Add the ability to sort by file name without grouping by album. The intention is to playback tracks from an artist chronologically based on his soundcloud posts without sacrificing other ID3 metadata. I do this by putting the track release date in YYYY-MM-DD format at the beginning of all file names, then put the proper title in the ID3 Title field.
When sorting by file name Symfonium still groups by albums, but this artist posted his album tracks piecemeal in a different track order on his original SoundCloud feed where I was familiarized with his work.
Problem solved:
This gives users more control over track sorting in Symfonium. My personal reason is because this artist removed most of his soundcloud content due to copyright attacks form a competing artist. His music was the soundtrack to an important part of my life, as played in the soundcloud feed order. It does not bring back the memories if not sorted correctly.
Brought benefits:
Users have greater control of sorting.
Other application solutions:
Musicolet and Poweramp can both sort by file name without grouping by album. But I prefer Symfonium for other reasons.
Here is what I am doing: Open app > Library > Album artists > Artist name > Top tracks (is this the correct way to get to all tracks?) > Sort by.
Is this process different from the one you are describing above? Under my process I only see Filename up or down, I do not see a full path option.
In terms of the other tags I am using TDAT (DDMM), Year, and Release Time. But I don’t see an option to sort by those fields or the ones you suggest above. Am I missing something? I am a newbie with all of this so I appologize if I am missing anything obvious.
Yes it’s named filename but it’s the full path as it depends on the provider data.
But seems your right the release/original date are not exposed for tracks, will add for next release.
Edit: Actually I forget but those values are album values so won’t expose each track values. You can probably just use the sort title value for your need ?
Due to your first comment I have discovered that if I put all tracks in the same folder rather than segregating by album, the sorting function works as intended. However other sorting functions like Title and Duration work regardless folder. In other apps like Musicolet and Poweramp I can sort by file name with tracks in different folders and they sort alphabetically by file name. Is there a way to achieve this?
In regards to the date ID3 fields, I see that the Release Date (TDRL) and Original Release Date (TDOR/TORY) fields are track specific, but tagging programs like MusicBrainz Picard use that data at the album level. Is there any limitation to adding such fields as sorting methods to Symfonium?
As of right now I have used the TDAT field and Year field. I read that those fields are supposed to automatically combine into a field called Release Time. I didn’t understand that deeply but I didn’t see that effect so I created a field called Release Time with the format YYYY-MM-DD. I am flexible to use whatever the best industry standards are.
Summary:
As for right now, I can simply combine the albums into a single folder and sorting works correctly. But I would prefer to keep albums segregated by folders as that is my standard practice for music file management.
Improvements I would like:
Date sorting function drawing from TDAT + Year, TDRL, TDOR/TORY (whichever you think is the best industry standard)
Visibility of the date field(s) as described above in details page of each track
Visibilty of the date field(s) on the all tracks page. Next to the year or in lieu of the year under each track title.
Once again, thank you very much for everything that you do.
