Messages

16

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 27, 2020, 07:28:44 PM »

I think I found something. The grouping is not allowing us to change it anymore.
Clearly, we're supposed to have multiple options but there's only one now.

Continuing on this, I'd like to know how to have more options in the first field that's listed there (shown in the GIF).

Hey, have you found the solution to this?
It's infuriating me and I can't find how to rectify it myself in the docs.

Not yet. I only have a feeling of where the sorting/grouping logic is (shown in the GIF) because when I'm playing with it, it actually changes the display of the albums there but it just makes it worse but as a simple user, I don't know how the program is actually made.

17

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 24, 2020, 02:34:57 AM »

I think I found something. The grouping is not allowing us to change it anymore.
Clearly, we're supposed to have multiple options but there's only one now.


Edit: Link to the GIF embedded in this message since it doesn't seem to show for everyone : https://i.imgur.com/9VheuyL.gifv

18

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 23, 2020, 07:56:36 PM »

It's the "play all tracks" part that is loading your whole library.  Try different settings and see what works for you.

It sounds like Music Explorer does offer functionality that you like.  In terms of subdividing artists the way you expressed in your original post, though, only the library can do that. In the library, you can view any tracks where an artist is credited, or you can choose to only view tracks where they're credited as Artist or Remixer or Performer, etc.

That's bizarre that the Music Explorer can't display that properly. I miticulously tag every artist and composer in the Track Artist field with each their role on that (Artist, Guest Artist, Remixer, etc.). I was certain that the artist list in the music explorer would pull out a list based on artists.

What officially does the Music Explorer rely on exactly for that list? Maybe that will help me understand it.

19

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 23, 2020, 02:39:08 PM »

Those are my options for my setup in my screen shot.  It's playing the whole library because you've told it to do that.

I'm suggesting for you that if you just want the selected songs or album to play, then you should set yours to just play the selected songs or albums, either queued after what's currently playing or replacing it.

Or don't.  Honestly, good luck I think.

Sorry about that. I must have missed some explanation that's in your message that still doesn't load up on my end. I'll check that.
So, for now, we only have a small part of the problem solved. Since you look actually super good with this, do you have solutions for the rest too?

20

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 23, 2020, 02:30:09 PM »

It's certainly usable in the sense that I can double click a song there and it starts playing my whole library (not wanted) but starting by that selected song.

You can configure what gets played when you double click a song in the library


As for the rest, I'm really not interested in a debate on the respective merits of the library and music explorer. If you feel that music explorer works and looks better, then use music explorer. I thought the reason you posted in the first place was that music explorer wasn't working as you wished, and that's the issue I responded to.  You're of course free to use MB as you like.

Yes. That's what shipped with MusicBee and it doesn't solve it.
I have the option on and on the right, there's still the whole library as you can see.

21

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 23, 2020, 02:14:58 PM »

For me, Music Explorer is a means for music discovery. Artists who are similar to artists in my library, what else an artist may have released that's not part of my library yet, track previews of the aforementioned, etc.  It's meant (at least in my mind) to put the music in your library in context with the rest of the world of music that's out there and help you explore it.  Music. Explorer.

I don't use it much because it, by design and purpose, lacks function for what I mostly do, which is manage my own library.  I spend most of my time in the Library Explorer (i.e. "Main Panel") that you've been directed to twice now as the right tool for what you're looking to accomplish.

I'm, again, along with psychoadept it seems, struggling to understand what it is that you think you'd be missing out on by using the Library Main Panel. "Doesn't cut it" or "Doesn't come close" doesn't really describe what you feel like you're unable to get there, and without knowing that bit of information we're kind of at a disadvantage as far as finding ways to help.

Well, so far, what you've told about the Music Explorer is pretty much what I'm doing there. So, I have a really hard time understanding what I'm doing wrong there if you too are using it the same way.

When I'm in the Library page, I'm like a librarian who carefully documents and stores books (or in that case, music) with all their details catalogued for easy discovery later and to keep things nice and tidy.
When I'm in the Music Explorer page, I'm like an adventurer navigating through the library and, in that case, listening to music. I click an artist and voilà, music is playing and info appears about the song, the album and the artist that's displayed and played. I also get suggested similar stuff to discover and potentially buy in the future (or at least put on my wishlist on Discogs).

