Nested Genre > Artist > Album for Music?

[Chyron 238]

I like to sort my music by (custom) genre, but I greatly prefer music apps that organize music by Genre > Artist > Album instead of Genre > Album.

 

It makes album selection easier to browse if each album is nested under its own artist, but I don't want Film Soundtracks on the same screen as Jars of Clay or Led Zeppelin; and if I want to browse just Christian music, Skillet and Plumb would only list one artist entry each, on a page of 50 items, instead of 5 or 6 albums each on a page of 110+.

Edited October 27, 2018 by chyron8472

[Luke 37176]

Hi, what exactly are you asking for? We do support genres for music.

[Chyron 238]

Hi, what exactly are you asking for?

 

I'm asking for nested Genre > Album Artist > Album for music.

 

Currently it's nested Genre > Album.

 

I request it show all album artists under a selected genre, and then all albums under a selected album artist in that genre.

So that when I select "Rock" under Genre, it shows Linkin Park and Metallica; and then when I select Linkin Park, it shows Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Instead of showing all [insert genre] albums together in one big list.

Edited October 27, 2018 by chyron8472

[Happy2Play 8329]

If you are organized Music > Genre > Artist > Album then Folder View gives you what you want correct?

[ebr 14948]

The thing that would make this tricky is crossover artists (e.g. Taylor Swift).  if viewing how you suggest, you would only expect to see her Country albums under her when going through the Country genre.  This would require that either the server or client app build some sort of on-the-fly grouping in order to present it to you this way.

 

While that is certainly possible, it complicates the implementation enough to make this not a quick and easy thing to do.

 

Just FYI.

[jspenc3 6]

I've been looking for this as well, and originally this post seconded the original request, but I just played around in Emby Theater again and found Folder view and it works perfectly for my needs.  Is that something you added in the last few months?

 

Either way, this year has been great as far as filling in the final missing pieces to provide a true replacement for my WMC use case.  Keep up the great work!

Edited October 27, 2018 by jspenc3

[Dibbes 431]

....... This would require that either the server or client app build some sort of on-the-fly grouping in order to present it to you this way.

....

 

Hasn't something like this been planned for a couple of years already? I mean, I remember you guys taking about dynamic lists, etc.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Luke 37176]

What is wrong with genres -> artist -> album, except after clicking on the artist, you see all albums for that artist, and not just filtered on the original genre?

 

Because most of our apps already have this. Isn't that close enough?

[Chyron 238]

If you are organized Music > Genre > Artist > Album then Folder View gives you what you want correct?

 

Yes, except that Folder View doesn't scrape metadata for artist folders or album folders. It treats those folders as arbitrary and doesn't scrape anything for them. Also, it organizes by folder name rather than embedded metadata content, which is not always ideal, for one thing because folder names have limited naming conventions on the backend. It also puts a little folder icon in the corner of the artwork, which is the most minor of nitpicks, but is still a thing.

 

The thing that would make this tricky is crossover artists (e.g. Taylor Swift).  if viewing how you suggest, you would only expect to see her Country albums under her when going through the Country genre. 

 

Yes, and her Christmas albums (if she has any) would show up in the Christmas genre.

 

In iTunes, under the "Songs" Library, there is an option (under View) called "Column Browser". With the column browser, you can select a Genre from a list in the left column; when a genre is selected, it shows Artists (with tracks in that genre) from a list in the middle column; when an artist is selected, it then shows Albums (with tracks for that artist in that genre) from a list in the right column.

 

While I'm not asking for a column browser like that, I'm asking that when I select a genre in the Genre view it shows a small(er) list of Artists instead of a large(r ) list of Albums.

 

What is wrong with genres -> artist -> album, except after clicking on the artist, you see all albums for that artist, and not just filtered on the original genre?

 

I guess. Maybe? I don't see the advantage of this. Why would you include albums not in a genre on the artist page under that genre?

 

Because most of our apps already have this. Isn't that close enough?

 

No. Neither the Web app nor the Android app shows a list of artists under Genres. It shows a list of albums which includes every artist.

Edited October 29, 2018 by chyron8472

[scrambles 1]

I found this searching for the exact issue OP has. I have a large? library of ~25k songs and genre > artist - album is how I slice it up on every other music platform. Emby is seriously lacking in customization here, nevermind that it's the only music software I've encountered that trips up on vertical separators (|) in genre names and splits them.

