(NOOB) No Add to Playlist on context menu

[daveshawuk]

Hi

Noob here. Just installed 8.3.7 from scratch. Got it playing via my Hifiberry DAC and it can see my files on an attached USB stick and a share from my NAS. However I've spent a confusing several hours accessing my music files via the Library/Folders option and trying to add them to a playlist I had already created. However many ways I've tried there is no Add to playlist option on the context menu for each file. The only way I can do this is to Add each file to the Queue using the Add option, and then create a entirely new playlist from the queued files.

However if I approach the music via the Library/Tags or Library/Album options I can add to my playlist, but for me this is unintuitive - I think about folders and files normally.

Have I configured something wrong, is this by design, or am I just being dumb?

Thanks for any pointers.

Dave

[Nutul]

However if I approach the music via the Library/Tags or Library/Album options I can add to my playlist, but for me this is unintuitive - I think about folders and files normally.

Not questioning your habits, but...

if your music is organized how moOde prefers, that is: an ARTIST folder, containing various ALBUM folders, each of which containing the tracks, I cannot see how this might be counterintuitive when used in the TAG / ALBUM views, compared to the FOLDER view...

instead of opening the ARTIST folder, you just click on the ARTIST
instead of opening the ALBUM folder to see the track files, you just click on the ALBUM and look at the tracks in the lower screen

you can add:
- single tracks, in any order
- all albums
- single discs (in multi-disc albums)
- entire artist collection (who does it...? anyway)

Again, maybe I am over-simplifying it, but this is how it looks to me; as a former fan of FOLDER view, until I realized it's just the same, if not even better, to use the TAG view.
This requires your library to be consistently tagged of course. If your library is a mess, recognizable only by filenames, then I agree with you...

[Tim Curtis]

Folder view is really a legacy feature meant to provide basic support for navigating a music collection via its underlying folder tree. It doesn't support the full set of options available in Tag/Album view because of differences in the way tracks are accessed.

If there were a lot more requests for Folder view enhancements then the work effort to port some of the Tag/Album options for example "Add to playlist" could possibly be justified.

In any case, navigating and searching a collection by tags is much more flexible and powerful, and reflects the way most modern music apps work.

[daveshawuk]

Thanks both for your constructive feedback. Seems I'm just a dinosaur ;-)

I still think that from a consistency perspective it would make sense for all options to be available however you approach the Library, but I do recognise this is free software and developer resource should targeted at fixes/improvements that benefit the majority, not just dinosaurs.

Keep up the good work.

[Elias]

I think it's great that Moode lets me manage the music library via the file structure and doesn't force me to add new tags to the entire music library. I also have my own folders for the children's music, which would be difficult to filter using tags. 

However, the fact that the “add to playlist” option is not available there also confused me quite a bit, so I wanted to open a bug report. I would be very happy if the function were implemented!

[Tim Curtis]

You could simply add the genre "Children's Music" to those tracks and then it would be painless to select them in Tag or Album view.

[the_bertrum]

Remember that folders are just another way to add metadata to a file, same as tags. The problem with folders is that you can only encode one set of data to each file. If there are two ways to describe the file, then you need two copies of the file.

Take "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles, you might choose to add the Artist, Track Name and a "genre" of Children's Music to that file and you could do it with folder and file names thus:
/Children's Music/The Beatles/Yellow Submarine.file
But, if you have other Beatles tracks, they'll be somewhere else maybe here:
/60's British/The Beatles/She Loves You.file
Do you put another copy of Yellow Submarine here, or accept that all your Beatles tracks are not in The Beatles folder?

Use tags however and a search for an Artist "The Beatles" gets you everything, but a search for a Genre of Children's Music gets the tracks by The Beatles that are also Children's.