I noticed that the pick lists for artists, producers, engineers and songwriters are strictly separate. This means that when I have a musician who wrote the songs and also produced and engineered the album, I have to enter this person’s name four times! This long-time user remembers that in the desktop version there was just a ‘Persons’ pick list, which made life a lot easier. Why was this setup abandoned? You know what would be nice? One pick list for persons and one for ‘Credits’, the latter of which could have all kinds of instruments and functions such as producer, engineer, songwriter, liner notes, cover design, artwork, photography. It would be infinitely customizable!
It’s not such a crazy idea. Look at how DisCogs lists the credits.
The trouble is that some Artists are not People, they may be a Group (eg The Beatles). Also some people (eg Beethoven) cannot be Record Producers or Engineers.
I think that combining the “people” lists was the worst thing that Clz ever did.
No doubt it could be done in some way, but it would have to be far more sophisticated than what was done in MuC.
As a former cataloguer in a music library, I agree. One list for people and one for groups would be ideal and best practice. It shouldn’t be necessary to re-add to a different pick list someone who’s already in the database (time consuming and more database storage). Also, if you need to make a global change to a name, it’s mildly annoying to have to do it in more than one pick list, not to mention having to keep track of which pick lists you’ve added the name to.
And some record producers are not composers. So? You have one instance of a name to be added to whichever field is appropriate for that person. Could be added to just a single field, or to multiple fields if that person performs more than one role.
Really? I was the opposite, I thought it was great (still do). I’d really like to hear why you think that. (and my impression at the time was that many others shared your view).
Separate lists for Groups and Peoiple would be a good idea - but Clz only supports an Artist field, so that would mean a redesign of the software. This strikes me as a fairly major exercise.
Some people could be Artists, Producers, Engineers. But some people couldn’t be.
So, when I look at a list of Composers (ie Classical Composers, rather than more modern composers, who are fitted into the Songwriters field) I only want to see people who I recognise as composers, and not people who couldn’t be composers.
Groups, of course, couldn’t be people at all, which is why I felt that the original system was so bad, because groups were included in the people list.
Apart from keeping Groups separate from People, it would be a good idea if People Pick Lists could be restricted to Role. eg in the Composer List you have a check box which says “All People” or “Composers Only”. This would satisfy me and you, but would make the screens messy, and some rule would have to be made which could determine whether or not the person was a composer (eg had they already been used in that role). This is a suggestion of what sort of thing needs to be achieved, not how to do it. Maybe you can think of a better way, but it seems to me this is starting to get very complex.
But you don’t need to persuade me. You need to persuade the Clz team. And I think that in order to do that you would need to create a suggestion which is going to be easy to understand by the end user, and easy to implement by the team.
I really fail to see the problem. If you have one list of people and one list of credits, you can assign any credit to anybody. If Beethoven can’t be an engineer, then you just don’t assign that credit to him. Why would you? But if someone plays three instruments and is the producer, you assign them four credits. And if a group is the producer, what prevents me from assigning that credit?
The only advantage I can see in separate lists is that you can actually see a list of just composers or just producers etc. That could probably be solved if we still had the sadly missed filter feature of the ‘legacy’ version, which allowed us to build sophisticated filters using boolean formulas.
Whichever way I look at it, it seems silly to have to enter the same name to multiple lists.
When users, while in the Edit screen, go to add a Producer, most prefer to see a short-list of just person that are Producers. Not a full list of all persons in their entire database.
As I said earlier
we implemented the shared person lists for Music Collector, based on requests from a handful of advanced users on the old forum.
Implementation was complex and time-consuming, code was quite buggy for a while afterwards
And most imporantly, we received a LOT of complains from many Music Collector users who absolutely hated that change
So we never implemented the shared person lists for our other 4 desktop program
And we never implemented shared person lists for the mobile apps and web-based software either.
I understand your reasoning, but as things are now, it is rather arbitrary what credits make it to the status of their own pick list. NOT cover design, artwork, photography and liner notes, for instance. We are told to create our own custom fields for them, sending them to a completely different place on the man screen and not listed with the other Credits.
Now, I don’t catalogue my classical music, but I wonder: where would I then credit the conductor?
(I am not trying to be a nuisance; it’s just that since switching to the web version, I encounter issues both old and new that somehow make the experience less than ideal. Still enjoying the software, though).
I don’t understand. ALL fields have their own pick list. Nothing arbitrary.
I think that is a different discussion. Yes, Custom Fields are on their own tab. We make the Edit screen even more configurable, so that you can place Custom Fields on other tabs too. Maybe later. The Custom Fields feature is very new, who know what it may evolve in.
But, each Custom Pick List Field you create, will have its own pick list.
I would suggest using the Conductor field for that. Edit Album screen, Classical tab.
I am sorry to hear that. I suspect that part of that is just because it is different. You will find your way, just like you found your way in the old desktop software.
No, but getting away from pick lists, if you wanted a list of composers and only composers, to use your example, surely opening the composers folder would give you that list, without any irrelevant names creeping in? Or am I missing the point entirely here?
Because when people edit the Producer field in the Edit screen, they want the dropdown to only include producers, not every single person in their database.
The problem is in the EDIT screen, when editing fields.
And it won’t, if they type the first 4 or 5 letters of the name, the list will return a concise and targeted list of names that match only those letters, from which it is easy to identify and select the correct person.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, Alwin! But I can understand from your perspective, as someone running a business, that it makes bad business sense to change a product in a way that the majority of your customers don’t like.
I agree with jayvee59. As I originally suggested, a People and Credits list would be ideal. Other pick lists only for “things”. Even then, you could have it both ways: if every time a person gets assigned the credit ‘producer’ their name was automatically added to the Producers picklist, etc. for those who prefer the current way. But that may be too complicated, I guess…
