Genre tagging: using available tag and order sorting

[alan9990]

Fair comment. And yes, it's your software, written to your satisfaction. I can't have any argument with this. It's also excellent at what it does, which is why it pains me that a) I feel a little compelled to take up your time with something you clearly see as not important while b) trying as hard as I can to find ways around this.

So, in closing I might say (because clearly there becomes a rapidly diminishing return in keep posting about a dead subject) and such that you might at least understand why this is important for me if not for you:

I don't do streaming of any kind. Okay so all the work of tagging and sorting was already done - upstream.

All my replay is of an ever growing local library. And being distinctly "old school" about certain aspects of my music replay, just imagine the following scenario:

Tag files embed all manner of useful information beyond the obvious of who it is and what the tune/album is called. We can agree on this.

So, one day I decide that I want to have a "Louis Armstrong" day, or that I want to listen to all tracks released by a particular Label/Publisher. Or that I want my server to be able to filter all songs in my library by writer, or whatever.

Louis Armstrong collaborated with many other notable artists. To name just two: Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald.

So, when I sort/filter my albums by "artist", oh but anything that Louis Armstrong recorded with these other artists is not even available - because it has been rejected and is not indexed. Oh, but then simply strip out the multiple "Albumartist|Albumartist" and use just one!

Yes. But tomorrow, I want to listen to all the music by Ella Fitzgerald. Except now the albums featuring Louis Armstrong no longer get included.

I even thought of removing "Albumartist" tag from my entire library, so happy would I be to just have everything indexed and sorted. But then... what about the hundreds of compilation albums I have, all of which have "Albumartist=Various Artists". These would end up becoming thousands more new 'albums' containing just a single track!

So, without wanting to seem picky or personal or indeed the slightest unpleasant... it absolutely baffles me as to why such a seemingly obvious and natural filter (multiple Album Artist values) is unsupported? It just makes no sense at all to me.

If I say that having a database behind the files seems awesome... then yes! So again, just imagine I'm chatting with friends, and a conversation emerges about a particular song.... followed by an anecdote of what somebody was doing on that particular day/week/month (this does happen). So I decide that for fun I'll create a dynamic playlist that will play:

Filter genre> Pop|Jazz Pop

Filter these results by year: Up to 1964

Filter this by month (because tags support full date): Up to October 1964.

And play THESE songs.

Isn't this the very point of having everything stored in a database?

If it's simply impossible to have Minimserver work with multiple Albumartist values then... well, I can think of ways I might mitigate this e.g. create two copies of each album where there are shared "Albumartist" values, and have each copy of the album labelled with one and then the other artist. But to simply have them not show up is extraordinary.

But yes, I have gone back to AssetUPnP for the time being. If ever anything changes here I'll be right back!