Genre Category Grouping

[moldyboiii]

I look through what album I am going to listen through genre, and I have everything sorted by subgenres. If the subgenres had the ability to be sorted by genre category everything would be much easier to find.  So instead of the my music library looking like the 1st link it could look like the 2nd link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_5rzt489-5o2zn6G2uFmO3cQ7UlDAxN6/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_4_zVGW1tKFoI-5VN429kOvOj58qz1do/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oQhBH6OnLMk4iXXJCdsDYXbs3Sdc_LxS/view?usp=drivesdk

The 3rd link is how Musicbee handles its categories in the settings. They have it where some of the genres are autogenerated, but that's not necessary, having it customizable makes it amazing. This feature could be added somewhere in the list options to be turned on and off, or it could be switched for another grouping like artists or year if it was added. I don't know how difficult this would be to add to the apo, but it would one of my favorite features. Thanks.

[Kundun]

+1, even though it can turn into a standardization nightmare pretty easily, maybe a well-established category system like the one available on RYM can be used.

[andrewilley]

There is no concept of subgenres in Poweramp - nor indeed in ID3 (or Vorbis?) tagging at all. You can have multiple genres - and they are freeform, there is no limit to the number of descriptions you can invent - but they do not have any hierarchical nested structure. The only way to do what you want would be to use nested folders, and use Folders Hierarchy as your Library Category. 

Andre

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley This is feature request forum right? A feature where you can also group things together would be amazing. It would be managed through the app and not the tags. The tags are the subgenres and Poweramp would (if it was added) group them together by parent genre. This is not anything that's impossible. It has been done before.

[andrewilley]

As I said, you can already do it with Folders Hierarchy. Trying to do it with the existing Genre tag format that is read from audio files (ID3 format mostly) would be very difficult to accomplish, especially with free-format multi-genre tagged files now being a thing. But never say never, maybe Max can come up with an idea?

Andre

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley Folders don't support multiple genres though. I mean I could just manually edit every genre like Metal:Heavy or Electronic: House:Tech. I don't even want to estimate how long that would take. I know it would take a lot less time to manually enter in the genre groups like in Musicbee lol. Also, I always see you on here, how do you look for that certain album?

[LABB]

+1

I understand this request. MusicBee does something similar and it's pretty cool.

It would involve something like this: Poweramp detects "Pop Rock" genre tag as a subgenre of both Pop and Rock. It would use internal lists to determine this hierarchical structure, such as a list of strings that stores all subgenres of Pop, and other list to store all possible subgenres of Rock. Pop Rock would be included in both these lists, in this example.

Of course, these lists would have to be editable by the users who which to use this feature, because genre is somewhat subjective, but some common genres could come pre populated with subgenres out of the box with Poweramp. In the example that I gave, the hierarchy is pretty obvious.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, LABB said:

because genre is somewhat subjective

I think that's partly my concern as to how much use this would actually be.

In the good old days of ID3 v1, there were 79 specific defined Genre codes, which were gradually increased to 191 by unofficial Winamp extensions. Those could be mapped. However the tag is now completely free-form, so it could contain absolutely anything - "Rock" or "Pop" can be easily categorised, but where would you file something like "Fluffy pink cuddly music". I guess there could be an "Unknown" categorisation?

To answer the earlier question by the way, I'm probably rather old-school but I generally access my own music by folders. I have folders for overall content: Film, TV, Radio, Music, Podcasts, Christmas, Disney Parks (don't ask! ) and those are further subfoldered as necessary (Music for example has subfolders for Artists and then under those, Albums,. Plus an extra folder for Singles). About 50% of the time I listen in All Songs Shuffle mode - although I still wish there was an easy way to restrict certain folders (such as Podcasts and Radio) from being included in shuffle lists.  

Some of my files have Genre tags, but not all. And the tagging is all over the place when I look in PA's Genre list - e.g. I just found separate 80s, 80's and Eighties - and also Soundtrack, Soundtracks, TV Soundtrack, TV Music and Movies. I guess your category idea would help group the worst cases, but realistically I'd just have a lot of batch editing to do.

Andre

[moldyboiii]

@LABB I just want it to at least be able to group with one parent genre like Metal:Epic Doom Metal, but it would amazing if they could get it like folders but with multiple genre support and it be like Metal:Doom Metal:Epic Doom Metal. 

