Tracks without album does not show up in the UI & API correctly

[kmod-midori]

The files are generated from videos automatically, so the does not have album metadata set.
The artist entry is available in the web UI, but there is nothing in it, the same applies to the Subsonic API. However, clicking the "Play" button below the artist name does add all the files into the playlist.

example.zip

[epoupon]

Hello!
Yes indeed, in the artist page, only albums that are related to the artist are shown. A relation is one of composer, mixer, album artist, track artist, etc.
Technically all tracks in MB must belong to a release, but I admit this should be nice to support this.
We should find a way to show these relations and also tracks that are without albums.

[kmod-midori]

In my case I probably can simply fill the album (release) field with the same video title and be done with it. But the page being empty yet here can confuse new users who do not have complete metadata in their libraries.

[epoupon]

Unfortunately there is one drawback though.
Currently the artist page is rendered once. There is no infinite scroll stuff.
Adding a "non album tracks" raises a problem: what should we do when there are too many tracks to display?
We could infinite scroll but it would make the bottom sections (similar artists, links) difficul to reach.
Any thoughts on this to get a proper layout?

[kmod-midori]

Some web applications I used do infinite scrolling for a few pages, but switch to traditional pagination (or show a "next page" button) if the current page becomes too long. Others simply does not put anything at the bottom of a page when it scrolls infinitely (e.g. Twitter), instead they put extra contents in a sidebar. Emeric POUPON ***@***.***> 于 2021年9月3日周五 23:17写道：

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Unfortunately there is one drawback though. Currently the artist page is rendered once. There is no infinite scroll stuff. Adding a "non album tracks" raises a problem: what should we do when there are too many tracks to display? We could infinite scroll but it would make the bottom sections (similar artists, links) difficul to reach. Any thoughts on this to get a proper layout? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#165 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKRK2BBNRYV4EIYOOYZBEDUADRJ7ANCNFSM5AF4XSUQ> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

[garylaski]

What do you think about putting all tracks without an album into a group/psuedo-album called "[non album tracks]" in the way that Picard does for standalone recordings?

[epoupon]

@Glask1 : interesting idea indeed!
But after thinking a bit about it, I think it is rather a tagger problem than a player one.
I just discovered some picard/beets plugins that handle these non album tracks, maybe it would be best to just let users decide what to do and properly tag these tracks the way their wants.

[kmod-midori]

Yes, I currently simply write the title to both title and album field, and that works well. However, it can still be confusing to show an empty screen with the play button functioning.

[epoupon]

You are right. And @Glask1's solution does not prevent users from tagging non album tracks as they want...

[kmod-midori]

@Glask1 's idea is indeed interesting, but has a hidden problem: my individual tracks have embedded cover images, combining them into a single (virtual) album might mess that up.

[epoupon]

Maybe an acceptable solution would be to add a track list section with a manual "show more" button in order not to bloat the rendered page and make users still see the secondary stuff (similar stuff, links, etc.)

Edit: this would also apply for the albums of artists that have a very large amount of albums (lile Various Artists)