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Some improvements for the library


pmattke93

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The current Poweramp v3 already seems to be really good in my eyes. But I totally miss (also in the stable Poweramp versions) some features, which would make the library more beautiful :) These are:

Artist / Album Artist images

When you go to the library and select artist or album artist, all artists appear with that same microphone-icon. I'd rather like to see the artist images I used to implement in my music collection. And I think, this would be easy to implement:

I think, if people care about things like this, they also care about keeping their music collection nice and tidy. And I think, a common pattern to organize a music collection is following this folder structure: 

\ArtistName\AlbumName\[optionally some subfolders, i.e. in case of multi disc albums]\Tracks.mp3

Supposing that all (or at least most) songs from a specific artist follow that structure, a possible implementation could be:

  1. Take the first track of each album of the artist (to make sure the file path alters where the album folder is). Of course you could also take every track of the artist but I think this could be bad for loading performance, at least for slower devices.
  2. compare the file pathes and look for the deepest folder which is still equal for all pathes of the selected tracks
  3. Look for an image in that path and use it, if existing, as artist-image

 

An example:

  • We want to get the artist image for the "Red Hot Chili Peppers"
  • So we ask the library for the albums of "Red Hot Chili Peppers" and take the first track of each album. The resultiing pathes are: 
    \Music\Red Hot Chili Peppers\Blood Sugar Sex Magik\01 - The Power Of Equality.mp3
    \Music\Red Hot Chili Peppers\By The Way\01 - By The Way.mp3
    \Music\Red Hot Chili Peppers\Californication\01 - Around The World.mp3

    And so on... 

  • Comparing the strings, and getting the part that equals in all pathes we get: 

    \Music\Red Hot Chili Peppers\

     

  • So now, we can search for image files in that folder and use it as artist image. In my case, the image file is named "artist.jpg". Another cool thing that comes to my mind right now, would be, if multiple artist images are found, show them all successively, like a little diashow, in random order.

 

I hope I'm not the only one who would like such functionality.

 

View Artist as grid

Especially if the above described artist image would be implemented, it would be nice if it was possible to view the artist / album artist view as grid, like the album view. So the artist images would be larger than in the list view.

 

View album image next to the track in the "All Songs" view

The title already says everything. To quickly see, from which album a track in the "All Songs" list comes, it would be nice to see the album thumbnail there.

 

Playing the queue after the current list, if playing "all songs", is useless

Sometimes, when I listen to an album, I think "okay, another album xy is really cool and I want to listen to that, after the current album is finished". That is why I told Poweramp queue in the settings, to play the queue after the current list (folder/album/playlist etc.). I think, this is good for all cases, except when playing "all songs". If I do the latter, there are more than 3000 songs to be played, which means if I pick a song that I want to be played next, it actually never gets played until I go to the settings and set the queue settings to "play queue after current song". But than, the other way around, this is not the behaviour I prefer, when listening to an album. In that case, I always want to finish listening to the album, before any other content from the queue is played, no matter if  there is a single song in the queue or another album.

So, an extra setting for the queue would be nice. I think, the best would be, providing different settings for the use cases:

  • When playing a list (folder, album, playlist etc), you could select between playing the queue either after "the current song", "the current list" or "instantly"
  • When not playing a list (playing all songs from the library), you could select between playing the queue after "the current song" or "instantly". the option "current list" is useless in this case, i think

 

View album year in album list

When I am navigating through the library and select an artist, its albums pop up. Okay. Nice. Now, what I really like in apps like spotify or phonograph, is, that the albums of the artist are sorted by year, and the year is viewed. I find it interesting to see, how old the different albums are, looking at the album view like some kind of discography from a specific artist. So, it would be nice to see the year there, though it's already possible to sort the albums by year.

Oh, and I just realized, that if I invert the year sorting, the sorting actually gets messed up.

In case of Alter Bridge, the albums should be sorted that way:

  1. One Day Remains [Released 2004]
  2. Blackbird [Released 2007]
  3. AB III [Released 2010]
  4. Fortress [Released 2013]

Okay. Now, I select the "Invert" checkbox in the sorting dialog, so I want to see the latest album "Fortress" first, but the actual result will be:

  1. One Day Remains [2004]
  2. Fortress [2013]
  3. Blackbird [2007]
  4. AB III [2010]

I can't imagine what kind of sorting "key" is used there. Looks like it's actually messed up as soon as I invert sorting.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

Quote

 

Okay. Now, I select the "Invert" checkbox in the sorting dialog, so I want to see the latest album "Fortress" first, but the actual result will be:

  1. One Day Remains [2004]
  2. Fortress [2013]
  3. Blackbird [2007]
  4. AB III [2010]

I can't imagine what kind of sorting "key" is used there. Looks like it's actually messed up as soon as I invert sorting.

 

Looks like a bug, it's sorting reverse alphabetical order instead of reverse order by year.

 

 

 

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That sorting order looks like reverse alphabetical order. A few other people have reported inconsistencies with reversed sorts. Personally I used Folders/Filenames for my grouping and sorting, I have more control that way by naming the files appropriately (if I want sort by year for a given artist for example, I add the year to the start if the album's folder name).

At the moment, only one folder-level image file is checked, and that is used for Album Cover if proper image tags are not present in the song files. I agree that it would be nice if PA supported multiple image tags (Album Cover, Artist, etc) at some point. The ID3 spec includes about a dozen types that can be defined.

Andre

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  • 2 months later...
On 26.08.2016 at 0:18 PM, pmattke93 said:

all artists appear with that same microphone-icon. I'd rather like to see the artist images

a very needed and beautiful feature for me also. It could be the image you embeed, or it could download the artist image from the web, and let you decide which one to select. Apple's music player iOS 9.3.3 is doing sooooo great on this feature.

On 26.08.2016 at 0:18 PM, pmattke93 said:

Playing the queue after the current list, if playing "all songs", is useless

again, Apple's music player iOS 9.3.3 lets you decide if play just now, and then return to the current playlist, or play only the selection only.

 

On 26.08.2016 at 0:18 PM, pmattke93 said:

View album year in album list

subscribe !!! Would also be great to see the track number. This is how it looks on iOS 9.3.3: (tapping on Album Cover starts the playback of certain album, no need to Long Tap on it and select what to do)

915ab9516004808.jpg   ae69af516005048.jpg 

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1 hour ago, zlodey said:

again, Apple's music player iOS 9.3.3 lets you decide if play just now, and then return to the current playlist, or play only the selection only.

You can already do this in PA, queue mode can be set to start playing the queue immediately, or after the current song, or or after the current list. As you say, if your preferred list playback tends to be long (such as All Songs) then it would be better to use the 'After Current Song' mode if you ever want to hear your queued songs. You can start playback of the queue manually at any time you like from the Library screen by the way.

Andre

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