Browse by Genre...then by Artist....then by Album.

[jdevgrell]

Hi there. There are a few scattered posts here and there regarding adding an update to the app that would allow one to browse by genre, then by artist (without having to see all the albums), then by album. This is an aspect of music browsing that hardly any Andriod app offers, but has been a standard on iOS since the beginning and it's one of the things I really miss. I love everything else about Poweramp, but what would make it perfect for me is to offer this, since I basically always browse my music by genre. it's pretty annoying to have to scroll through the list of all the albums each time (and the current alphabetic scrolling in Poweramp doesn't work, even when the list is sorted by artist, because it's still paying attention to the album names, not the artist names). In other posts, the developers have said that this was a feature planned for version 2.0, but it hasn't made it in yet. Any updates on whether this is still in the works?

Thanks!!

[bazinga311]

This is the only reason I purchased a different player from the store. Gonemad does genre browsing very well. PlayerPro also supports this feature, but only if you have your view options set to grid and not list. Only other I found that supports this type of browsing is the sensor player.

[cantara256]

Yes please! It's the only reason I haven't purchased Poweramp, I have a large library that is meticulously organized by genre. Going from Genre -> Albums makes no sense.

[Cookie06031]

Is there any way to do this in Poweramp v3? I´m searching through the options of the app for a while now and it´s driving me crazy.

I´d really like a way to set up a Library three levels deep that goes Genre/Artist/Album withouth using folders, because the size of my music collections makes anything else extremely unwieldy.

 

[Absinthequ]

Please add this! Currently Poweramp genre browsing is too congested. 

This and adding multiple artist tag support will make this app untouchable! 

[The Cloud]

I absolutely support the idea.

I've recommended Poweramp to all my friends, but the lack of certain features made them consider other products. I'd definitely use this; and I'm sure the app would be more attractive.

[maxmp]

Thanks for the request. Additional subcategories within certain categories are possible (provably, optionally enabled as needed).

Alternatively, it can show Artists for the category as horizontal scrollable list, so it won’t take too much space and can be enabled by default, but that works only for small number of Artists (as it will be hard to scroll a lot of Artists horizontally).

[Raimo31]

On 8/10/2019 at 4:50 PM, Cookie06031 said:

Is there any way to do this in Poweramp v3? I´m searching through the options of the app for a while now and it´s driving me crazy.

I´d really like a way to set up a Library three levels deep that goes Genre/Artist/Album withouth using folders, because the size of my music collections makes anything else extremely unwieldy.

 

After having check the V3 it's still not possible to browse  by Genre/Artist/Album . It would be great also to have another one by Genre/Composer/album.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Raimo31 said:

After having check the V3 it's still not possible to browse  by Genre/Artist/Album .

Correct. When viewing by Genre you will see a long list of albums which contain tracks that are tagged under that genre (it's actually the tracks that contain tags by the way, not the album as a whole). This list can easily be viewed sorted by Artist, which gives you partially what you want, but there is no 'three-layer drill down' feature that provides a list of Artists which you then need to open in order to see their albums. That type of sorting would currently be best achieved using the Folders Hierarchy category - as long as your music is organised tidily on your storage of course. 

I've been suggesting for a long time that a user-customisable category system (where you can create your own multi-layer sorting and grouping modes) would be a really useful feature for Poweramp, and Max (@maxmp, the PA dev) has said that it is on his long-term radar, but I'm afraid I don't know when it might happen.

Andre

[hrolf1713]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

a user-customisable category system (where you can create your own multi-layer sorting and grouping modes)

Yes. 1000x yes !

[Raimo31]

A user-customisable category system  would be probably the best in term of usage .

But to be less demanding, would a simple additional pre-customized line proposing Genre/Artist/Album sorting of Collection   be not so nice too ?? 

This is  just to get it at the soonest, because less complicated in term of development (IMHO: copy paste of existing part of current dev with small adaptation ... ?)  

