Favorite Albums

[andrewilley]

Unfortunately this does seem to be a problem that you've created for yourself, that you now want the app to mask for you. Yes, if you have a load of random individual audio files taken from various different albums and you ask Poweramp to scan them into its Library, then you will indeed see a ton of random albums with only one or two songs present. And yes, that will make it harder for to find your 'real' albums, the ones with all their songs intact.

The solutions are still the same though:

Remove the Album tags from the assorted individual files so they don't create one-off items in your Albums view. This can be done in seconds as a batch process in any decent tag editor. Keep backups of the original files on your main (PC?) storage though so you can still use the songs in albums at a later stage if you want to.
         or
Use Folder navigation.

Andre

[6b6561]

Sound's like Playlist Manager is your ticket out of your problem, give the real albums a rating and then use Playlist Manager as a launcher when you want to listen to a complete album.

[andrewilley]

@6b6561 That would certainly work, but it's a bit of a kludge to have to use a third-party app. I was trying to think of a way around it within the core app - but it's hard to deal with a situation where there are deliberately lots of audio files creating a lot of single-song albums without ending up with a cluttered Albums list.

I still think it would be easiest to use a batch tag editor to remove the 'Album' tag data from files in the first place, if you don't want them to be treated as part of an album. That's what I do: I have a folder of about 1,300 single songs for which I don't have any other associated album tracks. I just set the Album and Album Artist tags to "(Singles)" so they get grouped together out of the way of any genuine multi-track albums.

Note: I use the brackets at the start of the "(Singles)" wording deliberately, so the item gets placed at the start of alphabetically-sorted lists. Otherwise it would be filed under "S" and harder to find. You could use a different character/symbol (e.g. "{" ) to sort it at the end of lists if you prefer though. 

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@6b6561 latest release now has an option to start in a library view, album, artists, tracks or genre

[6b6561]

Hard to tell what's the best news of the day... Today brought me "Start in library" in Playlist Manager and it's also more or less the first day of my 4-5 week long summer holiday. Life is good!
@flyingdutchman A big thank you and I will Paypal you a pizza when I get settled down!

[flyingdutchman]

@6b6561 great, thought you might like it 😎😎

[Ash Roarshock]

I wondered what being able to rate albums would look like and if it would be helpful, but then I look at the fact that I have 4700+ albums and realize that it's as difficult as navigating my artists lists. 

For the Op, you could just add "Favorites" to the genre of any album and it'll show up in it's own "category" under genre... for me, it's still going to be a much larger list than if the heavily requested "Genre by Artist, then by Album" was implemented. The list would be much smaller and easier to navigate.

A sub genre feature would be even better. Then you could go to "Rock" and see a "Favorites" genre under it. You could accomplish this by using different designated splitter characters or everything split after the first genre is the sub.

[eldal]

@Ash Roarshock thanks for the suggestion. I've been making my way around with other workarounds too. I'll check your idea out. The fact that everyone has all these workarounds should tell the team something. 

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, eldal said:

The fact that everyone has all these workarounds should tell the team something. 

Yes, it means that everyone has their own way of using Poweramp, which is a good thing and is why there are so many Categories and options.

But if you stray too far from the accepted and documented use of tags for example, you are likely to create more one-off problems for yourself.

But being able to create Ratings for Categories would be a useful feature overall, and I think is probably one that's worth considering for future development. That's why I added it as a votable item in the Feature Requests system back at the start of this discussion. So far, despite me referring to it in several other similar threads, just 4 people have added their vote for it - so it could do with a bit more general support:

Andre

[eldal]

I hear you. That's how you see it. 

[andrewilley]

3 hours ago, eldal said:

That's how you see it. 

No, that's how it is.

Andre

[eldal]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:22 AM, andrewilley said:

No, that's how it is.

Andre

My perspective is people use a lot of workarounds due to lack of this feature of favoriting a group of songs (album or whatever). As it pertains to this particular thread/feature only. I put my vote in and my opinion. That's all I can do. 

I'm aware the software is flexible and people use it in different unique ways and that's cool. 

I've found the simplest solution for me is just using search, as the albums pop right up there. 

[Wolly143]

On 6/9/2024 at 6:00 PM, Bencherished said:

Wow, how many albums do you have? If you have album(s) you listen to most, why not use most played category, look for one of the songs in the album, long press it, info/tags, and click on the album title, it will take you to that album. 

You can create a playlist, name it favourites, and add songs and albums to it for easy reach. 

Bencherished. 

Hi, I came here for the first time because I love Poweramp but the big thing missing for me is the ability to list favourite albums separately The suggestion 'You can create a playlist, name it favourites, and add songs and albums to it for easy reach' is no good because it lists every track of every album added (too untidy). All I want to see, somewhere, is my top 20 (or however many) albums, click the album - there's the tracks. Seems like an obvious requirement? An easy and useful request? I tried to use the 'vote for Ratings for Categories here on the June 10th post but it said I didn't have permission? Thanks. Fingers crossed. Everything else about Poweramp, as far as my needs are concerned, is brilliant.

[andrewilley]

@Wolly143 The voting system requires two valid posts and two days' membership, to try to cut down on multiple spam votes by fake accounts. There are two requests that might help you.

One is for a new 'Favourites' Category which would allow you to include and rearrange shortcuts to anything you want (albums, folders, artist names, even individual songs) in one place, so you can find them easily and drill down into their contents:

The other is to allow rating of individual Category items - such as albums, folders, artists, etc - and then view the Category lists sorted by those ratings, so your favourites would be shown at the top of the list:

Andre

[Wolly143]

28 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

One is for a new 'Favourites' Category which would allow you to include and rearrange shortcuts to anything you want (albums, folders, artist names, even individual songs) in one place, so you can find them easily and drill down into their contents:

Thanks for speedy reply - I'd like to vote for the 'Favourites' Category but as it's blocked can you kindly put a vote in for me? Thanks. Graham

[andrewilley]

@Wolly143 Please note what I wrote in my previous post, "the voting system requires two valid posts and two days' membership". You should be able to cast votes now as you've made a second post.

Andre

[Ash Roarshock]

On 6/22/2024 at 3:36 AM, andrewilley said:

Yes, it means that everyone has their own way of using Poweramp, which is a good thing and is why there are so many Categories and options.

But if you stray too far from the accepted and documented use of tags for example, you are likely to create more one-off problems for yourself.

But being able to create Ratings for Categories would be a useful feature overall, and I think is probably one that's worth considering for future development. That's why I added it as a votable item in the Feature Requests system back at the start of this discussion. So far, despite me referring to it in several other similar threads, just 4 people have added their vote for it - so it could do with a bit more general support:

Andre

I noticed a few new things to vote on, but I don't think most people who already voted are going back and looking.