Alpha Index for Artist and Album lists (USB disks).
I have my library on NAS and use MinimServer with an alpha index for Artists and Albums:
When I put my library (2000 artists) on a USB disk an browse the artist category in volumio, I can only get a linear list. My request is to add the possibility of an alpha index.
Gemini tells me this about MPD:
Music Player Daemon (MPD) itself is a server that manages your music library and playback. It doesn’t have a graphical user interface (GUI) to “display” anything directly to the user. Instead, it exposes an API that various MPD clients can use to interact with it.
Therefore, whether you can display an artist list with an alpha index depends entirely on the MPD client you are using. Many popular MPD clients, both command-line (like ncmpcpp) and graphical (like Cantata, GMPC, or various web clients), offer sophisticated Browse features that include:
- Alphabetical sorting of artists: This is a very common feature.
- Filtering/searching: Most clients allow you to type and filter artists.
- Alpha index (jump lists): Many graphical clients, especially, will provide an alpha index (e.g., A-Z buttons or a sidebar) to quickly jump to artists starting with a specific letter.
In summary: Yes, many MPD clients are able to display an artist list with an alpha index. MPD provides the data, and the clients provide the user interface features to present that data in a user-friendly way.
It seems some clients of MPD can indeed deliver an alpha index.
Not sure if I understand your post you might need to clarify it more.
- If I browse artists and select grid view, it’s not list:
- To me it’s pretty alphabetic sort?
- Same goes if I go into an artist folder:
(here the sorting seems off but that is because I’ve added the year before every album
- When I want to search an artist:
If you mean something else, please let me know.
I get an alphabetic (linear) sort both in list and grid views. That’s not the issue. The problem is that I have 2000 artists that I need to scroll through to get to i.e. Zucchero.
What I am looking for is an alpha index (as shown in my screenshot) that allows me to jump to any letter and then get the list or grid view of artists that start with that letter. Gemini in my post above described that feature as a “jump list”.
Same with albums.
Aha, you only referring to a quick jump list what is also present in LMS.
@volumio
Any comment on this as it has been requested multiple times (hard to find back when not knowing how it was requested).
Bingo.
And Gemini said (above) that some MDP clients offer this feature out of the box, but Grasshopper has little knowledge of MPD clients.
Cantata can’t do this, at least not the windows version. And since development stopped about 10 years ago…
Only supports album, artist and folder view.
Others I am not familiar with
Which MPD client is Volumio using? Or is Volumio a client itself that accesses core MPD? I am asking because I was wondering how big an effort a jump list would entail.
Thanks, @Wheaten
I think I have understood the situation now. Volumio uses MPD 0.25. The client that interacts with MPD is built into Volumio itself, so probably the jump list has to be coded into the Volumio MPD client.
As a work around, you could create a folder structure [0-9][A-Z] and copy the artist in them. Not the most charming way, but effective.
i also work around this way since years 
Thanks for the suggestion
I hesitate to even consider something like this. I have developed a folder structure over the years:
samplerate
album artist
album
%discnumber%-%tracknumber% - %title%
I have built a number of scripts that can derive tags from this folder structure. I don’t dare imagine what inserting an alpha index folder between the 15 or so samplerate folders and the album artist folders would mean to my workflow.
I was following this thread, understanding immediately what the OP was requesting, because my car displays this A-Z index, and I use it all the time & would also like to see it in Volumio. What I don’t understand is why this statement by the OP seems to suggest that any change to implement this type of index is not possible: “The client that interacts with MPD is built into Volumio itself, so probably the jump list has to be coded into the Volumio MPD client.”
So, why couldn’t the jump list be coded into Volumio?
@ReRy_Ro
I (the OP) was pointing to the probable scenario that
- MPD does not have a jump list functionality that can be called by API
- Other MPD clients (the piece of software that interacts with the MPD server) have the functionality to display a jump list and then ask MPD for a list of artists that start with the letter selected in the jump list
- Volumio acting as an MPD client has to implement this same functionality to present the user with a jump list
Not saying this is not possible, the functionality just has to be added to Volumio
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@volumio
Any thoughts on this request?
