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Artist Web media view
A totally new way to browse your music library, the Artist Web media view presents a topographical network of artists.
The arrangement of the artists is, by default, according to similarity as determined from the Last.fm APIs. Artists that are more similar are closer together. Examples of this type of mapping are available here, here, and elsewhere.
Because the initial arrangement of artists by similarity will be fairly resource-intensive, and because artist similarity values aren't changing by large degrees on Last.fm, it will probably only be necessary to re-map the similarities occasionally, either during idle time or when new artists are added, and either automatically or with user approval.
The artists may also be arranged alphabetically, if the user prefers it.
Aside from arrangement, the artist names also vary by font size and color value, based on specified criteria. These criteria can be selected in the preferences; for instance, the font size of artist names can vary by Last Played (i.e., more recently played artists appear in a larger font size), while the color value of the artist names can vary by Play Count (i.e., artists with high play counts are more white, artists with few play counts are more gray). Alternatively, the font size can vary according to Date Added, while the color value can vary by Rating. And so on.
The map is zoomable and scrollable (scrolling probably best achieved with a grippy-hand cursor), and the toolbar in the upper-left corner will also have buttons to conveniently invert the font size attributes or the color value attributes -- in case the user wants to place a stronger visual emphasis on the least played artists, for instance.
Clicking an artist name will focus the tracklist pane on the first song by that artist. Additionally there can be right-click actions and hover info (e.g., a summary of the user's collection of that artist -- total number of albums, last played, average rating, etc.).
This is only a dream of mine. I don't possess the ability to build something like this, but I would be eternally grateful to anybody who did. Fingers crossed.
The arrangement of the artists is, by default, according to similarity as determined from the Last.fm APIs. Artists that are more similar are closer together. Examples of this type of mapping are available here, here, and elsewhere.
Because the initial arrangement of artists by similarity will be fairly resource-intensive, and because artist similarity values aren't changing by large degrees on Last.fm, it will probably only be necessary to re-map the similarities occasionally, either during idle time or when new artists are added, and either automatically or with user approval.
The artists may also be arranged alphabetically, if the user prefers it.
Aside from arrangement, the artist names also vary by font size and color value, based on specified criteria. These criteria can be selected in the preferences; for instance, the font size of artist names can vary by Last Played (i.e., more recently played artists appear in a larger font size), while the color value of the artist names can vary by Play Count (i.e., artists with high play counts are more white, artists with few play counts are more gray). Alternatively, the font size can vary according to Date Added, while the color value can vary by Rating. And so on.
The map is zoomable and scrollable (scrolling probably best achieved with a grippy-hand cursor), and the toolbar in the upper-left corner will also have buttons to conveniently invert the font size attributes or the color value attributes -- in case the user wants to place a stronger visual emphasis on the least played artists, for instance.
Clicking an artist name will focus the tracklist pane on the first song by that artist. Additionally there can be right-click actions and hover info (e.g., a summary of the user's collection of that artist -- total number of albums, last played, average rating, etc.).
This is only a dream of mine. I don't possess the ability to build something like this, but I would be eternally grateful to anybody who did. Fingers crossed.
I’m optimistic.
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Inappropriate?Hm, maybe someone could integrate liveplasma into songbird. It's an web-service, that does pretty much what you want.
http://www.liveplasma.com/
But with liveplasma it's probably not possible to create playlist, so maybe someone else has a better idea.
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this is one of the best points
1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Thanks atreiu -- I'd never heard of liveplasma, though I'm finding that it isn't aware of the first several artists I typed into its search box. Last.fm has overwhelmingly vast amounts of data, all freely accessible, so it seems like the best option (as far as I know). -
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Inappropriate?great solution topdownjimmy!!
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Inappropriate?I mentioned in the other thread that I really like the idea of displaying artists in the library in terms of how they are related by style or mood rather than just alphabetically.
Alphabetical sorting is only useful if we need to scroll through our library and find something quickly, but I don't believe it is necessary to find specific music through scrolling. If I know the band I want to listen to, I navigate to them by typing the first few letters of their name, which is quicker than seeking it out by scrolling through an alphabetical list.
This means I just scroll through my library when I don't have something specific to listen to, and I think it is easier to stumble upon a band that you want to listen to if they are grouped by similar styles/moods, like in your suggested media view. That way you can narrow down the mood you are in and choose the specific band from there.
However, I don't know if I could use this media view exactly how it is, because I usually like filtering by albums and seeing album art. The way you have it, I could easily select the artist I want to play, but I don't like having to scroll through the song list to find the album, and then it would still not be able to queue up only the album to play. Maybe clicking on an band's/artist's name in the view could make it blossom into a ring of their albums around it, so you could optionally filter down into a specific album. Then I would definitely be sold on using it.
4 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Popping up a small window with the artist's albums in it might be a good right-click behavior. The window could also contain a "Create playlist of this artist" link, and right-clicking on one of the albums could display a "Create playlist of this album" link.
I also suppose each artist name could have an album image next to it, but I'd be wary of complicating things too much.
The presence of art in the main view could also cause significant slowdown when generating the view and/or scrolling through it.
I'm going to try to develop this add-on myself. I have a lot of learning to do. If you like you can follow my progress here. -
@topdownjimmy: Thanks for working on this! :-)
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves, atreiu. ;-) I am a novice at best.
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It is still very exciting that you are trying. I thought that the album art would only appear after mousing over an artist's name or clicking it. Then I thought you could click the album art to have it filter the results to that album. I was thinking it could look similar to YouTube's Warp feature: http://www.youtube.com/warp.swf?v=7IM...
A recently released add-on called Grid View displays album art and it performs extremely well, so I have more hope for the future of album art media views. I imagine it could be difficult to code album art though, so it could be a ways off.
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