2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

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Barry4679
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2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Barry4679 »

In MM4 there was facility to store Artist and Album comments ... ie. not Notes for an individual tracks, but notes for the artist, or album, as a whole.

The integration of these notes into MM4 was limited and disappointing. I was expecting that MM5 would have completed what had been started in MM4, but instead the whole thing appears to have been abandoned.

The data columns are still in the database, but access has disappeared from the MM5 UI ... ie. I can not alter nor view this information ... fI I try and open Properties at the Artist or Album level, I just get access to track properties> .... Intentional?
Last edited by Barry4679 on Sat Sep 05, 2020 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Lowlander
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comment?

Post by Lowlander »

Yes, this has been dropped. I have my Album Comments filled too, but as it wasn't actually used, I'm not too upset as it's been replaced by the wiki lookup that is actually functional.
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comment?

Post by Peke »

Hi,
To add to Lowlander post above. Data is still there as it can be returned in Future thru plugins and extensions.
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Barry4679
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Barry4679 »

Lowlander wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:23 pm Yes, this has been dropped. I have my Album Comments filled too, but as it wasn't actually used, I'm not too upset as it's been replaced by the wiki lookup that is actually functional.
It looks more like an oversight to me, than an actual plan.

It would make zero sense ... ie MM5 finally has a home page at the Artist and at the Album level, things that we missing in MM4 .... so at the same time they remove (?!) the facility to have your own local notes at these levels? ... and they saved diddly squat in terms of development time ... and they would disappoint customers who used this facility? ... I don't think so.

So maybe it is not too late to add it back in to 5.0?

I think this is another indication that the MM5 design team, or person, is missing enough representation from people whose focus is upon Music albums, rather than just a collection of tracks.

As it is, it would be more accurate and truthful if they renamed MediaMonkey to MusicTracksMonkey ... not only is there virtually zero support for Actors, and Publishers, and Directors, etc ... but there is also stuff all support for music albums either as discussed here, and here.
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Lowlander »

It's something that very few users knew existed in MediaMonkey 4, and even less used. The data has been preserved and is available for any Addon developer to expose in the interface.

The fact that you and I used it, doesn't mean it was used commonly, so it may be of little value to the user base.
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Barry4679 »

Lowlander wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:54 am It's something that very few users knew existed in MediaMonkey 4, and even less used. The data has been preserved and is available for any Addon developer to expose in the interface.
Is not what I think, but you knew that :D

I do think that it will be long while before MM5 will be stable enough to consider muddying up the situation with 3rd party addons.

The MM4 feature was so well hidden, and so poorly developed, that it may be true that few people use it. That is not the same as it being a useless feature. I think that it should be an expected part of any Media Manager. especially one that advertises itself as "the movie and music organizer for the serious collector."

Lowlander wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:54 am The fact that you and I used it, doesn't mean it was used commonly, so it may be of little value to the user base.
This post is really just to clear up the above point.
All my listening notes, and digitised extracts from CD booklets and reviews that had interesting background, is stored in Catraxx.
I tried to migrate all that data to MM4, due to the shuttering of Catraxx, but I didn't do it, as it was pointless due to the visibility problem in MM4.

I was hoping that MM5 would address this problem.
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by BMF »

Hi Lowlander, hi Barry, hi all,

indeed this feature was well hidden in MM4. When i found out about it the first time i thought "what a wonderful feature". But then i did not use it because of the how Barry is calling it poor visibility. I think that the developing staff should not wait for people who do addons or extensions. A better integration would make MM better than ever as a media library.

Maybe the space that is now needed for the wikipedia integration could be somehow splitted and enforced by the user's own notes about a specific album or film or composer or singer or actress and so on. Just an idea.

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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Ludek »

BMF wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 9:02 am Maybe the space that is now needed for the wikipedia integration could be somehow splitted and enforced by the user's own notes about a specific album or film or composer or singer or actress and so on. Just an idea.
Sounds as a good idea for me, tracked as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=16916
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by rusty »

To shed a bit more light on this, one of the guiding philosophies behind MM has been that whatever data is supported should be in an open manner--meaning that it should also be able to be stored to track tags in a standardized format so that the information can be easily shared with other applications (and vice versa).

That accounts for the track-centric focus you describe. Perhaps this might change in the future--just trying to give some visibility into why certain features haven't yet made it into MM (and why some have been minimized in the past).

-Rusty
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Barry4679 »

rusty wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:04 pm To shed a bit more light on this, one of the guiding philosophies behind MM has been that whatever data is supported should be in an open manner--meaning that it should also be able to be stored to track tags in a standardized format so that the information can be easily shared with other applications (and vice versa).

That accounts for the track-centric focus you describe. Perhaps this might change in the future--just trying to give some visibility into why certain features haven't yet made it into MM (and why some have been minimized in the past).
Thanks for the background info Rusty. I appreciate you making the effort to explain.

Some comments:
  • it may be a guiding philosophy, but it is not a hard rule ... ie. the track history in the played table is not persisted into the tracks, is it?
  • but my major point is that the data need no be persisted anyway, because it can be derived from data that already is persisted
For my own purposes I push the following data into the MM db, to overcome the current MM limitation:
  • Album play count = round(average(individual album track play counts))
  • Last Album Play Date = max(track play date)
That probably sounds horrible, inaccurate, and useless, to a mixed track playlist person.
But, by definition, an Album-focused person is rarely, if ever, playing playing mixed track playlists .... so the above approximations do a good job of being useful criteria in active playlists, and album filtering|sorting. ... The main thing is that both values be constant for all tracks in the album, to avoid album fragmentation in lists or playlist selection. ... Maybe a Median calculation would be better for Last Album Play date, but Max is calculated with less overhead.

They could even be virtual fields ... ie be rows in the MM GUI, but not stored in the database.

I think that this addition would be welcomed by any album focused people.
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by drakinite »

Sounds like you could make an extension that does that :yum:
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by Barry4679 »

drakinite wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 7:47 am Sounds like you could make an extension that does that :yum:
Actually I did ... some years ago ... but not as a UI extension .. is an external app ... which is why is it has survived the carnage of the MM4 -> MM5 upgrade technology change btw :P
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Re: 2266 - MM5 abandoned Artist and Album comments?

Post by drakinite »

Dang, nice. xD
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I uploaded many addons to MM's addon page, but not all of those were created by me. "By drakinite, Submitted by drakinite" means I made it on my own time. "By Ventis Media, Inc., Submitted by drakinite" means it may have been made by me or another MediaMonkey developer, so instead of crediting/thanking me, please thank the team. You can still ask me for support on any of our addons.
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