Best posts made by mncroc

BPM and initial key are used heavily by DJ's and others who need to consider how music "builds" over time.

A few examples:

• generally DJ's want BPM (tempo) to build over time so you don't go from a "fast" song to a bit slower one...even a slight drop in tempo can cause people to leave a dance floor.
• DJ's doing beat mixing use BPM to find songs of similar BPMs that may then mix together well. The tonal "key" of a song can also help with mixing songs together or to create smooth transitions.
• People exercising or running often find they like a certain tempo for running, another for cool down, etc.

Here's an article to learn more:
The Best Running Song BPM (and How to Find Your Running BPM)
https://www.beachbodyondemand.com/blog/find-running-bpm

Is there a search option for excluding results from the search - a "NOT" option? e.g. "NOT artist:U2 I've experimented with different syntaxes and haven't found anything that works...

In general:
I'd like to better understand what options are available for searching a collection. The tooltip displayed for the search field (screenshot below) shows some of the possibilities, but not all.

I've discovered a few other bits of syntax in forums and by experimenting. Here's what I've found (shown with examples):

• artist: u$ (find all artists starting with the letter "u")
• title: walk$ (similar but searches the title field)
• artist: uddy (will NOT find artists with "Muddy" or "Buddy") - search term must match the start of a word...but not the whole word. Searching for "artist:guy" will find Buddy Guy.
• albumartist: cro - searches album artist field.
• rating:2 - matches songs with that # of stars. can use half values (e.g. 2.5). Searching for "rating:0" and "rating:null" seem to return the same results.
• bitrate:<=200 - bitrate search
• genre:folk$ - would find genres "Folk', "Pop Folk", "Folk Rock", etc.
• grouping:vocal$ - searches the Grouping field. This would find "Vocal" and "VocalJazz", but not "HasVocal". (I use groupings a lot...)
• comment:"#1 single" - searches comment field
• length:>5:00 - searches by time length of track
• playcount:>5 - # of times played field
• year:>2011

There are other fields called out in the tooltip, but I find examples a good way to learn.

What other types of searches are there? Thought we'd get a topic going here as documentation is minimal and the forums are often the best way to learn...

Is there a search option for excluding results from the search - a "NOT" option? e.g. "NOT artist:U2

Thanks in advance!

albumartist: cro

It'd be great for collection management as well as technical purposes if SMP could show some basic data about the Collection:

• number of tracks/files
• number of albums
• number of artists
• Space used (e.g. 13.2 GB)

I have a pretty large collection and miss the data that iTunes used to show in the status bar about overall library size (# of items, total play time, and total file size).

SMP could show a short summary of totals at the bottom of the Collection pane when you scroll to the bottom below all the artists/albums - or however you have your collection displaying groups. This would also serve as a way to summarize the # of search results in the collection.

OR there could be a summary displayed on the Tools>Settings>Collection tab. OR another option would be to create some type of "report" screen...but I'd be happy with just a few simple stats.

Thoughts?

How are others finding the total size of their collection today?

@jonas MusicBrainz Picard has an option to "Save AcoustID fingerprints to file tags". Will SMP read/use/benefit from those saved fingerprints, or will it generate its own fingerprint instead?

Thanks @jonas !

I've been using the Groupings / Work tags for this for many years. I can't recall exactly where I picked up that tip, but it was from someone else in a tagging related discussion. I use the Groupings metadata as a way to track many things. As you can see from the screenshot below.

• Instrumental vs. HasVocal
• used in a Soundtrack
• Secondary / alternative genres. If Dolly Parton does a Rock album...you can label it Rock and Country and CountryRock.
• "Mellow" songs - slower tempo/chill
• Original vs. Cover vs. Re-Recording
• Orchestra, BigBand, Opera, (not just "Classical")
• Top40 - for me, that means it charted on the Billboard Hot 100.
• RS500 - Rolling Stone Top 500 songs list
• Disco, Dance (usually for R&B songs)
• Surf, Garage, HairMetal (usually for Rock songs)
• AdultContemporary - charted on the Billboard AC chart
• DrumSolo, Guitar - for tracks featuring these prominently
• etc.

I also have a grouping value I use to indicate I've confirmed/updated the Year field. Personally, I want the year field to hold the original release date of the track...so if it's a greatest hits album or a various artists compilation, the Year field has the original date of the track's release, and I update the album name to include the year the album was released. That looks like this:

Note: there is an "Original Year" field, but many players don't display or support that. This is a system I've been using for over 15 years...

Hope this helps others with managing their collections.

I second this request. Generally, any list should be sortable/orderable.

Simply being able to sort by name and renaming would allow decent simple user control.

Note that re-naming a smart playlist currently isn't easy/obvious. you need to "edit" and then go to the last screen of the wizard...

I had probably 100 or more smart playlists in iTunes in the past, but haven't yet used SMP's smart playlist much yet, although I expect to once I get my collection fully moved over. (I went through some data loss due to a HDD crash and am merging and cleansing from multiple backups...sigh).