Why was classical music moved to it's own tree node?

[wave]

It's completely idiotic.

MM4 has been nothing but a pain in the ass so far. Every change I've seen has been for the worse.

[nohitter151]

To separate it from other collections. This allows you to customize which tree nodes appear beneath the collection, and change which fields are viewable in the track list. This is vital when looking at different types of files: for example "Composer" is much more relevant for Classical music than it is for regular "Music", same with other fields like Conductor, etc.

Of course the beauty of MM is that if you don't like it, you can just take a few minutes and customize it exactly how you like it. At File > Manage collections, you can hide/delete/customize nodes as you please.

[Lowlander]

And the Entire Library Collection will show all your files in MediaMonkey. This also can be enabled under Tools > Options > Media Tree.

[Onweerwolf]

Of course the beauty of MM is that if you don't like it, you can just take a few minutes and customize it exactly how you like it. At File > Manage collections, you can hide/delete/customize nodes as you please.

Yes but the ugliness is that MM4 does this by default instead of letting the user make such a choice.

I think this is a bad precedent. Software should not attempt to think for the user.

[Lowlander]

I really don't see the problem as you can change it. I don't like the separation either, but you can just change it.

[wave]

Do you think the average user will ever change it, even if they don't like it? It's way too complicated for non-technical users.

[nohitter151]

Do you think the average user will ever change it, even if they don't like it? It's way too complicated for non-technical users.

It's no more complicated than setting up a device to sync. So I would say yes, I think the average user would change it if they didn't like it.

[Lowlander]

You only need to enable the Entire Library node, that's a single click. I don't think that's too difficult.

[Darryl_Gittins]

I like the Classical Node, and I think it's the right decision to make it visible by default. If it was hidden by default, who'd ever even know it was available.

Good decision, and congratulations on yuet another stunningly awesome release of the best Music app EVER!!!

A question about the node though?

How does MM distinguish what is actually Classical? Does it use the Genre to decide? How do I configure a track so that it does or does not appear in the Classical mode?

Thanks!

[Lowlander]

It's only done on upgrade to MediaMonkey and when files are scanned in first and it follows these rules: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... al#p299374

[nohitter151]

To add on to Lowlander's post: If you want to remove a track from being classified as "Classical", go into the file properties for the track in MM (right-click > Properties). Under the "File name" field you will see a field called "Type". Change it to "Music" and it will show under your music node instead of classical.

[jqueeng02]

I also don't like the classical node but it's okay because you can easily change it.

[Roger W]

There's a downside to the Entire Library view in the free version - you can't hide all the subnodes that are irrelevant. (This is a little annoying for the Music node, and moreso for the Entire Library view). IN MM3, the free version can still hide subnodes of the tree, but in 4, this doesn't seem possible. So if you want to see only "Artist/Album Artist", Genre, and Album, there's a lot of other clutter.

It would be nice to see some simplification options come back in the free version, since that's not really an advanced feature.

[TZ02]

Hello Everyone, here's my point of view when it comes to the "Why complain? You can change the configuration if you don't like the new setting..." responses.

I installed MM4 a few days back and everything went smooth, UI looked as confusing as before but well, I have chosen to purchase MM3 with that UI so it's no worse. The few features I use the most are where they have been before so no real reason to complain.

It just happend that I added a few new albums to my folder structure that day followed by a rescan of the folder with MM4.
Well, my albums didn't show up in the tree as they used to do? Let's try again, and again..
Maybe I need to restart? Did that with no effect. Is this a bug? Try'd to rename the folder, etc, again no difference.
Went to the forum and after some reading noticed the new Collection feature and right, there are a few new nodes in the Tree view which I didn't spot yet. And yes, there is a "Classic" node, which did contain the new albums.
Well, I don't want that split, so how do I change it back? Right click on the Collection to see if I can delete won't work unless I buy Gold edition? Is this a way to force people to buy the product? Changing configurations without telling/asking and then ask for money to set it back? That was the moment when I got really angry about the time wasted and what seemed to be a new way to make money out ot people.

Went back to the forum and finally stumbled over the tools/options/Media Tree setting and yes, now I can see all my mp3's in one tree again.

Don't get me wrong, I use MM because it's the only tool I know off that can handle my 30.000+ files in an acceptable manner and that's why I spend money on it and likely will buy the upgrade (once the email offer comes through) but because the UI is so busy it's been very difficult for me to even see that something needs to be done. 2 new nodes in the 30+ node tree view...
It's good that one can change a setting but to be able to do so I need to know that this setting exists in the first place.
So all in all I got pretty annoyed, so annoyed that I was close to look for alternatives.
MM may lose a quite few users because that don't want to check forums or dig through hundreds of options until they find what they need...

Well, once I found the solution here I decided to "waste" even more time to write this post

I guess the product has been designed with power users in mind which I am surely not. If this app would have an additional UI digestable for the average user it could be way more succesful and even I may start using some of the "advanced" features such as syncing to my iPhone or ripping CDs...

TZ02

[leoben]

I got caught by this one too. A couple hundred of my music tracks hit the "bit bucket" and were MIA for a couple of weeks because the genre was Classical. I use the music collection instead of Entire Library because it contains so many nodes that are completely meaningless to me. I did a bit of scripting to hide those nodes, but for some reason, they won't hide in Entire Library; but will hide in the other Collections.

The implementation chosen for MM4 reminds me of the way Microsoft does things. MS software presumes it knows what users want and how they use the software. Most of the time and for most people, MS gets is right, but for those who want something different; well, they are pretty much hooped. Usually there is no easy or cheap fix if there is one at all. And MS doesn't seem to care enough to change anything.

So in MM4, if you don't want to see all the sub nodes; want to configure your Collection configuration; the advertised solution: Buy Gold.

On first blush, it appears that the MM strategy is one to get folks to pony up bucks for Gold. Now, I don't have a problem with a gold license to create/edit new collections. I do find it disappointing that MM4 does not provide a way to hide superfluous nodes in Entire Library and for default collections for the free version users. Seems like they are deliberately trying to antagonize their customer base. To what action is unclear

I suppose it is only fair to give the MM guys the benefit of the doubt for now. Perhaps the shortcomings were things that got left out in the push to get MM4 out the door. That being the case, hopefully they will address these shortcomings in 4.1. We can always hope.

Well, enough ranting for now. Off to do a bit more scripting to hide excess nodes and to warn & fix tracks not assigned to the Music node. I am not holding my breath that these issues are going to be fixed any time soon; so I will script some work-arounds to minimize the problems.