place, without having to create 2 separate playlists every time.

9

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Show all tracks OMITTED by Auto-Playlist

« on: September 13, 2021, 11:21:46 PM »

mrbenn is sort-of correct - In his scenario I do want to identify the other 499 tracks, but not because I want to create another playlist from them.


I too have in excess of 30,000 tracks and as the library grows, the problem increases. It's great to be able to create a smart list that might, for example, filter the library down to about 10,000 tracks which are then randomly played. This is great for digging deep into the library and plucking out random tracks that you wouldn't often think of playing when you create a manual playlist.

But when you put together a set of rules, the more creative you get with these rules, the harder it is to know what you might be eliminating. So from the 20,000 excluded tracks there might be whole groupings that have been excluded unintentionally - The point is, you'll never know what's been excluded because all you can see is a long list of the 10,000 'successful' tracks.


I know from experience that if I had the chance to flick through some of the excluded tracks I would very quickly find some that I would rather have kept in the playlist. Looking at any one of these tracks would make you think again about what rule had excluded it (and other tracks like it), and you would quickly realise how to tweak the rules to accommodate any changes.

You would then check the list of exclusions again...and after a couple more iterations of this process you should be able to get the rules pretty close to perfect.



The thing is, this would not be a difficult feature to add. The work has already been done, we have auto-playlists already. I just want to be able to flip backwards at the press of a button and see what I might be excluding.

Just to be clear, if all you want to do with your smart playlist is, say, "Find all tracks in the 'Blues' genre with rating higher than 3 stars" then this feature will never be needed. But some of my auto-playlists have more than a dozen rules and at that level it's really difficult to calculate in your head exactly what the effect will be on every individual one of those 30,000+ tracks.

10

MusicBee Wishlist / Show all tracks OMITTED by Auto-Playlist

« on: September 13, 2021, 07:25:44 PM »

Auto playlists are a great feature but the only problem is, you can't quite be sure of which tracks you might have unintentionally omitted by the rules you set. It would therefore be extremely useful (and presumably quite easy) to have a button or menu item allowing you to show all tracks that have been omitted by your rules.

This way you can scan the 'omitted' list and try to spot if there are tracks you would have liked to include.

This will help you to tweak the rules so the auto-playlist reflects your intentions better.

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[ I searched through the MB forum wishlist and couldn't find this idea in any other thread ]

11

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Wrap album art around

« on: December 15, 2020, 01:23:45 PM »

Thanks, that does seem to produce a similar result to what you have.

The only problem I have with all of this is that you have to double-click everything to get where you want to go, and you have to back out of it to get back to the main artists panel.


The way I had it to begin with was almost perfect already - You can navigate within the artists panel, open up an artist or switch to another artist, without ever having to double click or back out. The standard view settings here are really good. The only issue was the lack of a 'wrap' for the line of album covers of an artist once opened out.

12

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Wrap album art around

« on: December 15, 2020, 12:52:27 PM »

Yes I'm using the 3.4 Beta. I've tried the 'separate panel' option you suggested but as I described, this just opens out all the track details for every album at once, which produces a very big list.


Thank you for reminding me about the 'click to play' button and 'Show artist picture.'
I have played around with these settings long ago and I remember now why I have it this way. But I haven't been able to find any combination that produces a wrap-around of the album art.

13

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Wrap album art around

« on: December 15, 2020, 12:23:10 PM »

I must be!

Yours looks a little different to mine and seems to work in a different way. Mine looks exactly like the layout in Tjoeker's initial post above. Album covers are stacked, rather than a single picture, and when you click on an album stack they just open out horizontally. There's no way for me to open out the albums below as in your example.

Also, when hovering over an artist I don't see a play/pause button.


Perhaps this is because I've kept the same layout over several upgrades, by copying the layout files into the MB folder after each upgrade?

14

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Wrap album art around

« on: December 15, 2020, 11:04:42 AM »

Not exactly. What that does is to open out all the tracks from all the albums below (which again can be an enormous list if there are a lot of albums for the artist in question).

The current setting is 'Show the tracks....directly under the selected artist'
With a single click, this opens out just a neat row of album covers belonging to the artist, allowing you to quickly drill down into the album you want.

The problem is that the group of album covers always opens out horizontally so if the artist in question has a lot of albums, most of these will be off the page to the right and you need to scroll this list horizontally to find the album cover you want.

So ideally, the group of album covers for any artist should wrap at the width of the main panel, so the album covers can all be seen below with just one click.

Then when you click on any of these covers, the tracks in that album would also open out (as it does now).

15

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Wrap album art around

« on: December 12, 2020, 01:45:16 PM »

I would like to second this. I find it quite annoying and unnecessary having to scroll through an artist's albums in this way. I have over 30 John Coltrane albums and this means I always have to scroll several times to find the later albums.

When clicking on an artist it would be nice to have all of their albums laid out immediately below. It would also make sense to shift position upwards so that the albums open out from (say) the second row from the top of the screen.