Top Request: Navigate music collections by folder in the Groove app

Generally, it's:

Music > Artist > Album > Songs

But could also be:

Music > Collections > Album > Songs

Music > Soundtracks > Game > Songs

or for multi-disc albums

Music > Artist > Album > Disc 1 > Songs

But that shouldn't matter. Why I want folder-based navigation is so that I can navigate through my music in a way that makes sense to me. Using the tags for navigation has never really worked for me. Different players sort things differently and especially collection albums get split up a lot when I don't want them to.

Ideally I'd be able to hit a play button on a folder and it would play everything in that folder - including its subfolders.

Shuffle, Add to playlist, Add to 'Now Playing', would also be welcome.

Also nice would be if the player could display an image file if found in those folders - an album art image, artist photos, or anything else, really.

The music player should never add anything to these folders - they should be considered read-only.

My folder organisation for my music files for an artist that I have a lot of different types of albums eg. Pearl Jam ;) is

Music > P > Pearl Jam > Studio Albums > (1991) - Ten

For music that I don't have as much of a collection of eg. Dave Matthews Band

Music > D > Dave Matthews Band > (1996) - Crash

Hi Ellen,

my name is Mathias Schmidt. I am a very basic user using digital music, so my needs should be very basic. But there is one point which annoys me every day.

I have some hundred music cds and still buy music by cd (yes I am somewhat conservative). I rip these cds into lossless wma format which automatically builds a folder structure like:

root

   interpreter1

      album1

         song1

         song2

         ...

      album2

         song1

         ...

   interpreter2

      album1

         ...

Either the Interpreter as the albums beneath the interpreter is automatically sorted by alphabet. Every cd I rip come along with a meta tag which includes the date of production of the album. I really miss the possibility to list of albums beneath the interpreter in a chronological order. Sounds stupid? But this is what I miss really, really, really really. Maybe you can help?

Thank you!

Mathias

Playing folder would be great help to us.

I miss play by other tags too.

Most show and play by "Album Interpret".

Play by Interpret is bad if you have many of them from Sampler...

But you can tag Album Interpret as "Various".

So, if we could show and play by tag Album Interpret, we have a great overview.

Hey Ellen,

That's a great news! I am happy to share my "folder" structure with you. It is actually based on the one iTunes has created automatically for me:

> Music > Artist > Album > Songs

• Where Artist name is their "famous" name (not their real name, used to do it but was not a good idea). e.g. Pennywise.
• Album is the Album name... currently only the album name... but I might update the whole thing with the release year if available --> AlbumName [(ReleaseDate)]: e.g: Unknown Road (1993), if not available: Unknown Road
• Songs have a more precise and interesting structure --> [CDNumber - ]TrackNumber TrackName: e.g.: 01 Unknown Road.mp3, or 1-01 Bad Romance.mp3, 2-16 Again Again.mp3 (for the first and last songs of "The Fame Monster" album of Lady Gaga).

You can also that almost all the words start with a capital, and the remaining does not have capital letters... although some have a special writing: e.g. .t.A.T.u.

Last but not the least... I have a "Various Artists" folder, where all the tracks for compilations, or weird albums are. "Various Artists" is considered as a normal artist folder.

Regarding your questions:

• play buttons should be on each artist, on each album, with 2 buttons (play all in the logical order, play them in shuffle),  I guess the folder structure is already present with the current artist view, which already shows albums into it and songs in albums. I am very happy with that. What I would add is a second button in the Artists view (with the shuffle logo), and a second button in other views next to "Play all" with "Shuffle all" (or something like that).
• it would be nice if Microsoft Groove could have the option (same as iTunes have) to order the files automatically, and create the files structure on the hard drive based on these info. Best practice, is to keep the same iTunes structure... to stay compatible.
• "Add to" menu, would not be interesting IMHO. But I would love to have "add to now playing", "add as next track" (which will put the track between the current one and the next one).

Hope that helps! Keep the good work :)

Lots of love from a music AND Groove music lover!