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Confusion about music in web client


fraenhawk

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fraenhawk

I'm not sure if I'm just not understanding how the Artist vs Album Artist views are supposed to work, or if there's a problem with the server or web client or maybe this just isn't fully implemented yet.

 

In the iTunes terminology, the artists are specific to songs but not every artists is on every song on the album, thus the album artist is the "primary" artist that's on the album cover. Is that the same intent for MBS?

 

Example. If I'm in Album Artists and click on Dr. Dre I'm immediately switched to the Artists "tab" up top and looking at Dr. Dre. However it shows Albums (2) | Songs (6). Clearly under that (2) are 11 albums?! If I then click songs (6) I see 1-16 of 16?!

It looks like the () counts are accurate for the album artist, but all the results are for Dr. Dre as an artist (Eminem albums and songs).

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  • 2 weeks later...
fraenhawk

Is this a problem with my metadata or is no one really using MB with music at this time? Just wondering if I'm alone with this issue.

I look in the Metadata Manager at Dr. Dre and see 2 albums, yet when I go through the web client I get 11 with no apparent way to filter down to just show the "correct" 2 by album artist. If it's a metadata issue, I'm willing to go through and fix what's needed...

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Vicpa

Hi

I use music with MB all the time. Can you provide a screen shot(s)? Your assumptions in the first post seemed correct to me. Album Artist is the primary or on the cover artist, artists play on tracks, sometimes are listed as Featuring "Joe Person"

 

Below is an example from my library that may help.

 

53ea6e671491e_AlbumArtist.png

 

Like I said screen shots and tags/metadata examples. Should help sort it out

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fraenhawk

So if you go into album artists and click on one, does it auto-switch you over to artists with too many albums/songs showing? Here are step by step pics to go with my original post.

Step one, browse album artists:

53ea783233e2d_screen1.jpg

 

Step 2, pick one and look at the Album (2) vs the 1 of 11. Note that the Blue underline switched to Artists tab:

53ea784c9a1c6_screen2.jpg
 
Step 3, songs tab also shows Songs (6) but at the bottom shows 1-16:
53ea78cfb02f1_screen3.jpg
 
There's no filter option to just see the songs or albums from the album artist that I've found. What I really want is that when it says 2 albums/6 songs I only see 2 albums/6 songs - but only if I got there from the Album Artists tab. I completely understand that if I found Dr. Dre on the Artists tab I should get the 11/16 results back,
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Vicpa

Ah

I understand your question and agree that it looks wrong to me as well. I confirmed the same scenario in my library. We need a dev to look into this.

To help them out I am on the latest beta and to be honest can't remember the last time I looked closely, so can't say if this is a broken item or has always been an issue.

 

 

 

 

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Necker

I don't fully agree that this is an issue. Throughout MB whenever you select a person you are shown all the content connected to that person. For example click on an actor within a film and you are shown the tv episodes as well as films they are in. Click on an artist (in any view) and i would expect to see all the content connected to that artist including music videos, etc (which is what it currently does). I think it just needs splitting out a bit more so under albums you see just the albums where the artist is the album artist, but under songs you see all the songs for that artist.

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Vicpa

Hi

 

Maybe just a question of semantics. Like people it should display in a particular context. If you are in movies and select a person the movies they are in are displayed by default with a click on that screen to select TV and other media, if you are in TV they are displayed by default.

 

For Music it should be Albums, Artist, Songs, Music Video with the default display being the particular context you are viewing. My opinion anyway :)

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fraenhawk

I agree this isn't necessarily a bug, more of a lack of necessary options. Even the screen output is confused. The screens clearly show that it thinks it should be showing 2 albums and 6 songs, yet because there are no filter options to filter by album artist, I'm seeing 11 albums and 16 songs. When I browse by album artist in any other music system, by default I expect to only find that artist's albums, not every ancillary work they're involved in.

 

I see two potential avenues to make everyone happy. One way would be that if I'm browsing by Album Artist, then it shouldn't jump me to the artist tab when I click on one. It should stay with the blue bar under album artist (even if the artist details is identical to the Artist view), but the albums and songs shown are only those when they're the Album Artist. If I'm on the Artist tab and browse to the Artist, same info about the Artist, but the songs and albums are what are currently showing. The Albums(#) and Songs (#) numbers would properly reflect the same quantity shown below that.

Option two would be to keep the "flip to artist" mode that happens, but have a quick and easy filter checkbox like [x] only Album Artist, or something that would toggle the filter for both the Albums(#)/Songs (#) and the lists of albums and songs to either be an album artist or artist search.

 

Right now, I just don't find this usable. If I just want so see what albums I have for that album artist, I can't. I have to look at each title. Even though the song view clearly lists the album artist, I can't sort or filter so they're all mixed together (see my step 3 screenshot). The metadata manager is actually providing a clearer view to my library than the web client.

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  • 2 weeks later...
fraenhawk

Okay, so with the new (3.0.5346.22797) build I see that the totals in parens has been removed. However with the layout changes, we've now lost things that I thought were essential to actually playback album artist songs. On the album page the album artist and album name text have been removed - the only thing we have now is the graphic of the album cover. On the songs page the album artist was removed as well. And can anyone tell me if there's any rhyme or reason to the order of the tracks? I would have thought that the songs list would have at least used the same order as the albums list, but nope, you can see in my screenshots that the songs from the 3rd album in the album page wind up being in the 9th album on the songs page.

53f744bb0ecb6_Albums.jpg

 

 

53f744c545478_Songs.jpg

 

I know we've had this discussion before, but some people would love more options and some people don't want to be cluttered by too many. I don't think a sort button at the top of the columns would have been too much clutter, but now we don't even have column headers on the new version :(

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psykix

I don't like the new layout either, but then I guess it's personal preference. It's going to be difficult to please everyone with the layout I suppose. I still have my music listed in Mediabrowser, but I'm not sure that it's going to suit me for actually playing it. I'm just following progress closely and waiting to see what direction the music support takes.

 

To be honest, I tend to keep reverting back to iTunes as I like the album layout and the visualiser and I've not found any media software that I feel really fits the bill for music. Plex had a nice layout, but why oh why it treats multi disc albums as separate albums I'll never know.

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Vicpa

Hi,

 

Personally I am warming up to the new layout. It still seems to be evolving, I like for instance the new display of multi-disc albums.

To be honest, I am more interested in how music support evolves in the other clients. 

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FrostByte

Got to agree that music is heading in the right direction and I'm really liking some of the new layouts (i.e. multi disc albums) though I'm sure things can always be improved upon.   Playlists however is what was really needed for me to really drop using other programs and now it's finally there

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rickster53

fraenhawk,

 

I agree with your original point about what should appear under album artist--ie. only the albums where the person is the album artist; and not albums where the person is a contributing artist so-to-speak, with a song or two on an album.  Conversely, if I'm looking under artist, I would expect to see any and all albums where that artist contributed to a song.

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