Looking for juke software

[olsteve]

Hello - I am looking for that magic jukebox software that will perfectly fit my every need.....(yeah right).

I have looked through almost everything listed in these threads but haven't found 'the one' yet.

I have a large collection of MP3's (5000+). They are all in one folder (X:\MUSIC) and aren't separated into folders for artist/album. I would like to keep them this way. They are all ID tagged and have the album art too.

I am looking for something that is very similar to the jukes you see in bars. Something with a front screen with four or more album covers and can be paged through alphabetically.  I want to click on the album art and it shows the songs on that album.....and the other albums available from the same artist.

I would also like a spot showing the song cue (something like the next 5-10 songs). It would also be cool to have a 'popular' feature. Also, a search by title/artist/genre would be nice.

Let me know if this software already exists and I just missed it? Otherwise let me know of something close or if someone much smarter than I would create it?

Thanks,
Steve O.

[Barry Barcrest]

It does exist, www.thepcjukebox.com and it's very good too. However you need a touchscreen as that is really what it is developed for. You can use it perfectly well with a mouse however should you have one cabled up. Or even better a track ball. The only downside is that it is commercial (Not to expensive unless you want the credit option then it's $199)...

I don't know if you took a look at the one i am working on but as i have only been working on it for a few days i could probably tailor it to what you wanted as it does most of it now just not in a tidy way...

Anyway i hope that helps
BB

[Silver]

Are you sure that's exactly what you want - I've got a massive collection too, and found that displaying 4 or even 8 albums on a screen is all well and good but it would take over an hour to actually page through them all....

...so you will probably want some form of search function by Alphabet or something...

[olsteve]

Also, a search by title/artist/genre would be nice.

One of the issues that I keep running into is that the different programs will list my whole collection as on CD. I want something that reads the ID tag and knows the albums by that.

[Barry Barcrest]

You mean like http://www.thepcjukebox.com 

Did you not check that out? It does exactly what you want and you can download a trial. Hopefully mine will eventually do what you want too but that doest it all right now without a problem (Bugs aside)

[olsteve]

Barcrest -
I have downloaded the pcjukebox trial and have been checking it out. I did have problems with a few things on it. First it was reading my collection as one disk. Also, a portion of the screen was off of my monitor and I couldn't even scroll to see it all. I haven't really played around with it a lot so maybe some of this is fixable but not sure. I have also looked at your software and think it is a great start. Keep working on it and I think people will be really pleased.

[DrewKaree]

I have a large collection of MP3's (5000+). They are all in one folder (X:\MUSIC) and aren't separated into folders for artist/album. I would like to keep them this way. They are all ID tagged and have the album art too.

I am looking for something that is very similar to the jukes you see in bars. Something with a front screen with four or more album covers and can be paged through alphabetically.

Chris' will do that with the new CD skin. 

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,37545.0.html

I want to click on the album art and it shows the songs on that album.....and the other albums available from the same artist.

This part, I don't get.  If you want to select them by album art, and show the songs n that album, why not folder-ize them and change your ripping in the future to make this a possible feature? 

It sounds as if, with all your music unorganized, you're wanting software that will organize it "on the fly" but won't do so "permanently".

Maybe I'm just not understanding your explanation on that part, though.

I would also like a spot showing the song cue (something like the next 5-10 songs). It would also be cool to have a 'popular' feature. Also, a search by title/artist/genre would be nice.

I know there's a que, dunno if there's a "popular" or "most played" feature, but hopefully Chris will chime in here, on anything missing.

[SalmonKing]

SKJB would do the trick, if you were game enough to start organizing your files   

Using something like 'Tag & Rename' would make the job pretty easy, if you already have them tagged correctly.

[olsteve]

I want to click on the album art and it shows the songs on that album.....and the other albums available from the same artist.

This part, I don't get.  If you want to select them by album art, and show the songs n that album, why not folder-ize them and change your ripping in the future to make this a possible feature? 

It sounds as if, with all your music unorganized, you're wanting software that will organize it "on the fly" but won't do so "permanently".

Maybe I'm just not understanding your explanation on that part, though.

Ok...I am currently using MusicMatch software and it is well organized within this program. The software takes the large list of music and it is shown in groups (by artist, album, genre, etc.). I would like to keep that as is (not folder-ize in Windows). However, I don't like MusicMatch for my cab. I prefer something that is more like a jukebox and less of a media player (something that fits with a game room or bar). I guess if I have to I could arrange my files into folders.

