Organising music by libraries

[xtoph]

First of all thanks for this nice piece of software. I am currently testing it and so far it fulfils most of my requirements

I would like however to be able to classify my music by 'genre' the way I do with physical media (Jazz, Rock, Early Music...)

From what I understand reading the forum, this seems only feasible using custom tags, which I find a bit inconvenient. I also read that implementing such a feature, as found in a Plex server, would require a major refactoring of the application

My digital collection is spread across top folders, all of them added to the minimserver.contentDir. When browsing the collection, I can somehow reach my goal by switching to the folder view, selecting my library (e.g. Jazz), switch back to Tag view and go ahead. Almost perfect, but not intuitive for other people in house, and requiring a bit too much clicks...

I was thinking about a way to ease this without changing the application too much. Could we have a dynamic tag that does reflect the top level folder of the library? Could this be an easy solution, or do I miss something?

Thanks for reading

[simoncn]

Welcome to the MinimServer forum!

Genre is not a custom tag. It is supported by all tagging programs, all music servers and all control points. I'm surprised that your files don't contain Genre tags already as these would normally be populated by your ripping program or present in a purchased download.

[xtoph]

Sure genre is a standard tag, but its values are not normalised. It is actually a mess with an infinite number of genres and their (spelling) variations.

I use MusicBrainz for tagging, so this tag is filled already, but unsuable (my point of view). I could correct it, sure, but then I would define a custom tag with a handful values, which I want to avoid

My idea was a bit different. Just like with physical media, I put albums according to the kind of music (e.g. Classical, Jazz)

I so have 2 top folders (say /Music/Jazz and /Music/Classical) bot defined in the contentDir

I though it would be a good idea to (at scan time) read the top-level folder (/Music/Jazz), extract the leaf folder (Jazz), and assign this value to a dynamic tag (let's call it Library) for all files contained in this folder. I would then have a new way of navigating my Library

I have seen such requests in the past, e.g. from people willing to have the possibility for each family member to consider only their own songs. Most of the answers are multiple instances, multiple VM's, or a refactoring, all being heavy solutions for a simple problem

Would this be a possible solution?

[antonmb]

I would think it would be much simpler and easier to just edit your genre tags for consistency. Get a tagging app like mp3tag or Metadatics (for Mac), load all albums in your jazz folder, select all files and just change the genre tag to "Jazz" for all files to be consistent. Then they will be easily found by genre in any co troll point, which will be simple for your family.

[xtoph]

Sure, it will do the trick. But only once

Each time you add an album, you have to repeat this step. That is what I wanted to avoid...

[antonmb]

Yes, whenever you add an album you will have to verify its tagging to make sure it is consistent with how you like to see your music categorized, but frankly that's just good common practice. It's not much of a step (takes an extra 30-60 seconds perhaps?) to verify and change tags when you import music.

[simoncn]

(20-02-2016 16:08)xtoph Wrote:  I though it would be a good idea to (at scan time) read the top-level folder (/Music/Jazz), extract the leaf folder (Jazz), and assign this value to a dynamic tag (let's call it Library) for all files contained in this folder. I would then have a new way of navigating my Library

I have seen such requests in the past, e.g. from people willing to have the possibility for each family member to consider only their own songs. Most of the answers are multiple instances, multiple VM's, or a refactoring, all being heavy solutions for a simple problem

Would this be a possible solution?

I understand what you are suggesting but I would be reluctant to implement something like this in MinimServer. It doesn't feel right to me to use folder names as a substitute for correct tagging.

The family member requirement is easily handled by custom tagging and this has the advantage that a single item can be shared by multiple family members. This wouldn't be possible with a folder-based approach.

[Peter StreamMagic]

(20-02-2016 17:38)antonmb Wrote:  Yes, whenever you add an album you will have to verify its tagging to make sure it is consistent with how you like to see your music categorized, but frankly that's just good common practice. It's not much of a step (takes an extra 30-60 seconds perhaps?) to verify and change tags when you import music.

I totally agree with "antonmb", it is necessary and only takes an few seconds.
For example: I downloaded two "Hans Theessink" albums today (Qobuz),one tagged with Artist: "Hans Theessink" the other one with Artist: "Hans Theesink" and an new artist is born!
Tags might be wrong,written in an other language,inaccurate,written with or without capitals etc.etc....all reasons to be consistent and spend some time on it.

[xtoph]

Well, understood

I do actually myself handle the tagging of the files with a lot of care

But I am not alone at home, and I have children that don't consume music the same way. Most of their songs is a bit short lived and it is impossible to convince them to spend time on this.

Now, I do agree that the name of the folder is sub-optimal. I could be configured, by e.g. repeating the contentDir tag together with a label tag. Or separate libraries, but I understand that this functionality has impact on a lot of aspects.

In the meantime, I think I will have a look at another lightweight server for their needs. MinimServer will keep handling the long term collection (which it does really well)

[nbpf]

(20-02-2016 16:08)xtoph Wrote:  Sure genre is a standard tag, but its values are not normalised. It is actually a mess with an infinite number of genres and their (spelling) variations.

I use MusicBrainz for tagging, so this tag is filled already, but unsuable (my point of view). I could correct it, sure, but then I would define a custom tag with a handful values, which I want to avoid

My idea was a bit different. Just like with physical media, I put albums according to the kind of music (e.g. Classical, Jazz)

I so have 2 top folders (say /Music/Jazz and /Music/Classical) bot defined in the contentDir

I though it would be a good idea to (at scan time) read the top-level folder (/Music/Jazz), extract the leaf folder (Jazz), and assign this value to a dynamic tag (let's call it Library) for all files contained in this folder. I would then have a new way of navigating my Library

I have seen such requests in the past, e.g. from people willing to have the possibility for each family member to consider only their own songs. Most of the answers are multiple instances, multiple VM's, or a refactoring, all being heavy solutions for a simple problem

Would this be a possible solution?

Apart from the fact that your approach leads to album duplication for those albums which are both "classical" and "jazz" (and tags are there exactly to avoid this and other limitations of folders as means for organising data collections): if you are happy with giving all the files in /Music/Jazz (/Music/Classical) the same value for a "genre" or "library" tag, you can do this very easily with lltag from the command line, please see http://home.gna.org/lltag/. Of course, you can also run a cron job and have lltag run once a day or once a week in the background. Best, nbpf