by paulyphonica » Sun Feb 22, 2015 12:06 am
It has long been a desire of mine to be able to effectively rate an entire album and use the album's rating in things like auto playlists. I took a look at Magic Nodes and thought that it might fit the bill, but it doesn't seem to.
Here's what I am looking to do.
Scenario #1: Say I just bought a Pat Metheny album with 10 tracks. One track I don't care for, so it is a 2-star rating. Two of them I haven't rated yet, two have 3-star ratings, three tracks have 4-stars, and one has 5 stars. So out of the tracks I've rated, the album has an average rating of about 3.5 stars.
Scenario #2: I have another album, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, that I just want to rate as 5-stars all at once, because it is my favorite album of all time, it should typically be played from beginning to end, and it makes no sense to rate individual tracks, because the album itself is legendary.
So now I want to have an auto play list which selects all tracks on my favorite albums, such that if an album rates 3 or higher, then all tracks from the album would appear in the playlist based on the album's overall rating, This way I can ensure that I always have the full album. This is helpful when the tracks flow into one another and I don't want to break the flow even if I don't like a track. It is also helpful if I want to take the whole album on my MediaMonkey mobile app so I can rate tracks I haven't rated yet. Or share the album with a friend on a road trip.
I know that the album itself in MediaMonkey doesn't have attributes like tags or ratings, but in theory this could still be done programmatically.
For scenario #1, in theory you could have the concept of "album rating" being an average of all rated tracks on the album, and then include this as an operator in the queries used by auto play lists. So in addition to the Track Rating you could have Album Rating. So a sample play list would have a condition to include all tracks with an album rating of 3.5 or higher, and since every track on this album would meet that criteria, all tracks would be in the playlist, even the 2-star song and the two tracks I haven't rated yet. So I could then create more playlists that refer to this one if desired. For example, I could have a child playlist that included all songs on the parent play list except those with fewer than 2 stars. This would allow me to rate tracks as low, but still include on the full album play, and rate other tracks so low that they wouldn't show up at all. The possibilities go on, you get the picture.
For scenario #2, you could show the "album rating" in the carousel view or the now playing view. Then if the user clicks on the album rating, you could use the selected rating as the base rating for all tracks on the album. The logic could be a bit tricky though... if they already rated several tracks as a 5 and then they rate the album as a 4, you could set the minimum rating of all tracks as a 4, but then the automatically calculated rate would actually be higher. You probably wouldn't want this feature to reduce the rating of a track you've already rated. But this subtlety could be figured out, and if not, then scenario #1 would still be a great capability to have.
One thing you'd probably want to consider in the album rating is how many tracks or what percentage of tracks would be sufficient to average the album rating. For example, if I have 10 tracks on an album and only one of them has been rated, and it is a 5, then this could mean I love the album and this is my favorite track, the other ones I haven't rated yet, or it could be that this is the only one I've listened to enough to rate yet, or it could be that I really can't stand most of the album and this is the one track I would even bother to listen to, but it's a favorite. Point is, perhaps some minimum number or percentage of tracks on the album need to be rated for it to have an album rating at all, otherwise the album would appear as unrated. These thresholds could be user configurable. For album ratings, allow the user to include unrated tracks in the rating, and what default rating to assume, and a minimum number and minimum percentage of the album to be rated before an album gets an album rating assigned.
Another possibility is to actually create a new database record for the album, but I don't know if that would be a great option. Since album is a loose concept determined solely by the value of the Album tag on the track itself, it would probably be more trouble than it is worth to try and track the album itself as a real entity.
It has long been a desire of mine to be able to effectively rate an entire album and use the album's rating in things like auto playlists. I took a look at Magic Nodes and thought that it might fit the bill, but it doesn't seem to.
Here's what I am looking to do.
Scenario #1: Say I just bought a Pat Metheny album with 10 tracks. One track I don't care for, so it is a 2-star rating. Two of them I haven't rated yet, two have 3-star ratings, three tracks have 4-stars, and one has 5 stars. So out of the tracks I've rated, the album has an average rating of about 3.5 stars.
Scenario #2: I have another album, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, that I just want to rate as 5-stars all at once, because it is my favorite album of all time, it should typically be played from beginning to end, and it makes no sense to rate individual tracks, because the album itself is legendary.
So now I want to have an auto play list which selects all tracks on my favorite albums, such that if an album rates 3 or higher, then all tracks from the album would appear in the playlist based on the album's overall rating, This way I can ensure that I always have the full album. This is helpful when the tracks flow into one another and I don't want to break the flow even if I don't like a track. It is also helpful if I want to take the whole album on my MediaMonkey mobile app so I can rate tracks I haven't rated yet. Or share the album with a friend on a road trip.
I know that the album itself in MediaMonkey doesn't have attributes like tags or ratings, but in theory this could still be done programmatically.
For scenario #1, in theory you could have the concept of "album rating" being an average of all rated tracks on the album, and then include this as an operator in the queries used by auto play lists. So in addition to the Track Rating you could have Album Rating. So a sample play list would have a condition to include all tracks with an album rating of 3.5 or higher, and since every track on this album would meet that criteria, all tracks would be in the playlist, even the 2-star song and the two tracks I haven't rated yet. So I could then create more playlists that refer to this one if desired. For example, I could have a child playlist that included all songs on the parent play list except those with fewer than 2 stars. This would allow me to rate tracks as low, but still include on the full album play, and rate other tracks so low that they wouldn't show up at all. The possibilities go on, you get the picture.
For scenario #2, you could show the "album rating" in the carousel view or the now playing view. Then if the user clicks on the album rating, you could use the selected rating as the base rating for all tracks on the album. The logic could be a bit tricky though... if they already rated several tracks as a 5 and then they rate the album as a 4, you could set the minimum rating of all tracks as a 4, but then the automatically calculated rate would actually be higher. You probably wouldn't want this feature to reduce the rating of a track you've already rated. But this subtlety could be figured out, and if not, then scenario #1 would still be a great capability to have.
One thing you'd probably want to consider in the album rating is how many tracks or what percentage of tracks would be sufficient to average the album rating. For example, if I have 10 tracks on an album and only one of them has been rated, and it is a 5, then this could mean I love the album and this is my favorite track, the other ones I haven't rated yet, or it could be that this is the only one I've listened to enough to rate yet, or it could be that I really can't stand most of the album and this is the one track I would even bother to listen to, but it's a favorite. Point is, perhaps some minimum number or percentage of tracks on the album need to be rated for it to have an album rating at all, otherwise the album would appear as unrated. These thresholds could be user configurable. For album ratings, allow the user to include unrated tracks in the rating, and what default rating to assume, and a minimum number and minimum percentage of the album to be rated before an album gets an album rating assigned.
Another possibility is to actually create a new database record for the album, but I don't know if that would be a great option. Since album is a loose concept determined solely by the value of the Album tag on the track itself, it would probably be more trouble than it is worth to try and track the album itself as a real entity.