A couple of ideas about Browsing and Now Playing List

[Greb]

BROWSING THE LIBRARY

By now, when you browse the library, it's only possible to filter according to artist and genre.

However, in the Auto DJ screen there's a very useful option that takes advantage of Last.fm similar artists. So, why not using it as a browsing library element?

For example, imagine you feel in the mood for some Alanis Morisette songs. Then, instead of going to the browser and filtering using Alanis as artist, you filter using as condition 'Artists who are at least 1% similar to Alanis according to Last.fm'.

Difference with the Auto DJ is you're not getting a playlist, but the library filtered by similar artists.

NOW PLAYING LIST

By now, it's possible to place the now playing list in the central pannel, the right and the left one. But the moment you place it in one side it disappears from the other ones.

Is it really necessary? What it means, it would be great to have it in the left pannel to drag and drop songs, and to have it in a tab, in the central pannel too, because it looks better when playing the songs.

By the way, in the left pannel there's a button, 'Show library explorer', which makes very easy to swap between the usual left pannel and the library explorer. Why not having something like 'Show library explorer', 'Show now playing list', 'Show usual left pannel' that allows to swap quickly among them if you place the now playing list at the left pannel?

[beeing good]

BROWSING THE LIBRARY

By now, when you browse the library, it's only possible to filter according to artist and genre.

I like the sound of the 'artists that are % similar. You could use genre though couldn't you? Assuming most similar artists would be in the same genre. I know there was a script for mediamonkey that did this.

How are you browsing the library? You can filter by all sorts of data in the track browser, right click on the title of the column and you can set it to a huge range of options.


The now playing list sounds like it would get a bit messy but I can see your point.

[Greb]

Usually browsing using Music Library's filters (that allow you to filter to use several genres at the same time) and by artist.

The idea would be to add an additional filter condition that would be something like (for example) '1% similar to Alanis Morissette'. Letting you to choose other artists as 'seed', of course (sorry Alanis ) and different percentages.

[beeing good]

It must be possible. Here is the script available for mediamonkey - http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26404

Maybe someone can reverse engineer it to work as a MB plugin?

[Blinghound]

I would love to see Last.fm similar artist integration, be it a filter option, or the similar artist names could be displayed near the playing track info.

A similar feature has been requested here.

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=3757.0

[Greb]

I missed the other thread. Not exactly the same, but very close to.

Yeap, the 'similar' feature in Last.fm is quite full of possibilities...

[ma_t14]

+1 For last.fm filtering, really useful feature to have  

[Steven]

when you right click on an artist or album artist/ Find Similar 'xxxx' in Library
MB will filter the library for similar artists
for now i've hardcoded it to >=10% but will be made configurable

http://www.mediafire.com/?e4a8gkl6emb232x

also i might add an auto-playlist query but i imagine that would not be so useful as it would require you to enter the artist name as the seed or perhaps could take the current playing artist as the seed

keep a copy of your current MusicBee.exe as it contains some relatively untested code for bitmap skinning (should be ok though)

[Greb]

http://www.mediafire.com/?e4a8gkl6emb232x

It's giving me some problems to play songs. I had to go back to last update.



But the 'similar artist' feature works OK.

I would propose to add it to the 'group by artist artwork' view contextual menu too.

for now i've hardcoded it to >=10% but will be made configurable

That'd be nice 

[Steven]

can you send me the full error message (last entry from help/support/view error log) - might be better to create a bug topic so not to sidetrack this topic

[Greb]

can you send me the full error message (last entry from help/support/view error log) - might be better to create a bug topic so not to sidetrack this topic

Yeap, of course.

This is the thread with the report:

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=3931.0

[ma_t14]

Could you please add the option in album and tracks view also when click on the artist "headers"



As you can see I removed artist/album artist from my sorting columns for the sake of space. Its not needed with this setup and I would be really happy if I don't have to get it back for this great function

[Steven]

"find similar artist" now included in the artwork layout, and also when right clicking on the album and tracks header
lastly it now takes the min % weighting from the equivalent auto-dj setting

http://www.mediafire.com/?djdqcdk83vu9t9d

[Greb]

Just a detail. When you look for similar artists from a specific one and you get the list, the original artist is missing.

From my point of view it would be better to have the original one too, since it allows you to add songs to the playlist that are similar to this specific artist you chose, and besides it to add songs from this artist too.

Just my feeling.

BTW. It works great. Thanks for it