Album Art - Play Album

[Benke]

Hi!

When displaying songs in Album view and clicking the Album "Play" icon the first song of the album is being played but if you for example are in the Music Library and you only want to play that album all other songs not belonging to that album is also added to the "Now playing" list.

* I found the right-click menu "Play more..."->"Play album tracks..."->"Play album now" but its a bit inconvenient to use.
* I also found you can double Enter; first selecting the album and its tracks and then start it and clearing the Play album now. But then you loose the album view.

Could it be possible to add a second icon below "Play" when howering the album art called "Play album" for this?

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When writing this post I found that left-clicking the album text gave a quick link to "Play album tracks...". However, I found this only by mistake and would never have guessed it otherwise.

[Steven]

if you click once to select an album then moving the mouse over the album picture will display a Play button as well

[ma_t14]

It depends on what you have set in Preferences. Go to Edit>Preferences>Now Playing> In "Play Now Action:" choose the first option that reads "clear list and play selected tracks only"

That should achieve what you want

[Benke]

Yes, that is what I meant by the "Play" icon. However, pressing the play button changes the "Now playing" list to contain all songs displayed in the artwork view. What I ment was a quick way starting to play only the songs of the specific album.

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As I wrote - I just found that you could press the album text to get a quick link to "Play album now" but it is a bit hard to guess. My suggestion was to also have a "Play album" button below the "Play" button.

Thinking about it further it might be cluttering the album art with button links. Another solution would be to maybe have a small arrow button in the corner of the album. Pressing it would display the same menu as pressing the text. I would never have guessed pressing the text would do something before I accidently did it.

[ma_t14]

Read my post above yours

If you do that clicking the "Play" button will load only the tracks of that specific album into the now playing list

[Benke]

@ma_t14: I was writing my post while you answered. Yes, I tried that configuration as well but I didn't like it much. For other scenarios having the Play now working in the default way is also desired. Sometimes you only want to play one song and keeping the current playlist, sometimes you want to play only the specific album replacing the current play list.

[Steven]

i agree its a little non-obvious when grouping by Album (for grouping by Artist you can see an underline on the text), so i will include a "v" image to the right of the Play button to give a hint, which when clicked will bring up the Album menu

[Benke]

Sounds excellent! Thanks! 

"for grouping by Artist you can see an underline on the text". I didn't quite understand you by this. When is this view displayed?

[Steven]

right click on the artwork main panel header/ Group By/ Artist
it shows the album count when albums are grouped by artist

[Benke]

Aha! I didn't know that. Thanks!

There are some great but hidden functionality. Maybe this too should be visualized by some icon in the header to point it out for the user?

[Steven]

their is a lot of functionality in MB and putting everything as buttons would make it too cluttered and confusing. I will add this to the drop down button menu to the left of the search box though. But generally with MB, you will find a lot of things using right click context menus on various sections of the screen

[Benke]

Yes, I understand that. Too much info will make it too complex and destroying the (nice looking) GUI design. I will use my right mouse button a lot from now on. Thanks!