Menu Option 'GENRES' for Music, Music Videos and Audiobook Libraries displays ALBUM view. Change to ARTIST view

[unisoft 325]

Currently 4.6 has GENRES menu option going to display a long list of ALBUMS (using the ID3v2 tag name) and this is really not expected as the view as artists can be randomly shown in the list as its done alphabetically by ALBUM name. 

Can this be changed so that the ARTIST (or ALBUM ARTIST) tag is used as the view please because it makes more sense; its tidier too.

When you go into GENRES, you often want to see the ARTISTS or AUTHORS and THEN see the list of work for them such as Albums or Books.

Music and Music Video Libraries:

ALBUMS are assigned to ARTIST in embedded meta data terms

AudioBooks:

BOOKS are assigned to AUTHORS. In this case the actual embedded meta data tags are still the same (BOOKS is ALBUMS and AUTHOR is ARTIST)

 

If this change is completed, the result is that when you select a GENRE e.g. 'Rock', you'll then get a list of artists in that genre. When you find the artist you are interested in, and click it, you then get the albums. This is instead of the current alphabetical list of album names resulting in  far bigger list to wade through if you have many albums (or books). In this current view, the artist work can be repeated multiple times if they released multiple albums and are all over the place because the sorting is on the album name. NOTE: MUSIC library did used to be like the proposed change until changed in 4.6.x!

Edited May 23, 2021 by unisoft

[ebr 15579]

Hi. That isn't really going to work because genres are an attribute of an album not an artist.  Any given artist could exist in multiple genres and not all of their work would lie within the genre you entered through.

[unisoft 325]

4 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi. That isn't really going to work because genres are an attribute of an album not an artist.  Any given artist could exist in multiple genres and not all of their work would lie within the genre you entered through.

Music Library used to be this way? Its the embedded tag GENRE of the file so of course it would work.

It would show the ARTIST that has any tags for the genre in the file. If the artist is in other genres then that file appears there under the artist in the other genre.

If I go into Music Videos browsing for videos to watch, I think to myself, I'd like Pop Music. I go into GENRE Pop Music, and sensibly, Emby would display the ARTISTS that had "Pop" set as their genre. You dont get a messy list of random Albums strewn across the screen because they are grouped under each artist that has a genre of "Pop".

Edited May 21, 2021 by unisoft

[ebr 15579]

3 minutes ago, unisoft said:

Emby would display the ARTISTS that had "Pop" set as their genre.

But no artists have "Pop" as their genre.  Artists would, however, have albums that were pop.

If we showed any artist with any Pop album then, once you entered that artist, you would lose your context of "Pop" because that artist could have a bunch of other things that would show in that view that are not Pop.

So, to do what you are requesting would require creating virtual groupings on the fly for everything.  Not impossible, I guess, but also maybe not practical...

[unisoft 325]

27 minutes ago, ebr said:

But no artists have "Pop" as their genre.  Artists would, however, have albums that were pop.

If we showed any artist with any Pop album then, once you entered that artist, you would lose your context of "Pop" because that artist could have a bunch of other things that would show in that view that are not Pop.

So, to do what you are requesting would require creating virtual groupings on the fly for everything.  Not impossible, I guess, but also maybe not practical...

That's what I meant. The Album has the genre. At the moment, emby just spews out a useless list of albums to wade through, not grouped under any artist. It knows the artist, because that's in the embedded meta data where it read the genre tag for the album.

Here's a picture or two to describe what I mean. Ignore the fact that the picture is actually a folder view - and pretend the images for each genre could be generated by Emby based on embedded genre tags. I'd expect this when going into the menu option of GENRES and then selecting 'Pop' for this example. Clicking on any artist would then show the albums for that artist tagged with "Pop":

Edited May 21, 2021 by unisoft

[unisoft 325]

Using the same embedded tags for GENRE, ARTIST and ALBUMS; AudioBook library types can be as follows (GENRE > AUTHOR > BOOKS):

(Audiobooks use same tags as music for embedded tags, so ALBUMS is Books or Series, and Artist is the AUTHOR!)