Thanks

[Absinthequ]

I agree, Genre/Artist/Album sorting Short-term would be preferred. It does feel like that's a copy and paste category rather than waiting for a hard-to-develop customizeable feature that accomplishes this task. Long Term, I'm sure this would be really cool. Seems like a lot of people have been waiting since 2013 for this feature and every Android music user ever has been waiting for "Multiple Artists"... I would rather these took Precedent, if possible. 😇

Edited January 25, 2020 by Absinthequ

[GeilerHeinz]

The possibility to access my vast music collection in a comfortable way is an essential ability a music player app should meet. That's why I requested several times the genre/album_artist/albums sorting feature when I purchased PA in 2012. Furthermore the forum is full of requests of other users which draw attention on this missing feature. Having to read that this is not even on maxmp's short-term to-do-list is really disappointing. 

[Absinthequ]

I think Poweramp is the best out there... But it's still lacking these basic essential features that streaming services already have.

I'm truly amazed and disappointed that No android player can compare to how some streaming services sort music. No multiple artists support,  no separating of albums,  singles,  ep, guest appearances,  limited genre browsing, limited playlist creation capabilities.

Obviously there are some cool features that the streaming services don't offer,  but there's a huge trade off of the most basic features missing. 

 

[andrewilley]

To be fair, Genre>Artist>Album sorting is already available, however the individual albums with each Genre are still laid out in a 'flat' list rather than having each Artist being available as a separate drill-down level. So yes, within any given Genre you can see all of your ABBA albums first, then ABC, Adele, After the Fire, Beatles, Bee Gees, etc. (Your artists may vary, I guess I'm not a teenager any more  )

While I know there are many areas for which people still have specific wishlist requests (and that will always be the case) I do suspect that as soon as Max introduces this particular thread's requested Genre>Artist>Album drill-down layering, someone will come along and say their life won't be complete until they have (for example) Genre>Artist>Year>Album sorting.  Hence my suggestion that a fully user-customisable Category system would probably be a better long-term solution, rather than adding more and more specific Library Categories to the 20 or so that are already there. And in the meantime, you can always do what I do and use folders, where the only limit to your sorting control is your own imagination in designing your naming conventions.

Perhaps comments like "I'm truly amazed and disappointed" about Poweramp " lacking these basic essential features" are maybe a bit churlish given that PA already has about 20 main Library Categories, each sortable using multiple methods (most offering at least six options, and sometimes with several layers too) and then sortable again at the songs level with around 15 options. Compare that to 'market leaders' such as Sonos, where their app has 6-7 basic categories and absolutely no user-settable sorting options at all (apart from local folder viewing, which allows filename or track/title sorting).

Andre

[Absinthequ]

13 hours ago, andrewilley said:

To be fair, Genre>Artist>Album sorting is already available, however the individual albums with each Genre are still laid out in a 'flat' list rather than having each Artist being available as a separate drill-down level. So yes, within any given Genre you can see all of your ABBA albums first, then ABC, Adele, After the Fire, Beatles, Bee Gees, etc. (Your artists may vary, I guess I'm not a teenager any more  )

While I know there are many areas for which people still have specific wishlist requests (and that will always be the case) I do suspect that as soon as Max introduces this particular thread's requested Genre>Artist>Album drill-down layering, someone will come along and say their life won't be complete until they have (for example) Genre>Artist>Year>Album sorting.  Hence my suggestion that a fully user-customisable Category system would probably be a better long-term solution, rather than adding more and more specific Library Categories to the 20 or so that are already there. And in the meantime, you can always do what I do and use folders, where the only limit to your sorting control is your own imagination in designing your naming conventions.

Perhaps comments like "I'm truly amazed and disappointed" about Poweramp " lacking these basic essential features" are maybe a bit churlish given that PA already has about 20 main Library Categories, each sortable using multiple methods (most offering at least six options, and sometimes with several layers too) and then sortable again at the songs level with around 15 options. Compare that to 'market leaders' such as Sonos, where their app has 6-7 basic categories and absolutely no user-settable sorting options at all (apart from local folder viewing, which allows filename or track/title sorting).

