Suggestions from a new user

[Thorbjorn]

I started using this brilliant program two days ago, and think I'm converting from MediaMonkey for good. I have a few suggestions to maybe improve it (at least for my use).

1. Possibility to choose what is the header in album and tracks view.
In the preferences it now says "group tracks with a header (Album Artist)". Would be great if it was possible to change which field is the header. Or even better, add the choice of more than one header (with different fonts). To explain what i would use it for: I have the <grouping> field tagged with studio album, live album, EP etc. and would love to use that as a header. Kind of get the same view as spotify uses. Go to an artist page and it groups everything by release type and then release year.

2. Remove the "lock" on values appearing with album art.
I made a virtual tag "(Year) Album name" and would rather use that instead of Album name (mostly to save space). Generally i don't like the locked values anywhere and would like to choose myself, but maybe there's a good reason they are locked.

3. I think there is a bug with the custom sorting.
I made some examples. Here is how I have defined my custom sorting:
http://i.imgur.com/tB5UI.png

and here is how it shows up:
http://i.imgur.com/bRd92.png

It seems to do the first three fields fine, and then screws up.

3. Mark the current playing track better in both now playing and library view.
I hate having to look for that small speaker symbol. Would prefer if the line of the song was highlighted similar to a selected song, but with a different color. Or just make the font bold or something.

4. When grouping on artist in Artwork view I get a new group if it is tagged with multiple album artists (e.g. "Ben Harper/Relentless7").
Would like it much better if the album was included in both artists group instead of making a new group.

5. I think it would be better if the tabs were added on the top line (where the 'new tab' button is) instead of on an extra line below. Would save some space, and I don't see why I need a big field on the top reminding me which tab I am using.

6. Automatically update the library view when updating with new album art.
When I tag an album with a new art, it doesn't update untill I hit refresh. More annoyingly it then throws me back to the artist view and I have to find the album again.

7. Possibility to hide panel headers.
Hide the headers for "now playing", "library explorer" etc. to save space. I know it's used for configuring layout right now, but I guess that can be done from preferences as well if one prefer hiding them.

8. Add to Last.fm panel or make a new tab with:
-Top tracks of artist
-Similar artists
-Similar tracks

Show all results, but with click to play on the relevant tracks/artists if you have them in your library. This could maybe take a bit of time to search for? Which is why i suggested maybe putting it in a seperate tab.

Lots of suggestions here, but I'm already loving this program!

[ma_t14]

For 3) (the latter one   )

You can right click on the playing track info or alternatively double click in the area in red to go to the playing track directly:



You can use the context menu in the now playing panel as well. Additionaly I think in preferences you can set the behaviour so that the playing track is highlighted and followed as it changes.

for 5)

That space is reserved for the address bar of the in-built browser. There was much discussion about this topic here: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=4625.0 and this is the resulting design.

and for 8
Something related, you can use the library  explorer to find similar artists in your library. Right-click on an artist and check the option "show similar artists". Similar artists will appear under each artist. Otherwise I think its a good suggestion.

[cartman005]

For number 4, MusicBee uses semicolons to separate multiple artists. As for the grouping, you can try to use the Display Artist field to solve this. In the Tag Editor, click the ... next to the artist field. There, you can add multiple artists but only show one to simplify the grouping and such. Maybe that will help.

[Thorbjorn]

3) Cool I didn't know about that. Doesn't really work for me though since I mainly use the Artwork view. When I try to locate playing track it goes back to the original view with grouped artists and just selects the artist image. I have seen similar issues, for example when I reload it always goes out to the grouped artists. Being able to see all artists grouped and then go digging further into albums is one of my favorite things about this program, but I think it could be improved.  

Yes I have seen that option in the preferences, but for me it doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't highlight or follow the track. Maybe it's an issue with the skin.

5) I still think it would be better to move the tabs up there and have the address bar below as an option.

8 ) Yeah I have tried that option, but I turned it off because I think it just really clutters up my library explorer. It's also a bit confusing to have lots of different artist under an artist. I think separating it to another panel/tab would be better.

[Thorbjorn]

For number 4, MusicBee uses semicolons to separate multiple artists. As for the grouping, you can try to use the Display Artist field to solve this. In the Tag Editor, click the ... next to the artist field. There, you can add multiple artists but only show one to simplify the grouping and such. Maybe that will help.

I have tagged them with semicolon in MediaMonkey, but I think it might still be stored with / in the id tag as that's default. Maybe that's the problem. I'll try to re-tag, or change the multiple artist seperator if that's possible in Musicbee? Didn't know about Display Artist. May be a solution but it sounds like the album will then only be displayed under one of the artist. I'll try it. Thank you!

