Which Jukebox software should I use?

[DigitalFusion]

Hey all,

  All my MP3's are organized by folders of artists, with song files in them.  I dont like the Artist/album/title layout.  I have a folder.jpg image in nearly all my directories. Is there any software out there that would work with this type of structure, and also be compatible with a touchscreen?  Recommendations?

[DigitalFusion]

thnk I figured it out.  I have to set the album tags all to the artists name, then most software out there will work the way I want it to.  I also discovered that the PCJukebox stores all the library data in an Access database, so those of you out there who know Access, we can tweak it to our hearts content.

[Space Fractal]

Nowtro Jukebox (Í saw screenshoot used that screme) and MultiJuke (my own) are both designed this way (using singles / sort songs by artist as list method). Both are best used by controllers, but my own should been used very well on touchscreen.

Yes, writing artists name into the albums would sort out very well on many album based software.

folder.jpg I guss is dedicated to picture the band itself, not the album itself?

Other software can been seen in the Wiki (look for the first tread in the stricky one)

[DigitalFusion]

i've given up on tryin to set all teh album names as artist.  I have somewhere around 30,000 MP3's, so the task is too overwhelming.  I have started to just completely remove the album tag from ALL of them as I can do this fairly fast with Tag & Rename.  As soon as I am done removing any duplicates and then normalize everything, I will be looking back into software.

[leapinlew]

Freebox - hands down.

The hardest part is organizing your MP3's. I just abandoned my current MP3 collection and built a new one with full albums.

[DigitalFusion]

I have played with Freebox.  I like it.  However, I want my music displayed like the album layout, with a image, and the songs next to it, but I want just artists, with cover art from a CD or a greatest hits album or something, then ALL the songs by that artist.  I have have yet to see if stripping the alb8um info from all mp3's will allow Freebox to do this. 

[psychotech]

..want my music displayed like the album layout, with a image, and the songs next to it, but I want just artists, with cover art from a CD or a greatest hits album or something, then ALL the songs by that artist.

Touchscreen support, album art with songs by album (Don't know about ALL songs.., though) Still. Check out SK Jukebox..

psychotech

SK Jukebox with push buttons ..and still grinning

[Space Fractal]

The only problem Freebox is more an Album based software rather than artist singles based, even it a prettyy good software.

SK Jukebox would been a nice software as well, which should been easy by the author to add that option to show artist/songs instead of album/songs. Request that feature to the author on his forum.

I still doubt the controller based Nowtro is the best choise, since it designed very extractly that with artist/songs in mind, even you need to use a keypad, but its artist/singles based, not album/songs based? If you ask me, I would maybe used that software.

MultiJuke may been need a bit of work as well, but is highly costumed by the user with many difficent type of librarys.

[unclet]

Even though you dont like the artist/album/song format, you could simply create one "album" for each artist and place all your songs from that artist within this album directory.   You should then be able to test out other jukebox software to have more choices I would believe  (like mine) .... 

I find it too hard to have all songs located under one artist directory.   If you have too many songs in one list then it forces the user to scroll through many songs to find one they want to play.  If you have about 10 to 12 under a unique album, then the user can select the album and see all the songs available rather quickly and can select the next album and see all the songs quickly as well.

Hope all this made sense ....

[Space Fractal]

you are corrent here, unclet, but it depend how good the GUI is for scrolling long song list....

I do have updated my MultiJuke to support artist/songlist 100% in album view (even Explorer list could do that, but Singles view do however not support coverart). Just enable ArtistOnly, and then albums and track nr would not been used (debend you use filemask or id3 tags).

[JackTucky]

Hasn't Salmonking "disappeared" after his baby came?  Is he still making enhancements/bug fixes?

=J

[Space Fractal]

I just noticed that for few days ago. It seen he is away for a while... Here you could maybe just move artist tags to album tags and then remove artist tag to get it work on current SK-Jukebox?

[Barry Barcrest]

I just noticed that for few days ago. It seen he is away for a while... Here you could maybe just move artist tags to album tags and then remove artist tag to get it work on current SK-Jukebox?

Personally i don't recommend messing up your tags to get a program to work....

[Space Fractal]

yep you are correct, Barcrest.

It easy to move them back again which use with a batch tagger app. It easy to trying doing that with 2-3 artists in a another folder (coping) as a test to these software to make sure. Tag & Rename or such app would been easy to undo the chooise for messing the tags. Im pretty sure it would beek good with SK-Jukebox.

MultiJuke does not need that anymore (so no need to mess tags), and you could support that too in your Freebox (sorting by Artists instead of Albums in config).

[Barry Barcrest]

MultiJuke does not need that anymore (so no need to mess tags), and you could support that too in your Freebox (sorting by Artists instead of Albums in config).

I'm not sure what you mean here? At the moment i sort it by Artists. Do you think i should offer the option of sorting by Album?

[Space Fractal]

btw, it sort by Artist/Album/Songs.

I mean a plan to remove album to sort it by Artist/Songs (one songlist per artist, regaardsless number of albums).

hat is what NowTro example does and I now support that in MultiJuke's Album view.

[Barry Barcrest]

btw, it sort by Artist/Album/Songs.

I mean a plan to remove album to sort it by Artist/Songs (one songlist per artist, regaardsless number of albums).

hat is what NowTro example does and I now support that in MultiJuke's Album view.

Ah somebody mentioned this on the forum and it's not something i plan to add. The related artists albums are displayed as quick jump links an that's good enough for me. You can search up an artists if you want to find all tracks by an artist.

[AdamMF]

DigitalFusion,

You may want to check out Nowtro Jukebox (http://www.nowtrosoftware.com/jukebox) and see if it suits you.  As Space Fractal said, there is a single track list for each artist.  Since an artist's tracks are not divided up by album you would not have to mess with the album tag on any of your mp3 files... the software is only concerned with the artist name and song title for each file.

If you do try it, I'd recommend NOT letting it scan your entire hard drive for mp3 files when you first run the software (since you have such a large library).  Instead, I'd manually import a few dozen directories (artists) to start out with.  That way you can see how it goes about importing files, and you can launch the jukebox and see how they are organized for browsing/requesting songs.  Then, if it's what you are looking for, you can import the rest.  For such a large library it may take a while to import all of your music, but you only need to do it once, and your library will be neatly organized in the jukebox forever more.