genre/year in place of track time/play count on Track Listing?

[wwwombat]

I've read the skin tool manual provided with the program and tried to press a few buttons but I still don't get it.

Since I assemble a "Greatest Hits" collection album for each artist in my jukebox I would prefer to see the year that the track was released, and the genre of the track (yes, most tracks by the same artists are usually the same genre but occasionally there's a difference) in place of the Track Time and Play Count values that are currently there on the TRACK LISTING SCREEN which I currently don't display/don't care about.

So...can I do this through the skin tool or do I have to hack the raw files somehow? Is it possible at all to alter what is displayed in these areas on this screen (and, if not, could it be?)

I can see that Label 3 and Label 60 are on that page but I don't see how I can change them (nor for that matter how you find out what Label3, Label4, Label5 etc. actually equate to) to hopefully equivalent track labels for year/genre.

[Barcrest]

There isn't any support for showing year and genre per track as it's assumed this is the same across the album.

[wwwombat]

Bugger... that's definitely not the case in my setup nor would it be, I suggest, on most Various Artists compilations discs that aren't a "NOW Summer 20xx"-type release (genre would most probably be different and year, in some cases (i.e. if it's a collection of one hit wonders) may not be).

With regards to "There isn't any support for showing year and genre per track as it's assumed this is the same across the album" I assume you mean on the TRACK LISTING SCREEN since the filters for genre and year seem to take the individual tracks into account (even though it shows the whole album in the display and not just the applicable tracks).

You obviously meant (on this screen) the year to indicate the release year of the CD but, since I'm taking a more "singles" based approach (more appropriate for a jukebox IMHO), if an artist ever releases a "Greatest Hits/Best Of" CD I tag each individual tracks with the year that track was first released (i.e. If I had my jukebox to select only tracks released in the 1980s in random play I would expect it to select from & play most of the Dire Straits tracks there... not from 1998 which is when their Greatest Hits CD was released) so that's how I'll continue to tag them.

So, given the genre and year tag still relates to the track (I assume you just assume the genre/year found in the first track of an album is indicative of the whole?) not the album is it possible/how do I display the year and genre on the individual PLAY OPTIONS SCREEN?

For that matter, can I take any of the metadata presumably available to you (through the tags) and alter the display as I see fit? With respect to skinning does this mean that currently all I can do is alter the graphical appearance of the screen i.e. the text labels themselves must always be present... I cannot add to them... I can only move some offscreen if I do not want them displayed (unless there's an option in the config to turn them off)?

Does this mean that most of you guys out there really do run this as an album jukebox? Do you do this just because it's easier to add an entire album rather than individual tracks? If you study your play history do you find that your users (i.e. not yourself) do regularly play the entire album or obscure tracks or do they just hone in on the accepted "radio" hits? (which is what my system seemed to show when I did have whole albums on there which is why I've restructured in the fashion I have)

[Barcrest]

Well if you wanted a singles based jukebox this is perfectly possible but involves setting it up different to how you have done it. If you want to have it set up for singles then you need to set the option to jump straight to play options if tracklising only has a single track. Then have each single track in it's own folder with it's own cover art. This is simular to how the sound leisure jukeboxes in bars work here. I do find that people will normally only pick the popular songs but the benefit of having 250,000 albums means you have most music availble to everyone. Actually the internet search facility now really negates the need for having a large local collection but that might be pulled at any point so I certainly wouldn't be switching to relying on that and still try and keep upto date with popular albums locally.