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Can I choose how to sort my library?
I know that clicking on a column in the library display (title, genre, album, etc) sorts by that column. What I'm wondering is whether I can choose a secondary sort or "tiebreaker" characteristic. For example, I'd like to be able to sort by genre first and then sort by title within the same genre. It seems that the secondary sort characteristic is always album by default, and I can't find how to change it.
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Inappropriate?Hi Dave G,
Currently, there is not a way to sort the library by secondary characteristics. This seems to be a common request, so I have created a feature suggestion for you in Bugzilla. You can track the comments on this work item by:
1. Going to the "people" box in the upper right hand corner of bug #13234.
2. Add your email in the "add cc" box.
3. Scroll down and hit commit.
If you don't have a free bugzilla account, signing up is quick and easy and will allow you to share your feedback directly with the development team
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Inappropriate?Thanks! It seems like most music players (e.g. iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real Player...) lack this feature; so far the only one I've found that has it is Musicmatch Jukebox (now Yahoo Jukebox), which is the one and only reason that I use Jukebox despite several annoying characteristics. I'd switch to anything else in a heartbeat if they just had this one feature.
P. S. That is one darn cute baby in your profile pic! Congrats! :-)
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Inappropriate?Hi Dave,
Our API supports supports sorting by multiple columns, so in theory an extension could add this feature. Unfortunately performance starts to suffer once you sort by multiple columns, and this is why we haven't exposed it in the UI.
How important is it to be able to customize your secondary sort? Would you be happy if the app had a built-in secondary sort for each column, as long as that sort was fairly logical? When we pre-compute the secondary sort information performance is not a problem (which is what we do for Artist -> Album, Disc, Track and Album -> Disc, Track).
If this acceptable, please file some enhancement bugs with the sort logic you'd like to see.
Thanks for your help!
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What are the API's that expose this. I wouldn't mind learning the API just to get Artist and then song Title. From the little research that I've done there appears to be no logical way of doing this simple thing. -
Inappropriate?Hey Matt,
I'm not a programmer at all so I don't 100% follow you (e.g. I don't know what an API is). Can you explain what you mean by a secondary sort for each column? (Do you mean that each column would be the secondary sort for some primary sort, or that each column would be the primary sort for some secondary sort?) The one particular combination that I would like is Genre --> Title, but I imagine other users might have other preferences too. -
Inappropriate?For me the importance of this feature (sorting on multiple fields) is so high that is reflects whether I use a program or not.
I want to be able to select an artist from my library. Then be default it selects all albums. This is fine. In the view I then want the albums sorted by year. Then secondary by track. Today when I select year, the tracks within each album is not sorted correctly.
mattc: My scenario would fit perfectly with a build-in secondary sort as you describe it.2 Comments Add a comment
This answers the question
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this is EXACTLY what i'm missing in songbird as well. i could have never described it as short and sweet as you,though :)
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This is what I have been looking for in any good media manager. That is the way I organize music in my mind (and on my CD rack) - Artist > Year > Track. (Really, an "order" or "album number" field might work better than year, so you could make sure two albums from the same year sorted in the correct order.) I would also really love to be able to sort individual artists using Last, First with having to enter it in the Artist field that way. Again, that is how they are sorted in my mind and on my CD rack.
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Inappropriate?I like this as well, specifically Album by Artist. Or in old WinAmp fashion an option to display by directory structure. That would end up being Artist by alphabet and then each album in that subdirectory (in most cases). -
Inappropriate?This is also something I really miss in SB.
Isn't it possible, for instance, to sort the library by artist and then, with a push in ctrl and a click in another column, sort again without undoing the previous sorting?
I guess this would be a good solution.
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Regardless of what the primary sort is, the secondary sort should always be along the lines of "Album Title" + "Disc No" + "Track No". My view is that it is key to retain the most logical view of an album, regardless of how you came to that order. At the moment, you re-sort and/or filter and everything else suffers - for example, I filter to play a compilation - the album is the same name for all 5 discs, these are identified by the disc number - I would expect to see my discs in disc number order, and then within each disc by track number. This doesn't happen, and I am unable to play back my music in the order that nature intended!
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I don't think the secondary sort should ALWAYS be by album. Maybe you like viewing your albums together, but I don't. I like my albums to be merged into one big library. I don't particularly care which album a song came from, I just care what it is and who it's by. My point is that if one could choose one's own secondary (and tertiary, etc) sorts then we could both sort our libraries as we please.
I’m indifferent
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Inappropriate?But I think that by default it should be sorted by album, and not like it is today. I only have complete releases in my library, be it an ep or a full album. It's a mirror of my record collection. And then it only makes sense to view it by album. So for me it's strange to have it any other way.
But if we as Dave G says, get to choose for ourselves, then everybody will be happy. Right? ;-)
But that's just my 2 cents. -
Inappropriate?iTunes has a tab specifically for sorting where you can change how the program sorts the data while not changing the actual metadata displayed for the file. For example, I have several albums of a single artist. If I sort by artist, it then also sorts the albums also in alphabetical order. If I want to have the albums sorted in chronological order, I can change the Sort part of it while keeping the actual album name displayed. So I have an album named "Back In Black" but I could change the album space in the Sort tab to "1980" so it will then be sorted by artist and have the albums sorted in chronological order too.
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Inappropriate?I think that allowing the user to apply their own sorting rules would make songbird FAR superior than any other music player. I for example love when everything is alphabetical, (artist) - (title), for example if i am sorting by Artist Column I would like the 2nd sort to be(title) that way all of the songs of a particular artist would then be displayed in alphabetical order.
and this is by far the MOST IMPORTANT feature to me
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