"New Music" isn't new

[asteinmetz]

My "new music" list hasn't been updated in over a year. I was hoping that the upgrade to 7.4 would fix that but the song remains the same ;). I added some new tunes, rescanned, and they didn't show up. The new stuff does appear in the library otherwise.

I don't know anything about the guts of the database but is there a way to "burp" this thing to unclog it? Thanks.

Version: 7.4.1 - r28947 @ Tue Oct 20 07:58:02 PDT 2009
Operating system: Debian - EN - utf8
Platform Architecture: i686-linux
Perl Version: 5.8.8 - i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi
MySQL Version: 5.0.45-Debian_1ubuntu3.4

[snarlydwarf]

My "new music" list hasn't been updated in over a year. I was hoping that the upgrade to 7.4 would fix that but the song remains the same ;). I added some new tunes, rescanned, and they didn't show up. The new stuff does appear in the library otherwise.

I don't know anything about the guts of the database but is there a way to "burp" this thing to unclog it? Thanks.


'New Music' is simply the most recent albums, where 'recent' means 'last modified date'.

Checked the date stamps on files that aren't being seen as new?

[erland]

I don't know anything about the guts of the database but is there a way to "burp" this thing to unclog it? Thanks.

As mentioned it's based on file modification time.

Since you seems to be running Linux, you can just run "touch somefile.mp3" to change the modification time of somefile.mp3 to now.

If you rip your music from CD, the modification time will usually be set to the time when you did the ripping. If you get files ripped earlier this could explain why you have the problem you describe.

[Mnyb]

Make it a habit to check the tagging when you add new music, just punch save without doing anything might be enough, but there is often something to fine tune or maybe embed artwork or something.

I exchange music with a couple of friends, sometimes *they* actually bring something ;) (I'm the music nerd around my friends ). It could be ripped whenever so I just let go trough mp3tag , and some people manages tags even worse than me.

[usch]

I've got the opposite problem. :)

I am currently re-tagging a lot of my older files and find it quite annoying that they appear under "New Music" just because I added a MusicBrainz ID. I can hardly find the albums that are really new to my library any more - only 9 out of 100 albums on the New Music page are actually new!

Windows keeps track of three different time stamps: file creation (this one never changes), last modification, and last access. Is there any way to let New Music use the creation date instead of the modification date, so that it only shows files that are actually newly created?

[aubuti]

I've got the opposite problem. :)

I am currently re-tagging a lot of my older files and find it quite annoying that they appear under "New Music" just because I added a MusicBrainz ID. I can hardly find the albums that are really new to my library any more - only 9 out of 100 albums on the New Music page are actually new!

Windows keeps track of three different time stamps: file creation (this one never changes), last modification, and last access. Is there any way to let New Music use the creation date instead of the modification date, so that it only shows files that are actually newly created?
Can't you get the tagging program not to touch the file modification time? Most tagging programs have this option. One reason SbS doesn't use creation date is that typical *nix filesystems don't have creation date info. At present there is no way to use the creation date on Windows filesystems. I suppose a special tweak could be added to Windows versions, but at a cost.

[usch]

Can't you get the tagging program not to touch the file modification time?
I could do that in Mp3tag, but I don't think MusicBrainz Picard has such an option.

But I would not want to use that hack anyway, as it defeats the purpose of the modification time. I'm a backup junkie and keep copies of my files in several locations, and I would no longer be able to tell the modified and unmodified versions apart without looking at the actual file content if they all had the same timestamp.


At present there is no way to use the creation date on Windows filesystems. I suppose a special tweak could be added to Windows versions, but at a cost.

Thanks, I was hoping somebody had a plugin for this. If there is none, I think I'd rather live with a cluttered New Music page than mess around with the timestamps.

[aubuti]

I'm a backup junkie and keep copies of my files in several locations, and I would no longer be able to tell the modified and unmodified versions apart without looking at the actual file content if they all had the same timestamp.
Have you considered rsync or a similar backup approach that doesn't rely on timestamps, and conveniently, is very efficient in only updating the data that have changed? It could be a big change to your backup regimen, but it has its benefits.

