Add grouping options (Files, Folders, Albums) to the Recently Played list

[VVB]

It would be good to have grouping options in the Recently Played list:  Files(or Tracks), Folders, Albums.

"Files" should be the default setting for the list of recently played files as it is now. Pressing on the list item will switch to Playing Now screen with that track. Folders or Albums options will provide list of recently played folders or  albums, that list should be built from the played file list.  Pressing on the item in the folder list should switch to that folder in the folder browser. And from the list of recent albums we should be switched to Album browser with that album.

I use "recently played list" quite often and in my usual scenario on the Playing screen I need to click on menu and then on Folder or Album, so Next/Previous buttons will switch tracks in the corresponding folder or album. Otherwise after coming from "Recently Played"  the button Next/Previous switches tracks within recently played list.

It might be useful to provide such grouping options for the Most Played list as well to get list of most played folders and albums.

Thank you.

Edited February 25, 2023 by VVB

[andrewilley]

As I said in the other topic, the Recently Played list shows songs/files that have been played recently. You don't actually play a 'Folder' or 'Album' per se, you play a selection of songs which happen to be ordered by those methods, but they are still just audio files as far as that list is concerned.

You can show the Recently Played list sorted by various criteria (such as sorting the songs by their artist name, or album name, or the folder they were found in) but they are still individual files, not Folders or Albums. However IMHO that does rather negate the point of a 'recent' list, where you really want to see the items that you have listened to most recently at the top of the list.

Andre

[VVB]

@andrewilley Yes, I tried to sort the Recently Played list by album or path and it doesn't make much sense for this particular list as it's still list of files but ordered not by time. That's why I suggest to add such a feature - to get time ordered list of Recently Played Folders or Albums and those lists should be built from the current list of played files - that feature will provide a history of played folders/albums and will add a new convenient navigation option, i.e. shortcuts for the scenario which I described. Thanks.

Edited February 25, 2023 by VVB

[andrewilley]

As I've said, there is no concept of a 'played' Album or Folder,  only of individual files, which may or may not happen to be in albums with other songs, which also may or may not have been played recently. But it's the files that Poweramp plays and logs.

Andre

[VVB]

@andrewilley Yes, it's the list of recent files and it's possible to provide direct navigation from that list to the list of containing folders or albums. File properties contain file path, i.e. folder, and looks like album link is stored too since we can navigate to it going from recent list to playing screen and then to its album from local menu item. That's why it's possible to built folder/album list from recent file list. Thanks.

[andrewilley]

How many times can I repeat the same thing: the Recently Played list shows songs that have recently been played. There is no log of whether a whole album, folder, artist, composer, year, genre, or any other possible tag has been played. Only individual songs.

If you start a song playing from any Category, the intended design logic is that the chosen category will be used for song-to-song sort ordering. So in this case, Recently Played will be used, and only songs from the  Recently Played list will be heard.

While playing though, you can then directly switch from the current playback category to another one (Folder, Album, Artist and Genre are supported) via the menu button.

Andre

[VVB]

@andrewilley Sorry, Andre, you describe the current implementation. This forum section is for new feature requests according to its name, and this is a suggestion to add natural grouping or sub categories to the Recently Played category. In my understanding that is doable and it will be a useful feature. Normally we can expect a resolution from  @maxmp or Dev Team about implementation possibility and wether it is intresting to add such a feature. Thanks.

[Kundun]

We've already talked about a similar request here and similar remarks were arose. I don't still get @andrewilley 's take, of course we're playing just files with ID3 tags, so which is the point of using a music player instead of a file manager?

An Album is an abstraction, but to stick to the just files paradigm seems reductive for a music player. If I put a CD on a physical player and listen to a single song, when was the last time I listened to that album? Those are just syntactical tricks, the user should decide if that's a useful feature or not, not a philosophical debate on if you listen to files or to an album.

Plus this feature is implemented in most mobile music players (I remember it being the default sorting for Google Play Music in 2014).

Really hope seeing this addressed in the 96X development cycle or in the future, it appears that I'm not the only one wanting it.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Kundun

[maxmp]

4 hours ago, Kundun said:

Plus this feature is implemented in most mobile music players (I remember it being the default sorting for Google Play Music in 2014).

It's not grouping. It's last played "categories" (e.g. last played albums). Never seen track grouping, though of course this is possible. But it doesn't bring any functionality, just small visual tweak, if it's grouping like:

Album a ---
- Song from album a
- Song from album a
Album b --
- Song from album b
Album c --
- Song from album c

And if you play something in shuffle all your recent files will be cluttered with all those albums headers.

As for last played categories, that's possible, but should we have "Last played *", where * is category (11+ categories)?

Or may be you mean you want a few recent played albums (like 10) as a horizontal scrollable list on top of Recent files, like in some other players?