[Thorbjorn]

4) I have tried fixing the multiple artist issues, but can't. First, it seems that either MediaMonkey exports the tag seperator wrong, or MB imports them wrong because all my tracks with multiple album artist are imported as "Tool/Puscifer" as one artist. If I change it manually in MB to two artist makes no difference. It still makes an extra group for "Tool; Puscifer".
And a small suggestion on that, when you choose "Group by -> Artist" shouldn't it say Album Artist, as that's what it actually groups by? I tried to use the Display Artist field, but that's only available for Artist, not Album Artist so it will not work.


And then a few new issues:

9. I love the A-Z jump bar, but I think that when you hit a letter it should always show the results from the top row instead of the last row. If I press 'T' I want to see all artists starting with T, not just the first 3 or whatever. How it works now it depends on if you are currently viewing before or after the letter you choose.

10. A new option for search
I think the search is currently a bit useless for me when using Artwork view. Would be better with an option to open search in a new tab with track detail view.

The perfect search for me would be like Wimp has if anyone have used that. Would open a new tab with three panels: Artist results, album results and track results. Would of course be even better if the number of panels and which tag it searches could be customised.

11. Is it possible to get the now playing panel below the track info panel?

[jbee]

(...)
3. Mark the current playing track better in both now playing and library view.
I hate having to look for that small speaker symbol. Would prefer if the line of the song was highlighted similar to a selected song, but with a different color. Or just make the font bold or something.

I agree on this one, I would also like to have the option to "highlight" the "Now playing track" in a more obvious way. I think it'd be a really good idea to have the "Now playing track" highlighted in the same way that "the currently selected track" is highlighted, but with a different color. And the now playing track should be highlighted this way, even if the user clicks to select another song.

If the user clicks to select the currently playing song, of course, that should trump the color of "now playing" and show the color of "selected track".

For 3) (the latter one  )

You can right click on the playing track info or alternatively double click in the area in red to go to the playing track directly:



You can use the context menu in the now playing panel as well. Additionaly I think in preferences you can set the behaviour so that the playing track is highlighted and followed as it changes.
(...)

Unfortunately the options (x) Highlight playing track + (x) and follow it in the main panel does not work as suggested above.

[Steven]

i've partially done one of the items which has been asked a few times, where you can change the grouping field (only one, but you could use a virtual field), and change the fonts on the header.
I've also increased the fields for display with the picture by 1

http://www.mediafire.com/?qvb14la4u3sd8vv

[Thorbjorn]

Amazing! It works great with a virtual field. Thank you!

[SimonBRT]

+1 for suggestion 9.)

A-Z jump is very useful but the current behaviour of jumping to 'S' and still having most the screen displaying 'R' does not make much sense.  I have thought this for a while but it has never occurred to bring it up.

[Analien]

+1 on suggestion 10. Also an option for remembering searches.

[Steven]

i've changed it so multiple album artists are handled now (before it was treated as a singular field)

http://www.mediafire.com/?9kb7itzi755a7u2

you would need to rescan the files already in your library (eg. File/Rescan and then tick 're-scan files already in the library).
also see: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=5382.0
for some improvements to file naming templates

[Thorbjorn]

I can't believe you're pretty much doing this project alone. So fast at implementing suggestions. Your extra functions and the escape characters seems to work great. Multiple album artist are not fully working here though. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I deleted my entire library and just added a few albums to test. Here is how it looks in artwork view:
http://i.imgur.com/Fu80t.png

and in library explorer:
http://i.imgur.com/pykfZ.png

I have tried the first() function on it though and it works fine, only showing one of the artists, so clearly it is working with multiple values. Is it just a display thing?

Since it can contain multiple artist you should maybe add this button for album artist too:
http://i.imgur.com/xqwag.png

Also, I first tried to add most of my library and saw a bug on some artists showing up as "Enigma; Enigma", "Metallica; Metallica" etc. It only happened on some of the albums for the artist, and only on some artists. Not sure what caused it, haven't really investigated it. No problem for me to just fix that manually though. Maybe it's because I have tagged them in a different program.

[Steven]

i know about the library explorer and will be addressed in the next update
for the duplicate album artists, that will likely be because the files will be tagged with different tags for the same album artist. eg. you can have "BAND", "ALBUM ARTIST" and "ALBUMARTIST" tags all referring to "Metallica"
What i will do is detect and remove the duplicates when scanning