Any way to make Emby display lots of cool metadata (like Roon) for music?

[Donny Bahama 1]

Roon focuses on 'audiophile sound' and seamlessly integrating a variety of hardware and streaming services, but they also have a KILLER UI with awesome metadata - images, wiki-esque artist/album information, interesting trivia, etc. (If you haven't seen it, go here.)

 

 

Roon looks at your music and finds photos, bios, reviews, lyrics, and concert dates, and makes connections between artists, composers, performers, conductors, and producers.

What you get is a searchable, surfable magazine about your music.

 

I'm just starting on my Emby journey and I don't really know yet what's available. Is there an Emby plugin that brings in metadata and attempts to recreate (something close to) the Roon UI? If not, is there a plugin architecture in place that makes this possible? Any developers out there who would like to work with me on this?

 

From my limited us so far, Emby is already doing a great job with Movies and TV shows; I'd love to see it become known for its awesome music features.

[Luke 42079]

Hi there, what's at the top of your list that you'd like to see?

[pwhodges 2012]

A large part of Roon's advantage is their own awesome database of metadata (my son contributed to its design, making it more friendly to classical music). I can't imagine that they would make this available for anything less than a ridiculous cost (if at all). And anyway, if, like me, you have a lot of non-commercial recordings, it falls flat on its face.

[Donny Bahama 1]

Hi there, what's at the top of your list that you'd like to see?

 

Hi, Luke! Thank you for asking! It would be hard to take one thing and put it at the top of my list... it's really the complete package, but if I had to summarize it, I'd say it should look more like a sophisticated, glossy magazine, put together by very talented graphic artists - rather than a "media player app". If I was put in charge of designing a new UI, it would look something like this...

 

 

The screen would be split (approximately) in half, with the main "control bar" dividing the two halves of the screen. The control bar could be dragged up or down to change the size of the upper/lower sections.

The upper section would consist of a nice piece of fan art as the background - swipe left/right to change the image. (Clickable arrows would be displayed if you're on a traditional computer but I'll focus on a tablet interface for the rest of this.) Below that, the artist bio - again, swipe left/right to switch to a different bit of text (an interview, allmusic.com artist overview, etc.)

The lower section, from left to right, would have a "feature text" section about the album. Swipe up/down to see different text about the album. In the center, a nice shot of the album cover, and to the right of that, a track list (with or without track duration times - a user preference). Tap any track for a small popup to start playing the track (with buttons for selecting the source - a disc icon if the track is in the library, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, iTunes, etc.), favorite it, add it to the queue, add it to a playlist, etc. Swipe left/right on the bottom section to switch from album info to album personnel (including producer and studio info), the artist's discography, awards, related artists, and a genre tag cloud.

 

A large part of Roon's advantage is their own awesome database of metadata (my son contributed to its design, making it more friendly to classical music). I can't imagine that they would make this available for anything less than a ridiculous cost (if at all). And anyway, if, like me, you have a lot of non-commercial recordings, it falls flat on its face.

 

I hear ya. A lot of this content would have to be contributed by the user community. The thought bubble in the control bar is for activating the social media controls, allowing the user community to add images, text (with attribution), user reviews, etc. Once the thought bubble is tapped/clicked, each of the elements on the screen would have a little overlay - thumbs up if you like it, thumbs down if you don't, and a flag in case some moron tags a Miles Davis album with the Classic Rock genre. (It's bound to happen and I suggest a three strikes rule -- if it's flagged by 3 separate users, it goes away without moderation.) Music lovers tend to be passionate about their music, so I think people would be quick to contribute a variety of content -- including information regarding non-commercial recordings. Over time, I'm confident that this would grow into something pretty robust and extraordinary.