Single tracks vs. Albums - UI visibility issue

[toyzrme]

Hi -
Trying out PerfectTunes to clean up artwork, but I can't do what I want.

I have a lot of single tracks I have purchased, and 'mix' albums that I created myself before the days of MP3's, and now ripped back to mp3s. Hence, not complete or traditional albums. Also, Amazon's MP3's sometimes have a one-off album name for a track, even though it was never released as a single, or the metadata isn't even populated, esp. when they had just opened their music store. I mention this, as this is the viewpoint from which I am speaking: a track-centric view, not an album-centric view.

I also have many 'best of' CD's and MP3 albums, and have taken the time to find the *original* release date, as I feel that more accurately represents the idea of the song (the fact that a 1977 disco song may be on a 2013 compilation fortunately does NOT mean disco has come back in 2013!). I have manually tagged some of these songs with the art from the original album, not the compilation - and I do not want these accidentally replaced.

I mention this, as my *album* names may be inconsistent, or even wrong, but the artist and track are *definitely* correct.

*1) So the UI is confusing to me. I was expecting to correct TRACKS, i.e. see a list of the tracks, and click through them to correct them. But I don't see a single track name.

Sure, maybe you *organize* by album, and have a Fix button for each track, as well as the whole album. But let me work track by track, too.

*2) If a track or two have the WRONG album name, what does PerfectTunes do to help prevent me from blindly adding the wrong art to a given track? Do you verify the track name against the artist & album in CDDB/MusicBrainz/Etc/etc?

Because you lump all tracks from an album together, I have no way to confirm that the 5 songs it thinks are from David Bowie are really his, whereas a track-by-track list would at least let me confirm that *4 (say, "Start Me Up") is really a Rolling Stones tune, based on track name. A player here would also help (ie, click a track to play, to verify the metadata matches the song, if in question)

*3) Why gather the fingerprint, if you don't use it for metadata/art lookup? Is it only for dupe detection? I have a number of very good fingerprint-based dupe detectors, so I would like to turn this off to speed up scanning dramatically. It should only take milliseconds to determine if a track has no artwork, or is low-res.

*4) Why not offer a search based on track name as well? i.e. you could offer configuration to use track, artist, or album, or any combination. Or even offer a priority search list (ie try track, then track & artist, then....etc.)

I understand why you started with an album-centric view, as that's where the artwork is, but a user's viewpoint is going to be as much track & artist-centric as anything, especially in this day of cherry-picking tunes from iTunes, Amazon, etc.

Thanks

[Spoon]

Re: Single tracks vs. Albums - UI visibility issue

1 + 2: - album name is key to getting art, it is used with the artist (or album artist name)
3: our next major update will make use of fingerprints.
4: track names can never realistically be used for album art, because often a track appears on many different albums (in some instances 10 albums can have the same track once compilations and best of are looked at).

Tracks which are bought on their own from iTunes or Amazon, they are still part of an album, they have an album tag.

[toyzrme]

Re: Single tracks vs. Albums - UI visibility issue

1/2: I understand why you would do it this way, it is certainly easier to program. But it's also assuming a pretty strict, simple view of tagging and people's libraries.

3: Awesome - how will this work, esp. in the case you mention for *4?

4: I would use this as my argument, too. I may have bought "Megadeath's Greatest Love Tunes", but I might want the original album artwork from the album the song was originally released with, not a generic "2013 1-hit wonders" cover

You should take a look at Jaikoz - it has some great ideas, too - you can choose whether you want the date from the compilation, or the track's original/oldest release, etc. It also does fuzzy searching: it tries for an exact match, then opens it up to include track, artist, year, etc.

Last point: this is a pretty naive view of Amazon - they sell the same track with many different albums, and sometimes with the track name in the album field (I'm guessing they are either lazy, or treating it like a single with no B side). I also have many from Amazon with *no* album, believe it or not.

BTW, I think you have some good ideas here. I'm just suggesting maybe a little less rigid view of how the world is, how it should be, and leave some choices to your customer. I also realize this is v1, and you have to cut off function at some point to ship it <g>

Any chance you could reveal the additional types of functions you are hoping to add? This might be incentive for more people to buy in sooner.

Thanks!