Pictures represent GENRES (Based on collated embedded genres from the audiobook files) then for this example, click on 'COMEDY' GENRE then see list of 'AUTHORS' then select one, in this case 'Dad's Army' to see the works of an AUTHOR (i.e. books or series). The ALBUM tag sets "Series 1" or "Series 2" in this example, but works for book names too:

Edited May 21, 2021 by unisoft

[unisoft 325]

And this view would work for Music, Music Videos and Audiobooks because they all utilise the same underlying embedded ID3v2 tags, namely ALBUMS, ARTIST and GENRE.

Emby actually processes embedded data properly. It's just the current view shown when selecting genre option.

TV Library - genres expect to yield the programme titles then the Season/Series/Specials. Because its logical!

Edited May 21, 2021 by unisoft

[unisoft 325]

20 hours ago, ebr said:

But no artists have "Pop" as their genre.  Artists would, however, have albums that were pop.

What you say is correct; quoted above; but with my pictures pasted above in previous reply to demonstrate a list of albums scattered with other artists albums is a pretty useless view!

It needs to be organised by artist view, then when you click on the artists you want, you get a list of their works in that genre previously selected.

[ebr 15579]

13 minutes ago, unisoft said:

you get a list of their works in that genre previously selected.

 

21 hours ago, ebr said:

So, to do what you are requesting would require creating virtual groupings on the fly for everything.  Not impossible, I guess, but also maybe not practical..

The request is here and we will monitor for feedback and consider based on that and complexity.

Thanks.

[unisoft 325]

On 22/05/2021 at 14:42, ebr said:

 

The request is here and we will monitor for feedback and consider based on that and complexity.

Thanks.

Was thinking about how to do this with minimal user impact and all that

How about, simply adding "Artist" under the SORT BY option menu option already there under Genres (and be "sticky")?

This would work for Music, Music Videos and Audiobooks - you could even keep the (stupid) default view of by Albums?

Can't see why this would be an issue as still tidy for you and gives customers choice? The current view is really giving usability issues right now.

Thanks.

Edited May 26, 2021 by unisoft

[tmb4016 92]

From a personal perspective I disagree about adding the extra level of grouping by artist... I want to get to the album as quickly as possible from the genre screen to be able to play it... So I suspect a change like this will definitely polarise opinions

But the option of being able to sort the current view by Artist I see as a good option 

[unisoft 325]

6 minutes ago, tmb4016 said:

From a personal perspective I disagree about adding the extra level of grouping by artist... I want to get to the album as quickly as possible from the genre screen to be able to play it... So I suspect a change like this will definitely polarise opinions

But the option of being able to sort the current view by Artist I see as a good option 

The trouble I am finding, is that MUSIC library **DID** used to sort by Artist under Genres and was changed without any warning.

Family really don't like the view by ALBUMS as artists are listed all over the place in a huge list (if large library).

I agree with what you said though, in that not everyone will agree on ONE view, so hence my idea of a sticky option of "Sort by Artist", "Sort by Album" options. It would then work for Music/Music Videos/Audiobook libraries.

[unisoft 325]

On 26/05/2021 at 13:46, unisoft said:

Was thinking about how to do this with minimal user impact and all that

How about, simply adding "Artist" under the SORT BY option menu option already there under Genres (and be "sticky")?

This would work for Music, Music Videos and Audiobooks - you could even keep the (stupid) default view of by Albums?

Can't see why this would be an issue as still tidy for you and gives customers choice? The current view is really giving usability issues right now.

Thanks.

So can this be done pretty please EBR / Luke?

My request is perfectly valid view type, that if done the way I indicated above, would not affect what you think should be your default view, but flexible enough for a lot of us who prefer a view prior to 4.6.x where we prefer GENRE > ARTIST > ALBUMS view rather than your change to GENRE > ALBUMS. (Music/Music Videos/Audiobooks library types)

As I said the reason is, often the family want to watch something by a GNERE type eg. Pop Music, and then see the artists under the genre and then the albums collected together by that artist. You changed this in the music library to go from Pop Music in this example straight to an alphabetical list list of albums not sorted and grouped by artist. Everyone in household is moaning about this. The ID3v2 tags for GENRE chosen determine the ARTIST tags shown for the ARTIST and then ALBUM tag to show albums.

[Luke 39656]

It's possible for the future. We're monitoring this for community feedback. Thanks.