[Kundun]

Thank you for your attention Max, I don't want to hijack this thread and I don't know which solution OP suggests, but in this thread we already discussed some solutions.

I haven't thought about a solution based on headings, I was thinking more of displaying the album instead of the tracks (maybe a checklist option with "Show album instead of single tracks").

For an example, let's assume the following is a screenshot of my "Recently played" category:

 

 

After selecting the checkbox the result should be something like:

 

 

Then you can have two possible solutions:

• The album view contains just the songs that you've listened recently (for example in shuffle mode)
• The album view contains the whole album

 

This is of course just one of the possible solutions, I still consider adding the "Sort by recently played" sorting option to other Categories a better solution, at least compared to this one related to the "Recently played" category.

We have thoroughly discussed the topic in this thread and several people manifested their interest over time, so I hope it takes a little traction

 

 

[Kundun]

2 hours ago, maxmp said:

As for last played categories, that's possible, but should we have "Last played *", where * is category (11+ categories)?

As I said I still consider adding a new sorting to other categories a better solution than to add new "Last Played *" categories or to add a grouping to the "Recently played" category.

By adding a new "Last played" sorting + using the Reverse option a user could also see which (for example) albums he has never listened to or which album were played a long ago, something that you can't achieve by adding a new grouping in "Recently played". TBH a feature that I consider quite useful.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Kundun

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, Kundun said:

As I said I still consider adding a new sorting to other categories a better solution than to add new "Last Played *" categories or to add a grouping to the "Recently played" category.

I think that would make a lot more sense, rather than what was originally being proposed which was to somehow tag 'recent albums' (or recent Folders etc) into what is intended to be a recently played songs list.

So for example in the Albums view you can currently set a sorting option of 'By Year'. Although 'Albums' don't have Years as such (because they are just an abstract based on a bunch of audio files with matching Album and Album Artist tags) a year value can be inferred based on checking the Year tag from one of those matched songs. I wouldn't think it ought to be too hard to similarly create an interpreted 'Last Played' time/date value for an entity such as an Album by checking the Last Played Time for each of individual files. OK technically it would not be the last time that the full album was played, but it would indicate the last time you listened to at least one track from an album.   

Andre

[Kundun]

27 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

So for example in the Albums view you can currently set a sorting option of 'By Year'. Although 'Albums' don't have Years as such (because they are just an abstract based on a bunch of audio files with matching Album and Album Artist tags) a year value can be inferred based on checking the Year tag from one of those matched songs. I wouldn't think it ought to be too hard to similarly create an interpreted 'Last Played' time/date value for an entity such as an Album by checking the Last Played Time for each of individual files. OK technically it would not be the last time that the full album was played, but it would indicate the last time you listened to at least one track from an album.

Yes, exactly what I was referring to, thank you for your effort for verbalizing it properly Andre!

[VVB]

7 hours ago, maxmp said:

It's not grouping. It's last played "categories" (e.g. last played albums). Never seen track grouping, though of course this is possible. But it doesn't bring any functionality, just small visual tweak, if it's grouping like:
Album a ---
- Song from album a
- Song from album a
Album b --

I suggest to add local switches on the Recently Played screen - for ex. buttons above the list (Files, Folders, Albums) with Files as default setting, as described. Users who play something in shuffle won't use those switches and current functionality will be preserved for them. Users who play more folders and albums usually have corresponding sublists in the recent list. So if Folder switch was selected this option will be saved and Recently Played screen will provide a much shorter list of recent folders (without files):
- Folder a
- Folder b
...
And that will be not just a visual tweak but very useful navigation shortcut to the particular folder. Otherwise I have to go to it via playing screen and menu/folder in it - my current usual steps.  I understand that this improvement reguire much less efforts in comparison with adding a new sorting option "by playing time" into the main categories. You can build Folder/Albums sublists from the existing recent file list.  Global sorting option would be useful too but that is much more costly in development terms. Thank you.

[andrewilley]

19 minutes ago, VVB said:

 I understand that this improvement reguire much less efforts in comparison with adding a new sorting option "by playing time" into the main categories.

I would have thought that adding a "By Recently Played" sort option into some other Categories (such as Folders, Albums, etc) would be much easier to implement. It would work in much the same way that 'By Date Added to Library' or 'By Year' (for Albums) does now, in that it would sort the chosen entity (which does not really posses any such concepts) by the properties of its song contents instead.

Andre

[VVB]

@andrewilley You may be right and adding that global sorting option into main categories is not a big deal - depending on the implementation. Still sorting by "Year" or "Date added" is kind of static operation, i.e. based on static properties which are set once during library rescan. "Last time played" on the contrary will be a new property which should be updated dynamically in real time for each main category data types: files, folders, albums,... That means a deep integration into the player core functionality, more risky for possible new bugs, etc.