@tapeworm wrote:
Now consider your player . . . you scroll to ARTIST, it gives you all the ALBUMS by that artist. Select an ALBUM, & it shows you all the TRACKS/SONGS in that album.
You are wrong. It will show you the ALBUMS that have ANY song by that ARTIST. Select an ALBUM, and it will show you ONLY the SONGS which are from the ARTIST you selected.
For ‘normal’ albums, where all the songs are by the same artist it’s exactly the same and the procedure you described will be transparent. But when it comes to compilation albums it’s really annoying. Besides the fact that you will have different selection methods depending on what type of album you want to listen (I agree, both can be selected by going directly to ALBUMS instead of ARTIST, but in a 4Gb clip you can have many, many albums and one wishes to have USEFUL filters), you will have a pletora of artists that each contribute with one song. Most of it could be avoided if there was a consistent use of the ALBUM ARTIST tag (like Windows Media Player or Winamp).
Another issue is when you want to select by GENRE. If I have a compilation ALBUM of Soul songs, and I try to find it by GENRE–>Soul, the Clip gives me a list of ARTISTS, not albums! Of course, I have other soul albums (and artists) than the one that I want to listen so I don’t want to select the whole genre. I have to go back, to the ALBUM list, and find what I want.
And what if I want to make MY compilation? I’m forced to either: a) make a playlist or b) edit ID3 tags to make the songs appear as a different album (by far I prefer the first method, because I can have a song appearing in several compilation without duplicating the file).
So, you have to be aware of these little ‘bugs’ (so to speak) when doing the transition from folders to tags. I had a player that mainly navigated by folder and I missed many things that now I do with tags in the Clip. But there are some things (I admit they are few) that I did with folders and now I can’t do with tags.
I think that I wouldn’t miss any if the clip had
a) The possibility of navigation/filtering by ALBUM ARTIST in addition to ARTIST
and b) the possibility of selection by ARTIST or ALBUM after selecting a GENRE.
Can you hear me, Sansa people? This may be easier than implementing folder navigation