[dcpete 8]

I have a huge music collection and totally agree that under genres, sorting by album name is completely useless.  I want to sort by artist.  So adding Artist in the sort field seems reasonable to me.

[PuffyToesToo 337]

+1 for this. Album view is not my idea of the default way to organize my screen. 

 

[Roger Graham 6]

+1, I just found this thread after experiencing the same "why am I seeing albums, not artists?" question after tapping on a genre.

However it's done under the covers, you might include an Album/Artist toggle at the top, along with the Play/Shuffle/Sort/Filter options.

[unisoft 325]

On 12/01/2024 at 01:58, Roger Graham said:

+1, I just found this thread after experiencing the same "why am I seeing albums, not artists?" question after tapping on a genre.

However it's done under the covers, you might include an Album/Artist toggle at the top, along with the Play/Shuffle/Sort/Filter options.

That's what I asked for originally but EBR made a big fuss about virtual views required. Emby git it right some releases then changed on belief that Spotifys UI must be right. It isn't in my opinion as a useless list of albums isn't what I want. Genre then artist then the albums listed. Only stuff that has the id3 tag for the genre would be included. If a view option it needs to be sticky too, so that you don't have to keep setting it. There is existing ui space for that under display options for library options.

[MistD 31]

I fully agree to this. It’s one of the Emby’s counter-intuitive things.

In my case i expected to see ALL the music content shown in genre view, not ONLY albums.

This means that if you have “singletons” not assigned to any album they aren’t displayed making the genre view unusable (since you can’t see all music on that genre … only albums)

It just doesn’t make sense …

Either have genre as a filter in other views like albums, artists, album artists etc.

OR have those other “resources” as filters inside genre: artist, albums, songs etc.

Edited January 14, 2024 by MistD

[user24 233]

I agree that GENRE > ARTIST > ALBUMS is a good approach, especially for the large music libraries that many Emby users would have.

There is another thread discussing it here:

 

[MistD 31]

Thinking about this i just realized how hard it is for Luke & Team to please everybody and strike the perfect balance of features and functionality.
 

14 minutes ago, user24 said:

I agree that GENRE > ARTIST > ALBUMS is a good approach, especially for the large music libraries that many Emby users would have.

In my opinion is a little bit of redundant since we have the artist view.
If one wants artists sorted by genre, my intuition tells me that genre should be a filter within the artist / album artist view.

I think Genre should be related strictly to the actual "content", basically the music files (by the same logic only actual movies should be sorted by genre .... not actors). 

My problem with the current approach arises when i have "singletons" (tracks that don't belong to any album) .... totally being hidden from the genre filtering under the "Genre" dedicated view. Yet, i'm not sure what the best approach for this is.

Basically, when we want to browse by genre, i assume people wants to get all the music from that particular genre (not albums, artists, album artists, composers etc.). This can be done within the "Songs" view ...  yet we also have the Genre view. 

Yeah ... hard to strike a perfect balance.



 

[user24 233]

2 hours ago, MistD said:

OR have those other “resources” as filters inside genre: artist, albums, songs etc.

This might be a reasonable way to suit a wide range of preferences? 

[MistD 31]

Yes, i think it makes the most sense to filter whatever you want (artists, albums, songs) inside a particular genre view.

[ebr 15579]

Hi.  I did not make a big "fuss" I simply pointed out that genres are assigned to Albums not Artists.  Therefore, any truly correct view of genres organized into Artists would have to be a virtually created view - or not really correct in that once you clicked into the Artist you would see all their content instead of just the albums of that genre.

That doesn't mean it cannot be done.  It just means it is more complicated or compromised than it may appear.

[MistD 31]

Yeah, from a UX point of view i kind of totally agree with @ebrthat the artist profile page should not be touched.

When you click on an artist image (across the entire Emby software) you should reach his “profile” page with all it’s content (from all genres), albums, apperances, playlists on etc (the way it is currently)

That’s why i suggested that “artists” should be used in genre view as a filter (dropdown filter) … at most.

Listing the artists in genres the way it is in the artist / album artist views but having them display albums and not the profile page will create a mess of confusion … i agree 1000% . 

Anyway …

For me , genres are about the actual songs and that’s it Albums are next in line

Sorting the artist by genre, if done, makes the most sense (for me at least) within the artists “browse” pages (album artist / artists views)