Hey Steven,
hope you're good wherever you are!
Atm I am using what would classify as genre, subgenre & style values interchangeably inside the same Genre tag field already anyway (out of necessity), which means I am using redundant tags to have them appear across a variety of genre/subgenre/style based playlists/groupings.
So this proposal should work with the existing 'single genre field for everything' paradigm we've had for yonks (and this suggestion shouldn't change anything in terms of end-user behaviour), but adds an additional angle for people who want to use a deeper (than 2 levels) taxonomy system built in XML for their file tag source(s)/clouds.
I'll stick to the Genre tag based example:
Atmospheric Jungle -> Jungle -> Drum'n'bass -> Electronic
level depth for now.
As is - I have all of these as Genre tags on a file: Atmospheric Jungle; Jungle; Drum'n'bass
And the last parent layer, i.e. Genre Category "Electronic" (IF i have ' <Genre Name="Drum'n'bass" Category="Electronic" /> ' set), is done via the xml definition only as is already.
Correct ?
My understanding/idea is that this XML based relationship definition that already exists could be extended, and without forcing anyone needing to 'transition' into using sub-genres or the likes...
So what I am proposing is to:
- add functionality for additional n'th level relational / taxonomy definitions coming from the (or a new dedicated) xml directly, definable by the user, that work with the users' existing, unique tags (without changing the current core system for the any MB user [i.e. the 2 layers Genre Category & Genre way] )
This is what a fake xml syntax, for a 4 level deep taxonomy relation could look like, if all but the last hierarchy level were to do their NameCheck against the 'Genre' field (as long as each levels' returns is unique and each possible value is only "parented" once in the xml... So if I want "Drum n Bass" & "Jungle" to each be allowed to have further children, in slghtly adjusted fake xml syntax (with generic names & tag ID defintion in the same row... ):
<HierarchicalName="Electronic" Tag id="Genre"/>
<Child="House"/>
<Child="Techno"/>
<Child="Drum n Bass"/>
<HierarchicalName="Drum n Bass" Tag id="Genre"/>
<Child="Halftime"/>
<Child="Jungle"/>
<Child="Techstep"/>
<HierarchicalName="Jungle" Tag id="Genre"/>
<Child="Atmospheric Jungle"/>
<Child="Ragga Jungle"/>
<HierarchicalName="Atmospheric Jungle" Tag id="MyOwnCustomSubGenreField"/>
- the Genre Category (or a new 'Relationship Browser') browser pane would need to be able to display taxonomy definitions ( i.e. nested/hierarchical structure, IF each value is unique...!). i.e. as long as this is defined in the xml (the nesting functionality we do have in the Navigator panel already, i.e. endlessly nested playlist structures...)
[-] Electronic
[+] Ambient
[-] Drum'n'Bass
[-] Jungle
[-] Atmospheric Jungle
[+] House
[+] Techno
[+] etc
[-] World Music
[+] Africa
[+] India
[-] Latin
[-] Cumbia
[-] Chicha
[+] Samba
...
[+] etc
- and finally, if the above is worth considering, if it would even be possible to open such a grouping / taxonomy system to work with other tags/tag-groups as well - i.e. the '<SubGenre, Tag id="DISCOGS_STYLES">' part or the instrument example in the previous xml code mockup, so one could define per hierachy/nesting level, which source tag is used to retrieve the xml defined tag values. Meaning that I as a user have the option to set any parent/child level relation inside the xml, have these display as parent/child groups in the browser pane, and fill these with tracks base on unique tag cloud values derived from
custom field per parenting level...
i.e. the Tag id="MyOwnCustomSubGenreField" hint above, or the instrument taxonomy use case, along the lines of something like this:
<HierarchicalName="String Instruments" Tag id="Instruments"/>
<Child="Bowed String Instruments"/>
<Child="Plugged String Instruments"/>
<HierarchicalName="Bowed String Instruments" Tag id="Instruments"/>
<Child="Cello"/>
<Child="Contrabass"/>
<Child="Viola"/>
<Child="Violin"/>
<HierarchicalName="Violin" Tag id="Instruments"/>
<Child="Piccolo Violin"/>
<Child="Pochette "/>
<Child="Five String Violin"/>
whereas the above could then look like this in the hierarchical browser pane:
[-] String Instruments
[-] Bowed String Instruments
[+] Cello
[+] Contrabass
[+] Viola
[-] Violin
[-] Piccolo Violin
[-] Pochette
[-] Five String Violin
[+] Plugged String Instruments
[+] etc
Hope that makes sense, as in my head this would not require any transition whatsoever, but each user could decide if they wanted to dive deeper into structuring taxonomies for a tag cloud or even groups of tags (be it genres or instruments just being 2 examples) as they see fit for their musical world, and people craving for a 3rd/4th/5th/n'th level could add this logic to the xml themselves, if the taxonomy definition inside the XML was structured slightly differently (I think
) & if we had a browser pane to support this.
Cheers, thanks for considering this again & all the best.
c.
