[Announce] Visual Statistics

[rgdawson]

Thanks for letting me know.


Not sure if PlayLog is still maintained. I think it's been replaced by the What Was That Tune? plugin.

You say that you rarely play anything from your own LMS library anymore. Do you mean you're mostly listening to streaming services like Spotify? If so, there's a restriction imposed by LMS you should know about: tracks from streaming services can only be processed by plugins like VS if you have added them to your LMS library as part of an album. LMS does not import single online tracks or tracks of online playlists as library tracks.

If this is about LMS library tracks, I think you can do already this: you create a virtual library with all tracks whose play count > 0 and then select this virtual library as a filter in VS. I've actually created such a virtual library with SQLite Virtual Libraries (because it can update the VL once a day) and Alternative Play Count (because it doesn't count skips as play counts). I can post the SQLite code for the VL if you're interested.

If you wanted to gather data on (online/remote) tracks that are not part of your LMS library, you'd first have to fetch all kinds of track (meta)data and the plugin for the respective streaming service (e.g. Spotty for Spotify) would be the way to go in that case. And then you'd need code to handle play counts and other dynamic metadata because LMS won't handle any of that for non-library tracks. You'd basically have to replicate a lot of LMS code to handle non-library online tracks.

Thanks for reminding me about "What Was That Tune". Better than nothing, I guess. One thing I would have liked about PlayLog is that you could configure it to not log local tracks and just log streamed tracks which is what I am really after.

Correct. I usually only play songs from my own library that are not available on Spotify. I mostly listen to Spotify and Pandora radio stations. I discover a lot of new music that way, and often, I think "Oh, I want to remember this song and tell so-and-so about it or listen to it again a few days later", then I can't remember it. So, "What Was that Tune" will help with that. It would be cool if VS could show statistics on WWTT data, though I have not looked into what data is keeps and whether VS could access it. (I guess this would be a variation on my original thought.)

I was just thinking of logging 'songinfo' data as the songs are played (like I assume WWTT and Playlog do). I have not confirmed that the songinfo command returns what you need, or whether an additional call needs to made using a link provided in 'songinfo'.

Oh well, it was just a thought.

R Greg Dawson

[AF1]

I got this sorted out on the Squeezelite-X side. In the process, I had the good fortune to install the Visual Statistics plugin and I think it is pretty cool.

Thanks for letting me know.

I have been looking for something like this that would build a database of all the songs I listen to (I rarely play anything from my own library anymore). I was hoping the PlayLog plugin would do the trick, but it appears obsolete. With Visual Statistics, you have all the basics to build such a feature.

Not sure if PlayLog is still maintained. I think it's been replaced by the What Was That Tune? plugin.

You say that you rarely play anything from your own LMS library anymore. Do you mean you're mostly listening to streaming services like Spotify? If so, there's a restriction imposed by LMS you should know about: tracks from streaming services can only be processed by plugins like VS if you have added them to your LMS library as part of an album. LMS does not import single online tracks or tracks of online playlists as library tracks.

If this is about LMS library tracks, I think you can do already this: you create a virtual library with all tracks whose play count > 0 and then select this virtual library as a filter in VS. I've actually created such a virtual library with SQLite Virtual Libraries (because it can update the VL once a day) and Alternative Play Count (because it doesn't count skips as play counts). I can post the SQLite code for the VL if you're interested.

If you wanted to gather data on (online/remote) tracks that are not part of your LMS library, you'd first have to fetch all kinds of track (meta)data and the plugin for the respective streaming service (e.g. Spotty for Spotify) would be the way to go in that case. And then you'd need code to handle play counts and other dynamic metadata because LMS won't handle any of that for non-library tracks. You'd basically have to replicate a lot of LMS code to handle non-library online tracks.

[rgdawson]

I got this sorted out on the Squeezelite-X side. In the process, I had the good fortune to install the Visual Statistics plugin and I think it is pretty cool.

I have been looking for something like this that would build a database of all the songs I listen to (I rarely play anything from my own library anymore). I was hoping the PlayLog plugin would do the trick, but it appears obsolete. With Visual Statistics, you have all the basics to build such a feature.

So my suggestion is to add into Visual Statistics the ability to do visual statistics on songs played (like PlayLog). I was considering writing such a plugin and then when I saw Visual Statistics, I decided it really belongs there.

Thoughts, anyone?

R Greg Dawson

[staresy]

If you need this fixed, I think your best bet would be to ask the developer of Squeezelite-X to have a look. Sorry I can't be of more help here.

Thanks to you (and your friend) for testing and confirming. I'll post a note on the Squeezelite-X thread referring back to this post and see if Greg can shed any light on it.