This is also why the library doesn't cut it. It's clearly meant to manage content (and that's all good!). It's certainly usable in the sense that I can double click a song there and it starts playing my whole library (not wanted) but starting by that selected song. But it's not working like the other page (and it absolutely doesn't look and work as nicely).

22

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 23, 2020, 03:42:57 AM »

Library with album and track view will get you very close to what you want out of the box. We can help move and tweak things from there.

I think this is the key point here. I haven't seen anything in what you're trying to do that Music Explorer is really suited for. The library is much more flexible and customizable.

You might start here to see if you can make it look more or less the way you want it to look: https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Panel_Views

It sadly doesn't cut it or come close to the Music Explorer. Well, if someone has been able to, I haven't so far.
May I ask then what is Music Explorer « suited for » then? As I said, I probably was wrong and didn't understand the brillant, farly superior software that MusicBee is so I'm asking this. Maybe that'll help solve the issue.

23

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:40:34 PM »

What? Where did I say that the Album Artist was interfering with the Track Artist? That's not what I meant. If I mentionned that, please point it out to me and I'll correct it.

I was responding to:

And I get what you're saying with the Album Artist. Although, having the usual name say « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » results in what I said earlier where I would get « Pegboard Nerds », « Snails » and « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » in the artists list.

I may have misunderstood. I am not approaching all this with surgical knives at the moment ;-)

And (just to be sure in case I understand correctly what you are suggesting) please don't edit messages that you already posted and have received replies for.
It would affect the coherence of the thread and make it harder to understand for others that stumble upon it later.

No problem. Nothing against you.

And yeah. I encountered a 502 error when submitting my response which required me to resend it but it turned out my last part was missing. So, I edited it to bring it back. Hopefully it won't happen again!

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Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:29:17 PM »

Although, having the usual name say « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » results in what I said earlier where I would get « Pegboard Nerds », « Snails » and « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » in the artists list.

Why and how would your 'Album Artist' overflow or interfere with your 'Artists' tag?
They are different entities. For regular (popular music) albums they will often be identical, but they can also have nothing in common.

You also mentioned scrobbling.
(I don't have much expertise on that myself)

Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to digest the input you have received for now, and then see if you can split/narrow down each separate issue or question that remains, and give each one it's own thread?

What? Where did I say that the Album Artist was interfering with the Track Artist? That's not what I meant. If I mentionned that, please point it out to me and I'll correct it.
It's also only a single issue. So, I can't really split that into multiple threats. Sorry!

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Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:27:55 PM »

Sorry about that. I don't like having a cold and bland tone in my messages. I'll stop it.

You don't need to apologize.

It's just that we're enthusiasts here who mostly pop in and out to see what problems potential enthusiasts might be having that are preventing them from being fellow enthusiasts. Slogging through a lot of very detailed but not very relevant to solving the problem specifics and high-style messages puts me in skim mode. I was more explaining why I may have missed the thread of what you were looking to do.

Library with album and track view will get you very close to what you want out of the box. We can help move and tweak things from there.

It's okay. I don't hold it against you for that and I thank you for trying to help people on the forums. Your work is super appreciated.

26

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:06:23 PM »

That's exactly the solution. Music Explorer is a non configurable mix of library data and external data based on album artists. You will never achieve the result you want of seeing all tracks an artist appears on in Music Explorer while keeping albums grouped together.

Music Explorer is not the right tool for the job.

I'll admit the obscene overuse of Emojis and extreme amount of background info also made me zone out on a lot of your OP, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're looking to achieve.

Sorry about that. I don't like having a cold and bland tone in my messages. I'll stop it.

27

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:05:10 PM »

The simplest solution is to tag Various Artist albums with the Album Artist "Various Artists" or mark them as compliations and then use your library rather than Music Explorer for this purpose.

So, just to be sure I understood right, the solution you're suggesting to the problem I'm having in the Music Explorer is...to not use the Music Explorer? That's not even a workaround solution. I must have understood wrong. 🤨

What are you doing in the b Music Explorer that you can't do as well or better in the library?

Using the nice and neat interface that was developped to listen to music by artists for example.