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley Addressing your concern about the "Fluffy Pink Cuddly" genre, the parent genre would be set on whatever the user puts as it. So lets say they made "Pink Cuddly" the parent genre grouping it would go in the app like Pink Cuddly: Fluffy Pink Cuddly and the genre tags on the song would just be "Fluffy Pink Cuddly". Say if a genre wasn't programmed in the app it would go to "unknown genres" until it is programmed into a parent genre by the user.

Do you make a playlist for those other songs to exclude Radio and Podcast? If so, adding every new album to your library to that playlist would kinda suck.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, moldyboiii said:

Do you make a playlist for those other songs to exclude Radio and Podcast?

No, as I'd need to update it every time I added new tracks to my overall library. I just press the Next Track button whenever a podcast or audiobook pops up in the Shuffle sequence.

Andre

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley i gotcha

[andrewilley]

@moldyboiii It would still be nice if there was some way to restrict certain Folders and/or Genres from being included in Shuffled playback. I would love to be able to hit Shuffle and know that PA won't suddenly start to play a 2-hour podcast, a random audiobook chapter, or a radio comedy show.

That said, occasionally you'll find a gem: a few nights ago I was listening to random music before going to sleep and PA happened to play an episode of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I didn't skip. But generally that would not be what's wanted.

Andre

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley For sure. I'm in full support for any new feature that can be added to the app. You could move those podcasts and other things you don't want to play on shuffle to a different folder then exclude that folder from being scanned. Then, you use a different music player solely to handle them.

[andrewilley]

47 minutes ago, moldyboiii said:

 You could move those podcasts and other things you don't want to play on shuffle to a different folder then exclude that folder from being scanned. Then, you use a different music player solely to handle them.

Yeah, but I do want Poweramp to be able to play them manually, so I do want them scanned. And it's not just podcasts that I'd want to exclude from Shuffled play anyway, I'd also skip full-length radio shows, audio books, concerts (again, full length ones), and even quite a lot of movie soundtrack scores (OK, I might occasionally like to hear the main title for Star Wars when shuffling, but not track #23 score for "Death of Second Stormtrooper On The Left"  )

Andre 

[moldyboiii]

@andrewilley That would be a good feature to have, but I'm just trying to help until they add that feature. Also, I organized all my by my somewhat custom genre tree I made (took as long as tagging the music itself).  I would still like to have a grouping feature although.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aDj8R6A0AJQcrh6cMF0T5p9g3bBVYQuO/view?usp=drivesdk

[LABB]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:05 AM, andrewilley said:

I think that's partly my concern as to how much use this would actually be.

In the good old days of ID3 v1, there were 79 specific defined Genre codes, which were gradually increased to 191 by unofficial Winamp extensions. Those could be mapped. However the tag is now completely free-form, so it could contain absolutely anything - "Rock" or "Pop" can be easily categorised, but where would you file something like "Fluffy pink cuddly music". I guess there could be an "Unknown" categorisation?

To answer the earlier question by the way, I'm probably rather old-school but I generally access my own music by folders. I have folders for overall content: Film, TV, Radio, Music, Podcasts, Christmas, Disney Parks (don't ask! ) and those are further subfoldered as necessary (Music for example has subfolders for Artists and then under those, Albums,. Plus an extra folder for Singles). About 50% of the time I listen in All Songs Shuffle mode - although I still wish there was an easy way to restrict certain folders (such as Podcasts and Radio) from being included in shuffle lists.  

Some of my files have Genre tags, but not all. And the tagging is all over the place when I look in PA's Genre list - e.g. I just found separate 80s, 80's and Eighties - and also Soundtrack, Soundtracks, TV Soundtrack, TV Music and Movies. I guess your category idea would help group the worst cases, but realistically I'd just have a lot of batch editing to do.

Andre

Well, "Fluffy pink cuddly music" actually would not fall under any list in my example of implementation. It could be added to one though, if the user desires. Say, if the user considers "Fluffy pink cuddly music" to be a subgenre of "Pop", they could add this genre to the list of subgenres of Pop. Yes, this feature would have to be editable and "free form" as you mentioned, because it is subjective.

[LABB]

On 7/10/2020 at 4:22 PM, moldyboiii said:

@LABB I just want it to at least be able to group with one parent genre like Metal:Epic Doom Metal, but it would amazing if they could get it like folders but with multiple genre support and it be like Metal:Doom Metal:Epic Doom Metal. 

I don't see why not add subgenres of subgenres.