Thanks for the advise and tips everyone. Any other ideas for me?

[Chris]

I have a large collection of MP3's (5000+). They are all in one folder (X:\MUSIC) and aren't separated into folders for artist/album. I would like to keep them this way. They are all ID tagged and have the album art too.

Chris' will do that with the new CD skin.

[olsteve]

Chris -  I am using your software and I like it so far.
The album art is a problem though. It just shows one for all of the albums. I will look when I get home where they are kept. Also, would it be possible to do more than four per page? How about the linking of same artist too (when you pull up one album it has links to all albums by the same artist)? Just some thoughts.

[Chris]

Also, would it be possible to do more than four per page?

The number of albums on a page is dependent on the skin.  If you have a high resolution screen, you can display as many albums as you like.  Edit CD4-1.skn in a text editor; it should be fairly obvious how to tinker with it to show more albums.

How about the linking of same artist too (when you pull up one album it has links to all albums by the same artist)? Just some thoughts.

That's a little more problematic, as it goes against the grain of what the jukebox is all about (modelling a physical jukebox).  However, I am planning to add filters that would allow you to select an artist and show only albums by that artist, but I have to clear some other things off my to-do list first.

--Chris

[olsteve]

Chris-
I was able to adjust the skin as you mentioned. I have a 2x3 grid showing 6 albums. I tried more but this looked best. Is it possible to have a search function? It would take forever to page through the whole collection.

I found my album art. It is in the same single folder as all of the .mp3's with various naming schemes:
AlbumArt_{F4FE1170-A8E4-4710-A251-DF1C532937EF}_Large.jpg
Big Ones.jpg
Best Of.jpg
Bob Dylan.jpg
Greatest Hits [Columbia].jpg
title.jpg
Folder.jpg
album.jpg

This looks like it could be a problem? Somehow when using musicmatch it must know how to tie the art to the album? Maybe I will just start re-tagging and 'folder-izing'

[Chris]

Chris-
I was able to adjust the skin as you mentioned. I have a 2x3 grid showing 6 albums. I tried more but this looked best. Is it possible to have a search function? It would take forever to page through the whole collection.

I found my album art. It is in the same single folder as all of the .mp3's with various naming schemes:
AlbumArt_{F4FE1170-A8E4-4710-A251-DF1C532937EF}_Large.jpg
Big Ones.jpg
Best Of.jpg
Bob Dylan.jpg
Greatest Hits [Columbia].jpg
title.jpg
Folder.jpg
album.jpg

This looks like it could be a problem? Somehow when using musicmatch it must know how to tie the art to the album? Maybe I will just start re-tagging and 'folder-izing'

You don't need to re-folderize... give me a few days to find a way to try to support this... it's just tying the image name to the album name in the mp3 tag.  Folder.jpg and AlbumArt*_Large are from Microsoft Media Player, in all likelyhood.

[olsteve]

Too late. I have already started to reorganize and folder-ize my mp3's. I am using the tag&rename software. It works pretty good. It was probably a good thing for me to do anyway. I found a lot of mis-tagged music and some duplicated songs. The tag look-up function in tag&rename isn't the greatest.

[olsteve]

I still need some way to attach my album art to the MP3's. Folder-izing didn't fix this.

[Chris]

Moving the album art into the folder for each album should get you your album art.

--Chris

[olsteve]

Do you know of an automated way to move the art? I don't want to manually do 5000+. I am not sure how the art is currently tied to the MP3? It must be embedded in the tag?

[allroy1975]

Some is built into the MP3 Tag itself.  Tag and rename will show you if it is.  Double click the file name..if it shows a pic, it's there, if not....it's not.

I'm in the process (STILL!) of going through my thousands of albums and getting artwork for them.  buy.com has really good scans of album covers, if it's not there I go to amazon, if I still can't find anything I do a google image search. 

It's a total PITA but I beleive it will produce the best results.  If someone could write something that would check a few of the most popular CD stores and download their artwork automatically that'd be awesome, or if anyone knows a better way then I'm doing it, I'm glad to change my ways. 

To answer your question:  I'm afraid it's going to be a long and painful process...at least mine has been.  I listen to a lot of Punk Rock and sometimes those bands are harder to find good pics of.

Allroy

[Barry Barcrest]

http://www.mega-search.net/ is quite good for finding some of the harder to find covers that you can't get off amazon etc...