[AF1]

I've noticed that sometimes the visual statistics plugin won't display stats, instead it shows a red X next to the stat to be displayed.
This only seems to happen when running with material skin via squeezelite-X. Using material skin via a web browser, VS works fine.
When it gets into this state, changing the skin within squeezelite-X to default and back to material seems to get it working again, but on re-start the problem seems to recur.

I don't own a Windows PC but I've asked a friend who relunctantly installed the necessary software and did a quick test. What you're describing is exactly what he saw.

The red X would suggest that there's a problem with the VS request to the LMS server or its response. Or that the content of the response is empty or incorrect. In the latter case, however, there would most likely be error log messages in the LMS log, but they aren't.
If Material in a web browser and LMS default skin in Squeezelite-X work fine, I think it's probably not something I can fix in VS but something that a change in Squeezelite-X could fix. The fact that VS does work in Squeezelite-X with Material until it doesn't (Squeezelite-X restart?) seems to support this.
Also the last major VS code change happened last October, so nothing new there for a while that could have messed up things that weren't already messed up :-)

If you need this fixed, I think your best bet would be to ask the developer of Squeezelite-X to have a look. Sorry I can't be of more help here.

[staresy]

I've noticed that sometimes the visual statistics plugin won't display stats, instead it shows a red X next to the stat to be displayed.




This only seems to happen when running with material skin via squeezelite-X. Using material skin via a web browser, VS works fine.

When it gets into this state, changing the skin within squeezelite-X to default and back to material seems to get it working again, but on re-start the problem seems to recur.

I think this is relatively new as I don't recall seeing it previously and I almost always run material within SLX, so I would have spotted it.

FYI
Squeezelite-X 2.11.32
LMS 8.4.0 - 1667914576
Vis Stats 1.4.14

[werdeil]

I also confirm it is fixed in version 1.4.8, thanks a lot !

[slartibartfast]

Could you try the latest GitHub version? Thank you.
P.S. And clear all browser caches before loading the VS page.

Looks good [emoji106]

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[AF1]

Could you try the latest GitHub version? Thank you.
P.S. And clear all browser caches before loading the VS page.

[slartibartfast]

So are you saying that right now, with browser caches cleared, maybe even an LMS restart, VS doesn't display the track counts correctly?
I'm very surprised that the very same function should yield different results in Library Views and VS.

What's your OS? And is English the default language of OS and the language set in LMS?

If nothing else works, I'll have to include my own delimit function and see if that works better.

Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye on a Pi4. English language.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[AF1]

My default skin in 8.3 displays track counts correctly but when I tried VS recently it didn't.

So are you saying that right now, with browser caches cleared, maybe even an LMS restart, VS doesn't display the track counts correctly?
I'm very surprised that the very same function should yield different results in Library Views and VS.

What's your OS? And is English the default language of OS and the language set in LMS?

If nothing else works, I'll have to include my own delimit function and see if that works better.

[slartibartfast]

Please try this (all LMS, no VS involved):
- Create a new test virtual library with >1000 tracks in it using advanced search. (Or how did you create it?)
- In the default skin, got to Home > Library View. Library View is only displayed in the home menu, if you have have created a library view / virtual library.
- It should display the name of your virtual library and a track count.
- Is the track count displayed, and if so correctly?
- If the answer to both questions is not yes then it could also be an OS related issue (LMS on Ubuntu).
- You could try updating LMS to 8.3.0. Maybe consult the LMS git commit log or ask in the Logitech Media Server.

Not sure what else I can do because, as I said, I use the LMS provided function to delimit thousands.

My default skin in 8.3 displays track counts correctly but when I tried VS recently it didn't.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[AF1]

Please try this (all LMS, no VS involved):
- Create a new test virtual library with >1000 tracks in it using advanced search. (Or how did you create it?)
- In the default skin, got to Home > Library View. Library View is only displayed in the home menu, if you have have created a library view / virtual library.
- It should display the name of your virtual library and a track count.
- Is the track count displayed, and if so correctly?
- If the answer to both questions is not yes then it could also be an OS related issue (LMS on Ubuntu).
- You could try updating LMS to 8.3.0. Maybe consult the LMS git commit log or ask in the Logitech Media Server.

Not sure what else I can do because, as I said, I use the LMS provided function to delimit thousands.

[werdeil]

I confirm it is related to the thousand separator as I don't have the issue on a custom library with 250 tracks.

That's also what LMS uses for its Library Views menu. It should display the same track count there. Does it?

I can't find any track count display for a custom library in the interface, I may have missed something.

[AF1]

Just checked, macOS displays all track counts correctly here. I'm using Slim::Utils::Misc::delimitThousands. That's also what LMS uses for its Library Views menu. It should display the same track count there. Does it?
If it does and your virtual library definition is not the cause, then maybe your OS has a problem with Slim::Utils::Misc::delimitThousands. You could ask in the Logitech Media Server forum. I couldn't say because I don't use Ubuntu.
P.S. my LMS = 8.3.0.