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Media player subdivides album after year tag [answered]

asked 2018-03-07 01:39:57 +0300

Kim gravatar image

updated 2018-03-08 16:14:31 +0300

After upgrading my Xperia to 2.1.4.14, media are subdivided after the year tag.

Where I previously had one album with about 400 podcast titles, I now have about 400 albums ordered in descending order.

An examination of the tags in the media files, has shown that the year tag contains a date, hence an album pr. file.

Other podcasts has other interesting values in the year tag, making it very confusing to find the next episode in the series.

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The question has been closed for the following reason "the question is answered, an answer was accepted" by Kim
close date 2018-03-08 16:15:04.734197

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1

I have the same issue, both now in Sailfish X (from 2.1.4) and since long time ago in my laptop running openSUSE Tumbleweed. I guess it's some kind of underlying lib that doesn't know what to do with the year-field. Frustrating! To spend all that time adding which year a song was recorded or released...

Lars Maria ( 2018-03-07 15:16:49 +0300 )edit

@Lars Maria: I don't know where you get your music from, but the date tag is one of the most basic tags there is for all music formats, and it should always already be filled in before you get the music files on your device. Even when ripping a CD, this information is automatically retrieved and your music is automatically tagged correctly.

nthn ( 2018-03-10 12:53:41 +0300 )edit

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answered 2018-03-07 08:29:48 +0300

bocephus gravatar image

That's a feature, not a bug. As the release notes for 2.1.4.14 say:

Order music albums by date released, instead of alphabetically.

https://together.jolla.com/question/179223/release-notes-214-lapuanjoki/#179223-media

In any case, QuasarMX is a much better media player than the stock one. May I suggest you install it from the Jolla Store? https://www.meteorasoftworks.com/

The only reason to have the Media player installed is for FM radio support, on the models that have it and where it works.

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I was about to give a similar answer (that it's meant to be this way and even listed in the release notes), still this most idiotic behaviour is a bug. The year is usually unknown and invisible in the UI. Sorting media per year is about as bizarre as sorting pictures by the 176th byte in the file.

ossi1967 ( 2018-03-07 09:25:19 +0300 )edit
3

Sorting per year makes perfect sense. I certainly want all my albums from a specific artist sorted by year of release, not alphabetically. In any case, I have no envy to litigate the merits of either way of sorting, but will instead again reiterate my previous advice: install QuasarMX, where you can sort your media in any way you yourself choose.

bocephus ( 2018-03-07 09:30:13 +0300 )edit
2

QuasarMX has a horrible UI and (before some more recent SailfishOS updates) didn't even play the media on the phone. I tried it in a different context and uninstalled it right away.

Sorting by year of release only makes sense if you know the year of release by heart. I assume only a few people do. However, everybody knows the album title and the alphabet.

ossi1967 ( 2018-03-07 10:02:30 +0300 )edit
1

Except it isn't albums, if a compilation contains titles with the year of the original publication in the year tag, you will get an album per year and, in worst case, per title!

It would be fine if the albums was sorted in year order, but the titles should be sorted in track number order under the album!

Kim ( 2018-03-07 10:03:16 +0300 )edit
1

Sorting by date makes a lot of sense, and is definitely not a bug. However, I think the issue here is that these podcasts are all on the same 'album', but because their year tags are all different, all of them are split up as if they were separate albums, so @Kim ends up with 400 different albums, each containing 1 podcast. Because podcasts aren't actually music, and because Jolla's Media application is clearly meant as a music player, I'd recommend to just use a different player.

There are a couple of applications specifically for listening to podcasts available in the store, of which Podcatcher seems to be the best. If you want to keep on using a music player which can do both, I agree with @bocephus' suggestion of Quasar MX, and would also recommend Unplayer, which is free software and can play music both through a database (albums are also sorted by year) and through simply browsing your files.

nthn ( 2018-03-07 10:18:32 +0300 )edit

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Asked: 2018-03-07 01:39:57 +0300

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Last updated: Mar 07 '18