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[baldo]

I would call this a first world quality problem.

I have a large music library made up of all kinds of music. But I dont listen to it as often as I would like to. One of the reason is that I dont really enjoy sitting at my computer looking for music to listen to. I end up playing around with the library and settings etc.

I have a lenovo tablet that I bought specifically so that I could sit on my couch and flick through my music collect and listen but that has not worked either because I can't seem to find the music easily.

What I would like to do is so be able to discover music from my library, Hell, if it is in there, its there for a reason and I must have liked it as one point.

I miss the days when I could just look at my whole CD collection and pick a CD I had not listened to in ages and just pop it in the player. I could see all the operas that I had, nicely arranged by composer, I could see all the albums arranged by artist. Of course now only 1/3 of music library are my CDs so that is not possible.

I was thinking of printing off all of my library into a pdf but that would take about 1200 pages and soon be out of date.

Any suggestions or ideas how I can wander through my music library and appreciate the great music that I have?


For the record, I have no interest in streaming services like Spotify, Apple music etc.  I love JRiver as my music library manager and not these services that I have to pay for and that want to shove stuff down my throat. Sorry for the rant!

Looking forward to hearing what folks here do.

Thanks

[JimH]

Play Doctor
and Search DJ

[baldo]

I dont really know how to use Play Doctor or search DJ. maybe there are some youtube vids that explain these??

In any case, I know how to search for files and artists etc, What I am talking about is discovering what I have in my library without having to search.  Searching assumes I know what to look for.  I don't know what I am looking for.

Think of of it this way, if  I want some steak, I go to the butchers or meat shop and get a steak.  That is searching for something specific.

On the other hand, say I just feel hungry and I don't know exactly what I want to eat but I feel like something from Wholefoods. So I go to Wholefoods and walk around to see what they have and what takes my fancy when I see it.
 
Its the second option that I want to do with my music library. I want to narrow down what I see by some parameters and see what I have.

Hope that makes sense.

I know that I have to spend some time making sure the data is tagged correctly, and I have already spent a lot of time doing that.  But
I still can't seem to have a way to walk around the "Wholefoods" of my music library.

Any more ideas?

[JimH]

The wiki has a topic on Play Doctor.  Search the forum for more.

[mattkhan]

assuming it's on your tablet then it means using panel or jremote which is basically a way to browse through your library based on tags and expressions, e.g. music > artist > album so you'll get a list of artists and then a list of albums for a particular artist. I don't know how you'd do this to "discover" which often means something more like "show me stuff similar to this thing I'm looking at" except doing something like sorting by when you last played something (to push not recently played things to the top of the lists)

I'm not aware of any feature that shows related content in the remote views which sounds more like spotlight but, as far as I know, spotlight isn't limited to related content that exists in your library so doesn't serve this purpose either. As far as I know, this means you just have to define some views based on tags/expressions that will surface things of interest to you.

[MikeO3]

Here are some pics how to use it. I just used the word "Guitar" and as you can see you can't get much more random 100 track spin list from your library... Using the word Steak also yielded a set of Jazz music.

Other terms to randomize Genre Jazz gets 100 Jazz songs or tracks with similar beats. Rolling Stones will generate a 100 Stones related tracks from various artists. To get a new list, stop playing and the Playdoctor Search DJ will come back.

There is an Options dropdown to randomize even more or set boundaries of the search scope.

You can also create Smartlists to randomize a number of Genres into a Playlist set.

[jctcom]

I also add things like this to my smart lists.

Last listened to: at least 90 days.  Or I have some play lists with that entry for 1 year.

This ensures that I am not listening to anything I have heard recently (Of course barring duplicates on multiple albums and / or Anthologies or Compilations).

Still though. It works pretty well.

Carl.

[Moe]

How well are your music files tagged?

If they are well tagged you could easily set stuff up so you could view your collection by year, a range of years, genre, composer, soloist, conductor, by date you imported it into your library, etc. etc.

If you want to discover stuff and be surprised, a simple thing you could do would be to make a playlist that plays X amount of random songs

I miss the days when I could just look at my whole CD collection and pick a CD I had not listened to in ages and just pop it in the player. I could see all the operas that I had, nicely arranged by composer, I could see all the albums arranged by artist.

You could do that easily, assuming your files are tagged correctly.  Get your view setup and then browse via theater view.

[baldo]

thanks Moe,

Tagging of the files seems to be like painting The Forth Bridge!  A never ending task.  I work at sporadically and I would say that about I'm about 95% of the way there with Tagging now. 

[baldo]

Thanks for the pics Mike.

I think that what I want to do for now, as the next step is to get my tablet views working the way that I want to.

The screenshots look like they got a good amount of detail and that is great when working with the computer screen and that is what  I want. However, for sitting and just browsing through my library with my tablet I want a more minimal view. I just want to see the bare bones, ie something like Artist/ Albums, Genre, Decade. 

Still working on the Tagging issue. Slowly, Slowly....

[MikeO3]

Cool. Ya, tagging is one of those things that needs a good start and you standardize your workflow. Don't get discouraged... Start with letter A, B, etc. After 100 Albums it will be no sweat! lol

I use Smartlists to help me out when I import new tracks or clean things up. Since I am just listening to music , I figured I could share a few. I have limited myself to about 50 genre which fits nicely in my 10" tablets.

Import the following code snips into new Smartlists. (Most are derived from the default JRiver and the Wiki references)

Audio -- Task -- Blank Album Artist

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Album Artist]=[] ~sort=[Artist],[Media Type],[Album Artist (auto)],[Album],[Disc #],[Track #],[Name]
Audio -- Task -- Empty properties

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[audio] ([Album]=[] or [Name]=[] or [Artist]=[] or [Genre]=[] or [Track #]=0)
Audio -- Task -- Field Mismatch (Album)

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] -[Album Artist (auto)]=[/(Multiple Artists/)] ~nodup=[Album],[Genre] ~dup=[Album],[Artist] ~sort=[Album] ~a ~sort=[File Type],[Album]
Audio -- Task -- Needs audio analysis

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[audio] [=isequal(AudioAnalysisState(), Needed, 1)]=1
Audio -- Task -- No image in inside file (assumes Folder.jpg is default)

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Image File]=[Folder.jpg] -[File Type]=[sacd],[dff]

Find and Replace is a great utility to manage the file system. Use with caution and read the Wiki before mass updates. Mileage varies on Classical album sets depending how you want your structure to be.

Something like this cleans up nicely with path and track format.