A rant, and a request ... MM5 disappointing for album focused lsiteners [#15239]

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Barry4679
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A rant, and a request ... MM5 disappointing for album focused lsiteners [#15239]

Post by Barry4679 »

As an album-focused listener I have always been disappointed that MM is very track focused, and does not do as much as it could for album listeners. I had hoped that the MM5 redesign would include some album-focused improvements, such as album level columns like date last played and last play date, and also album-focused smart playlists for MMA .... but MM5 not only has no album related improvements, but we have gone significantly backwards.

Examples:
  • MM5 migration, from MM4, turns off visibility of all of my albumartist nodes, and also defaults them off for any new collections
  • no screen eye candy in the new Home displays for album focused customers ... ie. a hard coded display of the artist tag, which cant be be switched to the AlbumArtist tag
  • can no longer select a whole album via an intuitive click in the whole-album summary cell in the album&Tracks view mode ... the album select action is now "hidden" as a less intuitive click on the album art, and it doesn't always work, as I sometimes just get offered a chance to add new album art, instead of achieving whole album selection ...nb. I haven't checked the latest version as I am travelling, and don't have a PC here
  • and then the one which triggered this post ... albumartist node completely dropped from the sync ->device facility ??!!!!
Looking at discussion linked to below, it seems that MM designers have little understanding of, or empathy for, the requirements from a album-based POV.
https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view ... 747#c50025

eg.
This should be enough imho, I'm not even sure we _need_ the Album Artists node. In case MM4 users find this an issue in MM5, we can keep it there, or even add Track Artists node (default hidden), but it only adds unnecessary complexity imho
That really steams me up. The AlbumArtist index seems essential to me. ... I use MM to bring order and management to a large music collection. ... I play only whole albums, and want the "album" to remain as a top level entity in MM, and not to be deprecated just because much of the music delivery ecosystem is moving towards isolated tracks and mixed track playlists.

The artist index, or a muddied up combination artist index, is not a substitute for the AlbumArtist index for someone like me.

UseCase: Every soundtrack album, or sub-genre box set, that I buy, pollutes the Artist index with another 12-20 extra people that I don't care too much about. The same thing when I rip the tracks on the CDs that come with speciality Music magazines.

I appreciate all these tracks, but all this bloat makes the Artist index largely useless to me, so I bring it back under control by using the AlbumArtist Index, where its "Various Artist" tag entry clears out all the unwanted bloat.

Please consider adding the AlbumArtist index back to the Sync->device facility. ... MMA gets this right ... whatever happened when you started designing MM5?

MM5 should bring me organisation of my collection, as advertised ... ie. I select a custom index that filters to just albums which I have not heard for a while ... that is still too many to sync to my device ... I want a way to browse to select a bunch of albums ... the album artist index of this filtered view is most useful to get this job done efficiently, because it can be difficult to remember all ablum names. .. why remove it??

Jiri, you need to add an album focused person to your design team IMO. ... MM seems to be drifting away from album-focused customers ... eg you also removed tha Artist name from the Album index display in sync->device display ... it was there in MM4 ... an album focused person would know that it is required.

The home screen eye candy should be able to be configured for Album Focused customers.

Another example of the drift can be seen in the MMA playlist browsing facility when in UPnP mode. That should have the same Go To whole album facility that is available in local track mode. ... ie. I want to jump from a playlist track, so that I can can queue the whole album ... available in MMA for local tracks, but not when being used against a UPnP on a WiFi portable disk drive.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
Ludek
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Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:00 am

Re: A rant, and a request ... MM5 disappointing for album focused lsiteners.

Post by Ludek »

FYI: The 'Album artists' node and the artist names to the album nodes were added as items 3&4 in build 2174 (https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15239)
Barry4679
Posts: 2408
Joined: Fri Sep 11, 2009 8:07 am
Location: Australia
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Re: A rant, and a request ... MM5 disappointing for album focused lsiteners.

Post by Barry4679 »

Good, thanks.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
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