[Luke 37176]

I found this searching for the exact issue OP has. I have a large? library of ~25k songs and genre > artist - album is how I slice it up on every other music platform. Emby is seriously lacking in customization here, nevermind that it's the only music software I've encountered that trips up on vertical separators (|) in genre names and splits them.

 

Hi @@scrambles, are you saying we shouldn't split on a pipe | ?

 

@@ginjaninja

[scrambles 1]

It's your design call and I'm sure there was a reason for it. From my pov, my tags are correct and I don't want any client applying its own interpretation, especially without the ability for me to override without paying for an add-on. I currently also use foobar2000, mediamonkey, subsonic and plex, all of which all respect my metadata as-is.

[Luke 37176]

It's just that the pipe is a typical separating character. @@ginjaninja what do you think?

[ebr 14948]

Yeah, I'm not sure about current practices but, in the past, metadata providers definitely used the pipe to separate multiple genres.

[ginjaninja 538]

so it seems @@scrambles 's case is that the pipes in genre are indeed understood by @@scrambles as 'separators', but @@scrambles does not wish the genre tag to be "split"...rather the genre value presented  pipe and all?

 

 

in my library every track only has one genre...

 

in my mind, it could make sense to apply multiple genres to a track..especially in the case of sub genres eg "blues" and subgenre "gospel blues".

"Show me all 'blues' tracks/albums"..now show me specifically "gospel blues"

 

but, assuming emby allows for a track to have multiple genres and the ui/datbase schema works for that  (i have not tested) 

I cant see why you wouldnt want the genres split out (on separators including pipe)

eg "blues|gospel blues" split and  the track being associated to both genre "blues" and "gospel blues"...

there would be no advantage in the track being associated solely to genre "blues|gospel blues" as then you would never see the track as part of genre "blues" or "gospel blues"...only "blues|gospel blues"....and that doesnt seem helpful?

 

so @@scrambles

its worth clarifying with an example, what the "uninterpreted" embedded genre tag value is, how emby presents that and how you think emby should present.

Edited December 17, 2018 by ginjaninja

[scrambles 1]

Again, I want Emby to respect my tags and present genre values as they are, like literally every other player I've ever used (add to my list above doubletwist, gmmp, winamp, heck even wmp). If I have a genre tagged as "Punk | Garage" I want to see "Punk | Garage" as a genre.  Genres are very limiting descriptors and while I'd love a true multi-value field feature, ID3 isn't there yet, so I settle for buckets. Mp3tag and other dedicated taggers support ad-hoc multi-value fields but I've encountered limited player support.

 

This is honestly a relatively minor issue that's derailing a thread about the more significant issue (to me and the OP at least) of sorting. The OP requested genre > artist > album and I'll second that - I'd get premiere and Genre Cleaner if this worked, assuming that your implementation won't override Genre Cleaner as well.

 

I would just use Folder sort, but it's broken - the nested sort is sorting by album name (as read from tags) instead of sorting by folder name, despite selecting 'Sort by Folders' at the top. It's incorrectly sorting the folder 'Johnny Cash - American Recordings' before 'Blind Boy Fuller - East Coast Piedmont Style' because A comes before E, instead of sorting by folder name, which would correctly put B before J.

[ginjaninja 538]

Again, I want Emby to respect my tags and present genre values as they are, like literally every other player I've ever used (add to my list above doubletwist, gmmp, winamp, heck even wmp). If I have a genre tagged as "Punk | Garage" I want to see "Punk | Garage" as a genre.  Genres are very limiting descriptors and while I'd love a true multi-value field feature, ID3 isn't there yet, so I settle for buckets. Mp3tag and other dedicated taggers support ad-hoc multi-value fields but I've encountered limited player support.

 

 

So with respect to the genre separation or otherwise...

Just done a bit of testing with separators in genres (in tag view);  to me it seems like multiple genres / genre splitting does indeed "generally" work already in that a track and an album can have multiple genres and these can be be navigated in tag view.

so it would be a step backwards not to split genres on "separators" imo

 

@@scrambles would it be difficult for you to change to  "Punk-Garage" rather than "Punk|Garage" then you would always get to see your tag on any player.

Removing existing functionality would be challenge for other users potentially.