Personally I still rely on timestamps most of the time, but I really like rsync in particular applications such as updating my music library backups when I edit tags, because it only transfers the changed tag data, rather than transferring GBs of audio data that have *not* changed.

[usch]

Most Windows backup programs don't use the timestamp at all, but the "archive" flag that is maintained by the OS whenever a file changes. So creating the backup is not the problem. The problem arises when it comes to restoring a backup.

Suppose I notice that I've totally messed up the tags of an album and want to revert to the previous version. With a proper last modified date I would just pick the last backup before that date and restore the files. Without that information I can only restore each backup in sequence and examine the file contents until I find the one with the tags still intact. That can be tedious if the unwanted change went unnoticed for quite some time.

But thanks for your suggestion, I'll keep rsync in mind, maybe it can be useful in another application.

[jdoering]

Hmm... I had wondered what New Music represented too since it changed when I didn't expect it to. I understand the file timestamp implementation described but it certainly doesn't match what I expected as a user.

I had expected "New Music" = most recently discovered and that later modifications to tags, etc shouldn't make it new regardless of last modification timestamp. Obviously moving things around would confuse this depending on how SBS defines unique identification. For my library MusicBrainz trackId + albumId is sufficient for identification uniqueness. If I happen to have multiple copies of the same thing (different bitrate or format or whatever) I wouldn't care than a newly discovered duplicate wasn't considered unique.

-Jeff

[JJZolx]

But I would not want to use that hack anyway, as it defeats the purpose of the modification time. I'm a backup junkie and keep copies of my files in several locations, and I would no longer be able to tell the modified and unmodified versions apart without looking at the actual file content if they all had the same timestamp.

That's what the archive attribute is for.

[JJZolx]

Most Windows backup programs don't use the timestamp at all, but the "archive" flag that is maintained by the OS whenever a file changes. So creating the backup is not the problem. The problem arises when it comes to restoring a backup.

Suppose I notice that I've totally messed up the tags of an album and want to revert to the previous version. With a proper last modified date I would just pick the last backup before that date and restore the files. Without that information I can only restore each backup in sequence and examine the file contents until I find the one with the tags still intact. That can be tedious if the unwanted change went unnoticed for quite some time.

Depends on how you do backups. Traditional backups for a music library are much more trouble than they're worth. Keeping a sync'd copy using something like rsync, Robocopy or SyncToy is a lot easier to manage. Keeping several generations of backups for something as static as music or video content doesn't make a lot of sense unless you're constantly editing the metadata.

If you mess up the tags on one album it's probably much faster to just correct the tags than it is to restore from a backup.

[Aurumer]

Is there any workaround or tool to change Timestamps and get "New Music" manually sorted?
Is it a workaround to change the system time of the PC/Server shortly and modify tags or save files new with this time?

[funkstar]

Is there any workaround or tool to change Timestamps and get "New Music" manually sorted?
Is it a workaround to change the system time of the PC/Server shortly and modify tags or save files new with this time?
You could do that, or search and download one of the hundreds of little utilities that will let you manually alter time stamps on files.

[Aurumer]

Thanks, sounds good. Then I will sort my new music. I have some albums under new music just because of correcting tags.

Which timestamp ist important for new music listing (modified, last accessed, created)?

[funkstar]

Modified (think about it, your New Music has been altered by a tagging program changing tags, hence modifying the file. That is what causes the change).

One thing to note, the albums are sorted as per the newest time stamp on all the tracks from that album. So you change one file and the whole album jumps to the top of New Albums.

[Aurumer]

Thanks, thought about that but wanted to be sure. I have had problems with changing only one file of an album resulting in having the album twice times in SB Server, one time with one song and second time with the others. Since then I allways change all files.

[funkstar]

Thanks, thought about that but wanted to be sure. I have had problems with changing only one file of an album resulting in having the album twice times in SB Server, one time with one song and second time with the others. Since then I allways change all files.
I've never had that personally, but I've only had my tagger change time stamps by mistake a couple of times. The last time an album jumped up my New Music list was when I re-ripped a track as it hadn't ripped correctly the first time and I didn't notice for about a year :)