Genre icons

[Steven]

The next enhancement i am doing for v2.3 is a Thumbnail Browser that shows a vertical panel showing a list of Artists with a small picture of each artist, or list of Albums with an image of the album cover.
I think it would also be useful to support Genres. So would anyone be willing to create a stock list of icons for common Genres (64x64 - the actual display size would probably be around 40x40)?
Otherwise I think flickr has some. For any genre with no icon, i guess it could just show an album cover like iTunes does

[nb8xtrr2]

something from google like this ?

http://www.veryicon.com/icons/media/music-genre/
 

[Barbie-qu]

The first question is which genres?

I suggest taking them from one of the main tagging databases. Personally I use Discogs. They have a limites set of top level genres, and then use styles to give further granularity. It works well I think.
These are their genres:
Blues
Brass & Military
Children's
Classical
Electronic
Folk, World & Country
Funk / Soul
Hip Hop
Jazz
Latin
Non-Music
Pop
Reggae
Rock
Stage & Screen

[Iowaseven]

Love the sound of this. Can I make a request; I have spent a lot of time pasting in custom artwork for all my artists. Can the new panel use the artwork I pasted in? Also, please allow us to stretch the artist image in this new view so that it can be of a reasonably large size if desired. Thanks!

[Zak]

I agree that deciding which genres to support might be tricky because they will be different for everyone.
At the least, it should be easy for users to add their own icons if they want to, such as storing the icons in a common format like PNG, with the file name matching the genre they represent. It would also make it easier for users to create and share entire icon sets should they wish to.

[psychoadept]

I agree that deciding which genres to support might be tricky because they will be different for everyone.
At the least, it should be easy for users to add their own icons if they want to, such as storing the icons in a common format like PNG, with the file name matching the genre they represent. It would also make it easier for users to create and share entire icon sets should they wish to.

I'm all for this.  Otherwise customizing genres and genre categories will be extra frustrating.

[Steven]

There will be a Genres sub-folder of the MusicBee\Icons folder where you can put your own genre pictures. But i want to include a base set of common genres with the distribution pack so people can at least be triggered to see the feature exists and query the wiki/forum how to add in there own pictures

[Steven]

If anyone does decide to look at doing this, its probably best to set the image size to 240x240.
Although the images will be scaled to 40x40 when displayed for the thumbnail browser, I can see this also being useful for the Artwork layout in the main panel where it could use these images for when grouping by Genre

edit:
flickr has some good ones:
http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?m=pool&w=908425%40N22&q=rock

edit 2:
v2.3 exe available on:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=10876.0

[Iasc]

photobucket has some good ones  http://photobucket.com/images/music%20genre?page=1

a few more on deviant art http://myssynen.deviantart.com/art/Music-genre-images-71751056

[psychoadept]

This was never fully implemented, was it?  There's no default set of Genre icons.  Are they still configured in the Icons folder?

[sleepless]

What exactly is the behavior for genre thumbs supposed to be? It seems MB uses album covers for all genres, and displays the generic thumb if there is no album cover available. Also,"Controls.GenreThumb" overrides/prevents any thumbnails from being displayed. Is this the correct behavior? Is there a way for MB to display the generic thumb instead of album covers when a custom icon isn't available? Maybe a default icon?

[Steven]

This was never fully implemented, was it?  There's no default set of Genre icons.  Are they still configured in the Icons folder?

MB will look in the Icons\Genres folder for a .jpg that matches the genre name. If nothing is found then MB will get a random album cover for an album that references that genre

[SandaruLJ]

Sorry for waking this topic up from 2 years sleep   . But it doesn't seem to work   . I have a few .jpg files in my "Icons\Genres" folder but I can't see any of them in my Thumbnail Browser. Only random album arts. I tried to copy and paste them but the "Paste Artwork" option is greyed out in the Thumbnail Browser. Was this feature removed in new updates? May be accidentally?  

[chr1sbail3y]

Looks like changes were made with v3.2. See Steven's update in this thread:

For the next v3.2 update i have added support for loading icons for: Grouping; Genre and Genre Category in the music explorer filter panel and header. The images should be square and at least 125px in size, but will be cropped to a circle in the header bar

As part of doing this, the custom Artwork location now defaults to:
- [root music folder]\MusicBee\Artwork\Artist Pictures
- [root music folder]\MusicBee\Artwork\Artist Pictures\Thumb
- [root music folder]\MusicBee\Artwork\Grouping Icons
- [root music folder]\MusicBee\Artwork\Soundtrack Pictures

There was support for genre icons in the thumb browser that used to look in [musicbee installation folder]\icons\Genre.
Those icons have been moved to:
- [root music folder]\MusicBee\Artwork\Grouping Icons

The artist and soundtrack folders are only reorganised if you are using default settings and will be reorganised automatically. You can still override the locations for artist pictures and soundtrack pictures in the Tags(1) preferences

[SandaruLJ]

I see! I wasn't aware of those changes. Thank you so much!