Is there a way to show all artists, then songs?

[pmilnes]

I don't have all of my music organized into separate folders by artist.

Many are, many are not.  Many of them are just jumbled MP3's in one folder.

Is there any way to have an 'artist' button that people can pull up "Beatles, The" and then show all of the Beatles' songs?

Thanks!

-Paul

[squirrellydw]

I would like to see something like this also.  i have mine organized correctly in folders though

[pmilnes]

At this point, this is about the only shortcoming that is stopping me from converting to this program.  I am an thepcjukebox user, but it has its problems. 

I have tried other programs, but pcjuke is the only one that I have found that suits my needs perfectly.

And I will gladly pay for this program if it will do what I want it to.

Am I missing something?   Is there some way to configure the program to show all of the artists on one side, and then the songs from that artist on the other side?

Help...

Thanks so much!!!

-Paul

[frosty]

I don't have all of my music organized into separate folders by artist.
Many are, many are not.  Many of them are just jumbled MP3's in one folder.
Is there any way to have an 'artist' button that people can pull up "Beatles, The" and then show all of the Beatles' songs?

The prudent thing to do is to organize your music.  The larger your collection, the more convenient it will be to manage.  Freebox won't create order out of chaos.

You can scroll the album list until you find "The Beatles", there you will find all the Beatles albums.  Alternatively you can do a search by artist for "The Beatles" and be presented with a list of beatles songs

Hope this helps

Frosty

[Barcrest]

WOW Frosty posted, i thought he had gone lol... Like he says you really need to organise your music. I too was a pcjukebox user as you know and i created tis software due to the problems i had with that software. Feel free to chat with me on msn about what your requirements are. barcrest@hotmail.com and i am sure you will find that by organising you music freebox will offer you what you want.

[tenorman]

I think that it really depends on what type of library you have and how you music is organized. I have all of my full albums sorted into directories by genre/artist/album and this is exactly how they are sorted on screen. This makes the jump to a letter function useless because I could have ZZ Top right next to ABBA. I haven't found a way to sort the library by artist without reorganizing my entire hardrive into the iTunes format, which would break my PCDJ record cases. Is there a way to sort the on-screen albums by artist rather than path?

It would also be nice to be able group by artist for collections of random songs and not based on CDs. Besides my albums, I have several other music collections of compilation CDs from music services, and finally just plain random music sorted into directories by genre. All of the music is fully tagged, but right now I can't find a good way to import it into Freebox since it is album driven.

Traditional jukeboxes are based on full albums. With PCs and downloadable music, it seems that a PC based jukebox would have to go beyond the traditional and handle not only full albums, but also PC music libraries which may only have a few songs from each artist. Like Paul, it is preventing my from using the program so far. I apologize, if I am trying to make this into something that it isn't supposed to be.

Thanks for all the great work so far!

[kizer]

Personally if Freebox was to go to what PcJuke is I wouldn't use it anymore. I like the fact that the search will pull up anything your looking for and when you click on an album it opens up a new window. I dont like the jumbled look of having album on one side and songs on another.

[Barcrest]

I think that it really depends on what type of library you have and how you music is organized. I have all of my full albums sorted into directories by genre/artist/album and this is exactly how they are sorted on screen. This makes the jump to a letter function useless because I could have ZZ Top right next to ABBA. I haven't found a way to sort the library by artist without reorganizing my entire hardrive into the iTunes format, which would break my PCDJ record cases. Is there a way to sort the on-screen albums by artist rather than path?

It would also be nice to be able group by artist for collections of random songs and not based on CDs. Besides my albums, I have several other music collections of compilation CDs from music services, and finally just plain random music sorted into directories by genre. All of the music is fully tagged, but right now I can't find a good way to import it into Freebox since it is album driven.

Traditional jukeboxes are based on full albums. With PCs and downloadable music, it seems that a PC based jukebox would have to go beyond the traditional and handle not only full albums, but also PC music libraries which may only have a few songs from each artist. Like Paul, it is preventing my from using the program so far. I apologize, if I am trying to make this into something that it isn't supposed to be.

Thanks for all the great work so far!

Dude it already sorts by artist. If this isn't happening for you then something is wrong, probably with your tags. It has always sorted the albums by artist and that is the whole reason the jump to letter (Or Slider bar) is there. You are the first person to comment that this isn't working which is what leads me to believe it's your tags. Are you usin 2.20 which i released a couple of days ago to the public. It's much more stable and bug free than the prevoius 2.13

Possible Problems With Tags

Your mp3's need the Artist, Album and Track Title tags at the very least to work with freebox. In and ideal world you would have the GENRE and YEAR teags filled in but they are not essential.

To keep albums together the Album tag must match all the tracks on that album.

Your tags need to be V2 tag, there seems to be a problem reading V1 tags.

Freebox doesn't like VBR mp3 files.

Embedded artwork not only increases the file size of each track but also causes issues.

[tenorman]

Hmm... I tried 2.13 first, and artists were sorted alphabetically but skins wouldn't load. I tried 2.20 last night and the jukebox switched to being sorted by path. I regenerated the library and everything is sorted by artist in Config3, but as soon as I start the Jukebox it is sorted by path. I will have to play more tonight.

Are you usin 2.20 which i released a couple of days ago to the public. It's much more stable and bug free than the prevoius 2.13
Yes, I am using version 2.20.

Possible Problems With Tags

Your mp3's need the Artist, Album and Track Title tags at the very least to work with freebox. In and ideal world you would have the GENRE and YEAR teags filled in but they are not essential.
All of my files are tagged with Artist, Album, Title, and Genre. Most also have a Track Number, Year, Publisher, and Comment.

To keep albums together the Album tag must match all the tracks on that album.
Albums are all have matching Album tags.

Your tags need to be V2 tag, there seems to be a problem reading V1 tags.
The bulk are tagged V2 with V1 [ ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3) ].
A handful are V2 Only [ ID3v2.2 ], APEv2, MP4, or Vorbis Comment.

Freebox doesn't like VBR mp3 files.
A few are VBR. Most are CBR.

Embedded artwork not only increases the file size of each track but also causes issues.
Some have embedded art, but most art is in album the directory.

[Barcrest]

Well the sorting you see int he config is the sorting you should see in freebox because they are not resorted from the database the config generates and they have never sorted on the filename. You need to create a blank new database then exit config and re-launch it and see how they are ordered in there. That is the order they will display in freebox. This issue has never been reported in 2.20 although i am now quite a few version away from that in V3.0.00 Beta 2