New user with feature requests & observations

CoyleyCoyley Member
edited July 2020 in General

Hi everyone

Firstly, hello everyone and a thank you for creating Astiga.

I am a new Premium Astiga user migrating over from Google Play Music (as it transitions to You Tube Music by year end). I manage my master collection locally with MediaMonkey and also have Plex running (which I do not consider competitors to Astiga as these are really for local / within premise use most effectively). I envisage Astiga becoming my main way of playing music content from this point onwards.

I have now completed uploading 80K+ songs to my new linked Pcloud account in both FLAC and MP3 formats. All is working well, all songs have synced into Astiga with the artwork showing. I'm very pleased and using Astiga on a daily basis. I am using the Astiga Android app on three different devices, all of which is working well.

Thank you for a wonderful service and application. I envisage that more users will make the journey over from Google Play Music too during the year before it closes. Having built up a collection over decades that I want to play, I am most concerned with the core functionality of artist / album / genre / playlists and the ability to cast. All of this is within Astiga which I chose after trying many apps and services. I have spent a long time getting the field tags right in the music files, so I am delighted that Astiga uses them properly.

I have a few requests and observations:

  1. Total Songs - I cannot see a way to view the total songs uploaded. I can see by Genre which is excellent, but not the total. I may be missing this so let me know if I am. If it is not shown, that will be a helpful feature.
  2. Sorting Z-A - The alphabetical A-Z views are very helpful. Is it possible to also have Z-A? That's can be a useful place to start for items nearer the end of the alphabet.
  3. Adding a 'Go To' - If that is possible for a Z-A, then a 'Go to letter <n>' type function will be appreciated. I know I can use Search too, but that gives an ability to view from points in the liberary.
  4. I support the requests for the Album Artist view - that will be especially helpful. In my 80K+ of songs, I have many compilations with artists who may of only ever released one or a few songs. These are all within albums with an album artist of Various Artists and then the Artist field populated with the specific artist. Having the Album Artist view will therefore be a very helpful addition, allowing for easy non-search access to album artists and keeping compilations nicely within the Various Artists area via the Album Artist field. This is in a number of other applications, including MediaMoney, Google Play and Plex (ironically Plex has its own issues with regard to the Artist field).
  5. The artist image & biography loading from LastFM is welcome, thank you. It isn't always accurate but useful none the less. I find that it works in the Artist view or Show Artist but not when I do a search. Then it shows a white star on a full white background. I am unsure of if there is a setting I need to change or if this is something that requires a small fix. If I need to change anything, please do feel free to let me know.
  6. Adding my own artist image - One feature request I do have that I do not believe has been mentioned so far relates to the Artist image. I have found the best image I use for all my artist fields, which I use consistently in Media Monkey (beta of V5) and Plex. I really would welcome the ability to either upload an image of my choosing to the artist field. Or if the Album Artist capability is added, then to that instead.
  7. Using images from Plex - Another option on the artist image is that because I am using a copy of my Plex local cloud as a Astiga content, there are artist-poster.jpg files in every album artist directory (including the master Various Artists album artist directory). Anyone with a mature Plex library may of done the same. If an ability to edit the image was introduced, scanning for artist-poster.jpg could be introduced as a way to auto populate the Album Artist field.
  8. I appreciate combining Last FM image pull with uploaded images might be more complex than required, so I would be happy if it was either/or. I could then use the ability to add my own images (and others who prefer this).

That's it for now. Everything is working well and I'll report back with further experiences over time.

Thank you and best wishes

Mark

Post edited by Coyley on

Comments

  • CoyleyCoyley Member

    Just to clarify on the artist image not show in the Search facility. This is not just for artists where Last FM does not have an image. For those where it does, the image seems to show in a brief flash and then disappears or is covered over by the white star default one. Thank you.

  • KoenKoen Member, Former

    Thank you for the kind words.

    Could you create a new discussion for every new feature request (or upvote if that feature request already exists)? That way they are easier to find, plus it allows others to upvote those ideas as well, which allows me to gauge what ideas are popular (that's what the 👍️42 shows). I of course would want to do all, but unfortunately a day only has 24 hours, so I tend to prioritise the feature requests that benefit most.

  • CoyleyCoyley Member

    Thanks Koen, I have put them up in the three areas of feature request in line with your request.

    The issue of artist images not loading after a search, is a potential fix I envisage rather than a new feature.

    Best wishes

    Mark

  • KoenKoen Member, Former

    The artist imagery is indeed a problem at the moment. The main reason is that Last.fm decided to remove the artist imagery for public use, i.e. they always return a star placeholder. I am still looking for a suitable alternative.

  • CoyleyCoyley Member

    Thanks Koen. That's helpful, I appreciate your clarification on it.

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