Tracks and a Track View... (CDpedia)

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philc
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Tracks and a Track View... (CDpedia)

Post by philc »

Hi,

I am interested in being able to break up my CD collection not just by albums, but by tracks also. This is especially relevant in today's world, where often we buy digital tracks, rather than a CD.

1. Currently, I get a track view by using a template that I set up - but I have to go outside the pedia program to get it and also, each time I do this I have to export both artist fields (both the artist attached to the album and the artist attached to the track), and then delete those that are attached to the album where an artist for the track exists.

There are a number of feature requests around this:

a) It would be useful to be able to view this information within the program by having a view that is 'by track', where the information could then be sorted by the attributes of track name, artist, etc.

b) Even better if I could then export this information in the same way that I would currently export the album information.

c) On the topic of tracks, additional track attributes (especially composer for my classical CDs, but iTunes also includes a number of others that would be good) would be a great feature to have.
Optimally this would be implemented in a database-like structure, where the CDs are made up of tracks which are each their own entry and can be double clicked on within the album window to bring up a track window with its attributes.

2. Finally, an Australian CDpedia plugin would be handy. Many Australian releases are not included on other sites, leaving me to manually enter them in. There are a number of sites that could be used (http://www.sanity.com.au , http://www.jbhifionline.com.au).

Thanks, Phil.
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Conor
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Post by Conor »

Thank you for the feedback.

The first two are related and I imagine as you have already found out that you can use the flexible export system to export the track information only. To solve the issue with the album artist not being present at the track level, I would add the artist to all tracks, even if it's the same one, and then ignore the album artist during exports.

We are also trying to stay away from being iTunes, if we place more emphasis on the tracks then the albums, then it becomes TrackPedia which is essentially iTunes. We are always looking to better our products and make them more flexible so that it can be customized and those that want more track level focus can do so.

We will add your plug-in suggestion to our list of possible plug-ins. Although here we also hope to make the plug-in creation easier for our users so that we can truly build a list of user created plug-ins without requiring that the user have a programmer's knowledge to create it.
wluytjes
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Post by wluytjes »

Conor, I understand how you don't want to become iTunes, but for me at least, half of the tracks I own on different carriers (MC, DAT, Tape, LP and that is still more than 10.000 tracks) are not in iTunes, but they are in CDpedia. So a more usefull way of listing and handling tracks, as requested by philc, would be very much appreciated.
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philc
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Post by philc »

Conor, Thank you for your response.

I do not think adding support for viewing by tracks crosses over with iTunes, as I think that Cdpedia has a different, distinct function in being able to sort your albums, and being able to see these by tracks simply facilitates this in another (sometimes more useful) way.

I think there is also wider support for more track attributes (see http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedb ... 1101417964
for some comments).

To consider adding an artist to all tracks is a bit unfeasible - even with a moderate size database this would take an excessive amount of time. An organiser/sorter should really save time rather than use it up.

There is a new program I've just seen called Music Collector, which (while buggy and parts of their interface have not been though out nearly as well as cdpedia) gives a good example of a program that switches between viewing by albums and viewing by tracks . It has a simple button at the top to switch between the two and seems to be able to distinguish well between an album artist and track artist, using the correct one where necessary. It is a good solution that provides simplicity and the feature for those who want/need it.

It would be appreciated if you could consider these features further.

Phil.
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Re: Tracks and a Track View... (CDpedia)

Post by dmenefee »

I also would like to see a track view in CDPedia. This feature is the only show-stopper for me, as what I want is an iTunes-like app that doesn't require me to import my CDs, but simply catalogs them and allows me to search them. CDPedia does *almost* everything I need :)
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