Introducing a new music library facility to filter artists, albums and songs by media source.
This new feature provides support for users to divide their music into any arbitrary sub-collections that have meaning for them, in a way that is independant of music file tagging, file naming or what is in artist or album NFO files. It is something I have have wanted since I first started using Kodi, I hope that others will be equally excited about it and support my efforts to improve Kodi in this way
I know that users find it much easier to put music in a folder than edit tags or NFO files. With the introduction of the Artist Information Folder for local art and NFO files, we are liberated from having to keep music under unique artist folders (containing all the music by that artist and only that artist), so there is no reason not to arrange albums phyisically in a folder hierarchy that matches how the user accesses their music. Categorising music by putting it under separate folders is a very natural thing to do, for example you could have folders for "Classical Music", "Kids stuff", "Party Music", "those old tapes I ripped", "Why did I buy this" etc., or large collections such as "Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of all time", the possibilities are endless. But until now Kodi did not make it easy to pick music using its physical location other than by using fileview (and not having all the other library advantages), or making custom nodes based on path rules etc. (and having to burrow into the GUI to access it).
This new feature makes use of adding separate media sources as an easy way for the user to identify these different music categories or collections. Maybe, especially if all your music is on one physical drive, you have only ever added one music source, but adding music sources does not have to be done an entire drive at a time, each music source can be a folder, or even multiple separate folders, and folder can be included in more than one souce. Adding a music source makes a great way for the user to specify that the music in this folder (or these folders) is my <whatever you like> music.
Having done that source, much like genre, is offered as a filter rule in smartplaylists and custom nodes, and on the more dynamic (but under used?) media filter dialog available in standard skins on the sideblade for artists, albums and songs. There is also a new sources default library node, that lists the music sources (that have been scanned into the library) and, again like genre, clicking on a source navigates to the list of artists with music on that source, and then the albums on that source by that artist.
I think this is particularly useful for those with large and diverse music collections, or when genre alone is not enough to divide the library into easily accessible chunks. But can you can try it out with more modest size libraries too.
The PR is yet to be reviewed, tested and approved, see https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/14012, so it would be a great help if those of you with an interest in the music library, and perhaps a use for this kind of facility, could try the test build 20180610-166b5650-PR14012
How to get started:
A clean installation is probably best, it will have the new library node. Then add some music sources - divide your albums in some meanigful way - and scan to library. Then explore the new sources node, filter dialog on artists, albums and songs, or make yourself some smart playlists.
[But you can also try out with an existing (upgraded) library assuming that you alreday have multiple music sources. Db gets bumped to v72, and you will still need to rescan tags, even though music files have not changed, to see the source stuff work. And need to add own node is you have customised your library menu layout]
Let me know what you think.
This new feature provides support for users to divide their music into any arbitrary sub-collections that have meaning for them, in a way that is independant of music file tagging, file naming or what is in artist or album NFO files. It is something I have have wanted since I first started using Kodi, I hope that others will be equally excited about it and support my efforts to improve Kodi in this way
I know that users find it much easier to put music in a folder than edit tags or NFO files. With the introduction of the Artist Information Folder for local art and NFO files, we are liberated from having to keep music under unique artist folders (containing all the music by that artist and only that artist), so there is no reason not to arrange albums phyisically in a folder hierarchy that matches how the user accesses their music. Categorising music by putting it under separate folders is a very natural thing to do, for example you could have folders for "Classical Music", "Kids stuff", "Party Music", "those old tapes I ripped", "Why did I buy this" etc., or large collections such as "Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of all time", the possibilities are endless. But until now Kodi did not make it easy to pick music using its physical location other than by using fileview (and not having all the other library advantages), or making custom nodes based on path rules etc. (and having to burrow into the GUI to access it).
This new feature makes use of adding separate media sources as an easy way for the user to identify these different music categories or collections. Maybe, especially if all your music is on one physical drive, you have only ever added one music source, but adding music sources does not have to be done an entire drive at a time, each music source can be a folder, or even multiple separate folders, and folder can be included in more than one souce. Adding a music source makes a great way for the user to specify that the music in this folder (or these folders) is my <whatever you like> music.
Having done that source, much like genre, is offered as a filter rule in smartplaylists and custom nodes, and on the more dynamic (but under used?) media filter dialog available in standard skins on the sideblade for artists, albums and songs. There is also a new sources default library node, that lists the music sources (that have been scanned into the library) and, again like genre, clicking on a source navigates to the list of artists with music on that source, and then the albums on that source by that artist.
I think this is particularly useful for those with large and diverse music collections, or when genre alone is not enough to divide the library into easily accessible chunks. But can you can try it out with more modest size libraries too.
The PR is yet to be reviewed, tested and approved, see https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/14012, so it would be a great help if those of you with an interest in the music library, and perhaps a use for this kind of facility, could try the test build 20180610-166b5650-PR14012
How to get started:
A clean installation is probably best, it will have the new library node. Then add some music sources - divide your albums in some meanigful way - and scan to library. Then explore the new sources node, filter dialog on artists, albums and songs, or make yourself some smart playlists.
[But you can also try out with an existing (upgraded) library assuming that you alreday have multiple music sources. Db gets bumped to v72, and you will still need to rescan tags, even though music files have not changed, to see the source stuff work. And need to add own node is you have customised your library menu layout]
Let me know what you think.
