Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Patch question: downloaded music RBSource

[Michael Messmore <lists clearcreeksupport com>]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:27, jorge o. castro wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:17 -0400, Dan8827 wrote:
> > I've run into similar issues.  There have been discussions here and
> > elsewhere about why Rhythmbox users keep XMMS around.  When I want to
> > play a new song that isn't (yet) in my library, I turn to XMMS
> 
> I've found that this is the best solution also, except I do it with
> totem. The only thing missing with this "use case" is that currently I
> can't drag a song from nautilus into rb yet.
> 
> This is especially useful in spatial mode, where I can have one folder
> full of 5 songs, preview them in totem for quality, and then select all
> and drag and drop right into rb into my permanent collection, that would
> rule.

This is closest to my use as well.  I have a ~/Downloads/Music folder
where I put my incoming mp3, etc. files from various sources.  I
periodically go through these with cplay, XMMS, or Totem (depending on
my mood, etc.) to check for quality.  I delete the ones I don't want to
keep, go through the rest with EasyTag, and file them away in my
/var/music/ partition which is for my well (some my say anal
retentively) organized collection resides.  I rip CDs directly to
/var/music/.  Then I'll add the files to the library by selecting all
the subdirectories of /var/music that have been modified "Today" (thank
you new File dialog).  

I wish I could automate more of this, but tag editing will always have
to be done by hand for downloaded music.  Musicbrainz has never worked
well for me, and sometimes my decision on what "Genre" music is to fit
in with the rest of my collection differs from others.  I also like to
stick the record label the album was originally released on in the
Comment field (until maybe one day there is a visible label field).  

I use iTunes on Windows, and the auto file naming/sorting can be handy,
but really it doesn't cut out that much work.  I'd like to be able to
watch /var/music and have anything placed there auto-loaded into my
library, but I really don't want whats in ~/Downloads/Music in RB at
all, given the disorder of the tags, poor/sporadic sound quality, and
horrible file names (why do these kids name files with so many '-'s and
'!'s???).  I drag and drop a bit with iTunes, but it has a bug (at least
on my PC) when you have it set to copy the files and sort them into the
library where it leaves the last file it imported open so you can't
delete it until you import more or close the program, which weened me
off behaving that way, not to mention another horrible bug where it
requires Windows or expensive hardware :).

I think my usage is "normal" albeit more picky when it comes to
metadata, but then again, don't we all think we're normal? ;)

--Mike