28

Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 08:04:22 PM »

To start off I'll admit I haven't read and digested your question in detail. (sorry)

So if other members do, and have better and more specific suggestions; please feel free to ignore my response.

I think it is a very bad idea to have multi-value 'Album Artist' tags.
It goes against the basic principle of what 'Album Artist' is, and what it's purpose is, and it can easily result in undesired outcomes.
It would be much better to create a custom tag for your concept of 'Album Artists', and leave 'Album Artist' as a singular tag.

Yeah. The question isn't actually a simple question. It's more of a behaviour from the app that doesn't seem right and me trying to understand what I'm doing wrong with it.

And I get what you're saying with the Album Artist. Although, having the usual name say « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » results in what I said earlier where I would get « Pegboard Nerds », « Snails » and « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » in the artists list. It also messes up the Last.FM scrobbler as it starts to think there's that third artist instead of the first two.

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Questions / Re: Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 07:33:44 PM »

The simplest solution is to tag Various Artist albums with the Album Artist "Various Artists" or mark them as compliations and then use your library rather than Music Explorer for this purpose.

So, just to be sure I understood right, the solution you're suggesting to the problem I'm having in the Music Explorer is...to not use the Music Explorer? That's not even a workaround solution. I must have understood wrong. 🤨

30

Questions / Yet another question about compilations management and display!

« on: April 22, 2020, 04:22:14 PM »

Good day to everyone reading this! Thank you for your time here. 😁
I want to thank Steve and all other contributors of this application. So far, it's the best solution I have found and I recommended it to a few friends right after starting to build my music library. 💛
Although, while I'm doing just that, I started to get a hard time with music compilations and I'd like to have some help with how to manage them. 😅

The situation I'm facing right now :
I have a bunch of compilations that are not showing properly in the music explorer or at least how I was expecting them to be displayed and handled.

Here's an example:
I have multiple music by Pegboard Nerds. Let's say one original (« Deep in the night ») with its own Single Release album, three remixes by three different artists inside their own remixes compilation (« Deep in the night - The Remixes ») and two tracks from a music label compilation (« Monstercat Uncaged Vol. 8 »).
If I simply tag the tracks like I would have expected where the Album artist are « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » for the Deep In The Night stuff and « Monstercat » for the Uncaged stuff, the first two albums get moved to the « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » artist page and the last one to the « Monstercat » artist page.
I'm content of the Monstercat one as it enables me to find every compilations Monstercat made in one place (Great!).
Although, the « Snails & Pegboard Nerds » was indeed off. (Example)
But, even if my search through the forum didn't give me much helpful info (I probably don't know the right terms to look for. 😄), I learned through a forum message by psychoadept that using the same seperator (« ; ») than with genres enabled me to specify two seperate artists in the Album Artist field. So, that's corrected even though it will make it display weirdly on any device that I'm gonna sync the files to. (Example of how it is now after this detail)
Now, where the difficulty starts is when I start to add other artists in the artist tags.
It's excellent in the sense that it enables me for example to get everything that MUZZ made and without having the other songs that were in the remixes (that MUZZ didn't touch at all) thrown in there with it. (Example)
Although, it creates duplicates of the album with only a single track inside each of them. 🤨 (Example)
This gets even worse if I add the Uncaged compilation to the mix. 😬 (Example from the Pegboard Nerds page and Example from the Monstercat page)

So, my question is : How can I tag everything so that the albums stay consolidated but when I go in the music explorer and say I click on Pegboard Nerds because I want to listen to everything that they made, I get shown all the albums they're in and it only shows me the tracks they are involved in? I really need to figure this out first before continuing to move everything to MusicBee since it's gonna become ugly really fast. 😅
Bare in mind I already have the Track Artist tagged properly with the Artist, Guest Artist and Remixer Artist fields set up on all of my songs. It's pretty much required for me to fill that properly for use in Tractor. Otherwise, it'll be through Tractor that I'll get these details filled in anyway. But yeah. Maybe this will be helpful to achieve what I was expecting to happen on the app?
I also understand how it can be desirable for people to not have their artists view polluted by all the artists they don't care about that were in the compilations they imported. But, I'm willing to trade that for what I'm trying to get. 😝