Andre

Could you imagine if you went on Spotify and clicked on Genre and it listed EVERY SINGLE album in the database in alphabetical order. It would take you forever to browse just A. I mean my personal library is over 4000 albums currently. Browsing by Genre->Albums with that many albums renders this category useless on my device. It's quicker to just scroll through Artists to jump to the album.

I will agree Poweramp is unmatched in how many sorting options it actually has. But... Poweramp along with every personal media player I've tried is completely missing a few of the most BASIC... let me stop there and use a couple of different words: STANDARD or COMMON sorting options there is. Let's be honest and not talk about Android or Streaming or Personal Media Player for a second. Let's look at any Discography all the way back to the 90's, what order do you see and what order do you expect to be able to browse if the list was interactive? 

Artists->Albums,Singles+EP's,Guest Appearances->Songs
Albums->Artists->Songs
Genre->Artists->Albums->Songs
Years->Months>Albums->Songs
Playlists

That's the most basic lists since the beginning of any Digital or Interactive lists, and almost all of the streaming platforms have nailed it. Can you honestly say Poweramp or any other non-streaming media player has more than 2 of the 5 fully available?

I know you're saying be thankful for all the great stuff you got, but it's like giving me a huge bowl of my favorite cereal with Bananas, strawberries, blueberries, with some sugar on top, and then saying "sorry no milk or spoon".

I designed websites from 1997-2013 for Gold & Platinum selling Artists, so this is my opinion based on my experience.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Absinthequ

[GeilerHeinz]

I agree that a fully user-customisable category system would be the best solution. I just want to attach importance to this request ... and - I hope I don't sound rude - but I don't want to wait another 8 years. 😉

[GeilerHeinz]

Any news about the implementation of the user-customisable category system to enable browsing within genres by subcategories of album artist/artist? 

Regards 

[Absinthequ]

I think the developer is working on Multiple Artists for the next set of Beta releases...

This is HUGE so I'm anxious for that.

"Browse by Genre...then by Artist....then by Album" is #2 on my list.

If these two are successfully implemented, I couldn't care less if any other feature requests were ever fulfilled. 😄

[afsdasdf]

I registered just to post that I find it absolutely ridiculous that this common sense, basic feature is absent!  My original Creative Nomad let me browse by Genre/Artist/Album/Song, and at the top of each list was a "play all".  It was simple and brilliant.  Why is this so hard to come by in any app.

[MotleyG]

Apparently this isn’t as easy as you would think. So many Android players have limited browser functions, I can only assume this is due to the use of standard APIs. There are a couple of media players that do this = Foobar Mobile is okay, GoneMAD is better. But Poweramp has its’ benefits too.

[flyingdutchman]

You can achieve any sort order by using the "smart playlist" functionality of Music Playlist Manager by building your own query.

[afsdasdf]

foobar2000 on the Play store is AWESOME!  Thanks so much, MotleyG.  The UI is instantaneous, it's simple, it scanned my >10k files in only about a minute, and it lets you browse by Genre/Artist/Album/Song.

[MotleyG]

24 minutes ago, afsdasdf said:

foobar2000 on the Play store is AWESOME!  Thanks so much, MotleyG.  The UI is instantaneous, it's simple, it scanned my >10k files in only about a minute, and it lets you browse by Genre/Artist/Album/Song.

Yes, but it doesn't have any improvement to the audio engine. So you are literally listening to the standard Android protocols. And while the UI is simple, it certainly has many limits that you will see versus Poweramp. Artist splitting is a big one. Plus the handling of playlists is very poor.

I use it occasionally, more as a baseline. But for times when plugging in headphones and sitting down for a good listen, it isn't my first choice.

[afsdasdf]

Excuse my ignorance, but what's the point of a better audio engine?  Is that only for applying EQ or DSP to the sound?  In my case I'm just playing MP3s and sending it over Bluetooth, with no extra processing, so it would seem that standard methods should work perfectly.