>> The current behavior is clearly incorrect. Is mixers on the "Various >Artists" item really needed ? >My current plan is to just remove the mixers on the "Various Artists" >item since I really don't see the purpose of having them there. Do you >think this would be a bad idea ? > I see the "Various Artists" item as a collection of all compilations. It's a pseudo artist, that has a list of albums. I was thinking that TrackStat or a Random mixer on "Various Artists" would select from all compilation albums, etc. "Browse by selection" may be a bit long though, if it were to list all of the albums within Various Artists, but it would be nice to browse the collection of various artists by genre or year.
I wouldn't object to simply removing the mixers from the various artists item though - Custom Browse menus could always be written to browse compilation albums by genre or year. >I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have two mixers: >*LastFM Similar Artists*: Browse similar artists and play button works >as normal >*Random songs by similar artists*: Plays or adds 20 tracks from artists >similar to the currently selected artist. > There's already 5 mixers in the player UI and only 2 listed in the web UI, so navigation will be harder to display in the web UI. Also, I quite like to select whether to play a random mix of songs or albums. I think normally one would want to play music normally, like the "browse by selection" add/play does, but as the mixers are available on any listed artist, it would be possible to bring up a mixer if required from a selected similar artist. The only thing is there is no mixer on the "LastFM Similar Artists" album, so you have to go down another level. I think that pressing play on "LastFM Similar Artists" should perhaps just default to playing a dynamic playlist, selecting songs from any of the similar artists? I guess this is a similar issue to the Various Artists mixer issue above, as it's a group of items. Going back to the web UI, perhaps when I browse by selection on an artist in the Web UI, I should be seeing a "Last FM Similar Artists" item listed to the right of the artists artwork? It would be nice to see the LastFM tags hyperlinked in the mixer and browse by selection information page too! >You can of course start with "LastFM Similar Artists", browse to a >similar artist and from there execute the "Random" mixer or the "Random >songs by similar artists" mixer. > That's true. That's what I used to do when I wanted to find something different to play. What made me discover this new mixer yesterday was when I was playing random songs and something came on that I wasn't familiar with that I quite liked. I looked at the artist, and went into the mixers. I saw the LastFM similar artists mixer come up (hadn't noticed this functionality before), and thought "what a good idea!". It's easier to get to from artist context, than to navigate through the whole list of similar artists. It's just a shortcut link to Custom Browse/LastFM Similar Artists/<artist>. >It you like a dynamic playlist to play that's possible today by: >- Create a new playlist in "SQLPlayList" of type "Random for LastFM >similar artists" > >After doing this you will also get a "DynamicPlaylist" mixer where you >can select dynamic playlists that takes an artist as parameter. >However, I'm also thinking that it might be a good idea to have the >similar artists playlist available by default, so I will add this to >the wish list. > That's neat - thanks. I have created the menu with all options at their default value, and it works very well. What does Minimum similarity percent use if this is not entered? How does this % work, in relationship to the LastFM Similarity list? "Add this number of tracks each time" - do I need to enter a value, or is this an override over the default queuing value? Initially I see 10 tracks. After the first track has finished, I see another 10 tracks added to the list, as my settings are for 10 upcoming songs and 10 recently played songs. Thanks for all your work - these plugins are really good for creating new ways of browsing my music collection. I feel compelled to make another donation! Phil _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/plugins