 

If users could had an option to define their own list of separators, then that might evaporate this and all similar concerns (i think this type of issue does crop up from time to time).

Maybe this is a good compromise on the feature request.

 

 

with respect to original post,

I do agree that increasing functionality around grouping and ordering in views can only help,

and in particular when looking at genres (order alphabetically), group by artist (ordered alphabetically) show albums (ordered by release date) would be a nice view.

Edited December 18, 2018 by ginjaninja

[rumzieee 3]

+1 to the list of people looking for a way to see artists within a genre(s).

This could be done as @Chyron suggested on the Genres page by adding Artist as a layer of grouping before the Albums.

As an alternative solution it would be useful to have genre filtering on the Artist and Album Artist pages, which as of Emby 4.6.7.0 is only an available filter for the Albums and Songs page.

I've had very few problems with Emby, it's awesome. I personally don't have issues with genre splitting, but would prefer to have that as an optional feature in the settings (especially if you add genre filtering to the Artists/Album Artists page )

[JimmyJack 0]

+ another one who wishes to see artist within genre. Would like to navigate: genre/artist/album/

[wordlover 104]

I am bumping this topic and don't understand the discussion above. To return to the original request, which seems simple to implement, I would like to be able to sort by Album Artist within an individual Genre, as can be done now in other library tabs/views. See attached - we can sort by Title (below), please just add Album Artist as a sort option in Genre view.

[Luke 37176]

54 minutes ago, wordlover said:

I am bumping this topic and don't understand the discussion above. To return to the original request, which seems simple to implement, I would like to be able to sort by Album Artist within an individual Genre, as can be done now in other library tabs/views. See attached - we can sort by Title (below), please just add Album Artist as a sort option in Genre view.

Hi, yes we can add this. Thanks for the feedback.

[wordlover 104]

And if you're feeling pressed for space on that sort screen, I expect most users would want to sort by Album Artist more than by some of the existing options there. 

[unisoft 287]

I raised this a while ago with EBR.

Emby USED to have GENRE > Artist > Album and then they blindly changed to the "Spotify" way of GENRE > ALBUM. A useless list of all albums randomly sorted by album name. Using ARTIST groups the albums together.

Its nuts.

I want to use the menu option "Genres" then see all artists who have any albums with tracks tagged with that genre. Tagged as in ID3v2 for the tracks. Anything not tagged as that genre is not displayed for the artist.

Folder view does give me that BUT it has other limitations that are annoying.

 

The emby devs are really dragging their feet over this one. All it needs is a "sort" or "View By" option that is sticky (remembered view). Everyone could be happy then.

I feel quite annoyed by it, as Emby always had it until someone fiddled...I didn't use Spotify because they got their logic stupidly wrong too.

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by unisoft

[unisoft 287]

Here was my original post where I pasted images to demonstrate WHY GENRE > ARTIST > ALBUM is better.....

 

 

[Vicpa 568]

Hi

My thoughts.

1) Browsing preferences for music or any media will vary,  I am all for emby providing options.

2) Functional requirements  for things like Play and Shuffle. 

Oddly I use the Genre by Album view probably the most of any view in emby. lol

Never to browse -Objective "Play some xyz"    -Select Genres  -click on xyzGenre - , Shuffle.

Hopefully we can all agree that functionality is working and should not be impacted by any changes. Same number of albums, same tracks etc. 

 

Genre -> Artist View.

Play/Shuffle button is functionally the same as Genre -> albums. ( the shuffle is exactly the same, Play button produces the same tracks though maybe in a different order)

Artist Detail (what happens when you click on an artist)

For this to add value (Opinion alert)

The artist detail would be filtered to only those items where there is an Album Artist/Artist credit in that genre.

Songs - show only artist credits in xyz track

albums- show only albums tagged with  Album artist in that genre.

Appears on- Show on albums tagged with an artist credit in that genre.

Play/Shuffle buttons. Should only consider Album Artist/ Artist tags in that genre.

@ebr - As you pointed out this mainly to account for Crossover or multi genre artists. The standard artist view would not work in this scenario.

 

@Luke, ebr

Just so we are on the same page. Composer tags are NOT a category for inclusion in any Genre grouping. As outlined above neither is Album Artist or Artist; It is album artist/artist plus   an album or track tagged with xyzgenre.

 

Thanks

-vicpa