Any way to view the genre on a selected album?

[Tetrachromacy]

Hello,

Longtime iTunes user who recently switched to MM a few months ago. I was wondering if anyone knows if there's a way to display the genre when you have an album "selected" like iTunes does.

Example:

In iTunes, [when you select an album] to view its track list, it shows the album name, artist name, genre, and year at the top.

In MediaMonkey, [when you select an album] to view its track list, it shows everything iTunes does except for genre.

Is there any setting that can enable this? If not, I think this would be a very nice feature to add.

[Lowlander]

No, you'd need to click through to the Album instead.

[Barry4679]

No, you'd need to click through to the Album instead.

To explain that a little more clearly, as I am guessing that it is unclear to you.

If you look at the image that you posted.
You clicked on the cover of Tago Mago (one of my favourite albums btw )
As you have seen, that opens the album to show its track list.
Both the album name and the albumartist, before you made the click, were also click zones.
They open a detail panel or either the artist, or the album.
Here is the detail panel for Tago Mago.
There is one questionable detail though. Those will not be your Genre designation for the album.
They are from Wikipedia.

Also it is worth noting that MM allows for Genre tags at the track level. You can supply a Genre tag at the album level, but all that it does is overwrite the tags for all the individual tracks.

[Tetrachromacy]

No, you'd need to click through to the Album instead.

Ah, I forgot about that feature. It helps, but as Barry mentioned, it lists the genres are defined by Wikipedia and not necessarily the ones I have saved on the tag.

I guess there is no current way to display the genre on the first clicked album menu, but I think that would be a great option to add to MM. Basically right in between the Album Name and the (Year) portion of the first album panel, or even below the Album Name and above the Artist Name - like it shows on iTunes.

So, thank you both for your reply. I guess this post serves as a feature request, then.

[Lowlander]

Genre will be shown with each file (if you enable the column).

[Tetrachromacy]

Genre will be shown with each file (if you enable the column).

Can you explain how to enable this in options? I cannot find it.

[Lowlander]

Depending on the View you can enable/disable columns to be shown. So for example the List View allows you to view the Genre column, which shows the Genre values of each file shown: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... _are_Shown

[Barry4679]

Ah, I forgot about that feature. It helps, but as Barry mentioned, it lists the genres are defined by Wikipedia and not necessarily the ones I have saved on the tag.

One problem is that there is no Genre tag at the album level.
The genre tag is at the track level only.
If all tracks in an album have the same genre this is not an necessarily an impediment.

I guess there is no current way to display the genre on the first clicked album menu, but I think that would be a great option to add to MM. Basically right in between the Album Name and the (Year) portion of the first album panel, or even below the Album Name and above the Artist Name - like it shows on iTunes.

So, thank you both for your reply. I guess this post serves as a feature request, then.

You can do somewhat better than what Lowlander is suggesting.
The proviso is that you have to use up (lose?) a bit of space by having the right hand side column open.
In this image I have a Thelonious Monk album selected. It has opened a detailed popup for the the album, which has no Genre tag.
Since the album has been clicked (selected) it is featured in the "Selected" panel, at the right.
That panel can be configured to show Genre, but as I mentioned above this will just be genre of the selected track, which is the first track by default.

To achieve this there are a couple of steps:

1. Enable the "Preview" panel via the View>Layout menu item
2. When the Preview panel opens, it can be toggled between "Selected" display and "Playing" view ... toggle to "Selected", by clicking on the heading
3. Click on the 3-dot menu in the "Selected" panel, take option Layout and select the Advanced option
4. click the cog icon and add Genre to the list of tags to be displayed

The good news is that this configuration is sticky, ie. it will persist when you next open MediaMonkey

So, thank you both for your reply. I guess this post serves as a feature request, then.

I support your request, although I would like it to be generalised.
I would like MM5 to display the album summary tag there, and that they would allow us to customise the contents of that tag, just as we can with the Track Summary tag.

[Tetrachromacy]

Depending on the View you can enable/disable columns to be shown.

Since I'm exclusively using the grid view (to see all my album art displayed beside each other) this doesn't really scratch that itch for me as a solution, but thanks.

You can do somewhat better than what Lowlander is suggesting.

Oh wow, I did not realize you could do that. That gets me halfway there. I've enabled it on my layout and it'll probably be a permanent addition now. It's nice to be able to see the genre (also artist, album name and year) for the current playing album (like this: https://i.imgur.com/L7EffKo.png). Thanks for pointing that out.

But yeah, it still would be nice for a genre to be linked at the album level like the year is, and to be able to see it ala my original post. Because as I familiarize myself with more music genres, it's nice to be able to quickly click an album and see what genre I have it saved as.

As of right now to quickly check a genre's album, I'd either need to play the album to see the preview I just added (interrupting what I'm currently listening to) or right click + properties on the album to see additional info.

Again, thank you Lowlander and Barry for the suggestions, workarounds and information, it was all very helpful. Now I just cross my fingers that my suggestion is good enough to be added to the stock program. Cheers, fellas!

[Barry4679]

As of right now to quickly check a genre's album, I'd either need to play the album to see the preview I just added (interrupting what I'm currently listening to) or right click + properties on the album to see additional info.

No, you don't have to do that.
MM can have multiple tabs open concurrently. ... one is on view, and the others remain "open", but are stacked behind the front panel.
You could use one tab to show the Playing display, if you want to have this on display.
And you could use another tab to browse your Collection, ie. the Music, or Classical Music, or Entire Library nodes.
The "Selected" side panel will show the selection from whichever is the currently selected front tab, so no need to interrupt whatever is playing.

Or you could activate the "playing list", and have this share the right side panel, with the "Selected" (aka Preview) panel. That way you can observe and control the play queue without occupying the main panel. Set this up via the View>Layout menu item.