External Playlists titles presented by Albums

[Arkats]

Hello guys,

Sorry if I missed something but so far I haven't been able to find the solution on the forum.

My need is very simple, I have external Playlists (.m3u) on Poweramp, and I would like them to present the titles presented by albums (all titles of an album in one album cover - Exactly like it is presented into Collection / Albums).

So, far I haven't been able to obtain that results...

Thank you very much for your help!!

[andrewilley]

A playlist is simply a pre-ordered text file containing pointers to separate audio filenames, it has no inherent structure or any understanding of concepts such as 'album' or 'artist'.

Poweramp can only display those extra labels because it has already scanned the embedded metadata from the files at the time when it added the files into its music library database.

You can re-sort a playlist based on the associated tag data - such to sort the text list again, using the quoted artist names - but the resulting list is still just a differently ordered series of pointers to audio filenames. 

Andre

[Arkats]

Dear Andre,

Thank you for very much your help.

I understand from your message that i will not be able to get what I want. Fine! :-)

Anyhow, for my understanding... as you write that Poweramp can display the extra labels because it has already scanned the embedded metadata from the files that are pointed in the playlist, why Poweramp is not able to use these metadata to group files together as they share the same album name? (considering that at that stage Poweramp understands the concept of 'album').

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and understanding!

[andrewilley]

12 hours ago, Arkats said:

. as you write that Poweramp can display the extra labels because it has already scanned the embedded metadata from the files that are pointed in the playlist, why Poweramp is not able to use these metadata to group files together as they share the same album name?

That's what Re-Sort does, it rearranges the flat list into a new sequence based on the database-stored information that you choose. But the result is still a flat list, just laid out in a new order, there is no hierarchy or drill-down concept in a flat list.

For example, a playlist is something like the following - a plain text list of where in storage to find a series of unconnected audio files. Anything else is ignored.

#EXTM3U
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Singles/Every Day Hurts - Sad Cafe.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Singles/Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman - Bryan Adams.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Bonnie Tyler/Faster Than the Speed of Night (Remastered 2023)/01 Have You Ever Seen the Rain.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Blondie/Parallel Lines/10 - Heart of Glass.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Meatloaf/I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) [Single].mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Dire Straits/Making Movies/02 - Romeo and Juliet.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Singles/Rosanna - Toto.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Blondie/Parallel Lines/09 - Sunday Girl.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Singles/Take it On the Run - REO Speedwagon.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Bonnie Tyler/Faster Than the Speed of Night (Remastered 2023)/04 Total Eclipse of the Heart.mp3
/storage/emulated/0/Music/Barclay James Harvest/Turn Of The Tide/05 - Echoes And Shadows.mp3

Andre

[Arkats]

Thank you for the precision.

Unfortunately, even the re-sort is not useful for me as the titles are already following each other if they belong to the same album. To give you the context, it is a playlist with the recent titles I have add to my music database. And I add titles of an album all together.

But I still do not understand, why technically it is not possible to display the album cover instead of the track list as the metadata have been scanned for these files. Why the mechanism that allows Poweramp to group and display albums in Collection / Albums cannot be the same for my Playlist where titles belong to the same album.

The great mystery!!

I guess, I just have to live with it!! 🙂

Thank you for your time!!

And by the way, the work that has been done on Poweramp is amazing. Congrats guys!!

[andrewilley]

It would technically be possible to re-code the viewing system to show album names, and offer drill-down, within Playlists - but what would be the point? As far as any player software is concerned, Playlists are just a random collection of songs from anywhere, designed to be played in the precise order that their creator defined.

There is no guarantee that there are even any complete albums, nor what order the songs might appear in. Take my example playlist above (where some favourite songs are in alphabetical order). Bearing in mind the fact that the songs must play in that order - this is a pre-defined playlist, not a group Category like Artist or Albums - how would you present any drill-down information since every line is a song from a different album? It's the same reason that playlists don't have an A-Z scroll bar at the side, it's never possible to guarantee the songs in the list are alpha-sorted.  

Andre

[MotleyG]

16 minutes ago, Arkats said:

Why the mechanism that allows Poweramp to group and display albums in Collection / Albums cannot be the same for my Playlist where titles belong to the same album.

This is not the design intention of a playlist. To view and browse complete albums grouped together you can use the album category. These are two distinctly different groupings.

A playlist is a collection of individual songs from any album you choose. This could be your favourites, dance songs, sad songs, or maybe even just a random selection. This playback order of this collection can be anything you choose and is not based on a disc or track number like an album. So there is no concept of an "Album" within a playlist.

The main difference with a playlist is it doesn't need a copy of the song file, it just "knows" where to find this track in the original storage location.

An Album on the other hand is the collection of songs created by the artist, in the order presented by that release. The disc and track numbers (based on the CD format) identify this order to keep playback aligned. It is this formatting that allows Poweramp to browse this way in the Album category.

[Arkats]

@andrewilley & @MotleyG

I do not necessarily agree with you. For sure, most of the playlists contains singles tagged for any reasons and you want them played in random or in the list order. I have them too like playlists with my favorite songs, playlists with smooth tunes and so on. But in that case, the playlist is my recent added albums and singles. So, that would be much easier for me to see them grouped by album and I choose which one to listen and I go from one new album to another one without trying to find them in Collection / Albums.

Concerning the order as it has scanned the metadata, Poweramp would even be able to play them in order of the track number.

But then, it has come to my mind if it would be possible to sort Albums by dates when added to the collection, and I have seen it is the case. So, that would be a solution to my need. Trying it, it seems to work even if there are some bugs, meaning albums that are displayed like being just added but that are not at all.

So, now I have a question regarding the best way to manage a collection with Poweramp.

Do I need to create a new topic or it is fine here?

I tell you and you will advise me.

I have a large music collection and all tracks are very carefully tagged. I manage everything with MusicBee on my PC. Then I use a synchronization app to update my MicroSD card from my music folder. After some tests, I have decided that the best way was to re-scan entirely my collection each time I was doing an update. And I guess now that may be it might be the reason why the date of added to the collection can be erroneous. As far as I remember, just doing a simple scan was not conclusive, some new tracks were missing.

Thank you very much for your help!!

[andrewilley]

9 hours ago, Arkats said:

Do I need to create a new topic or it is fine here?

Best to start a new thread please, conversations can get very muddled otherwise.

Andre

[Arkats]

Ok thank you!