Genre should not be Enabled by Default or Moved

[Rich Jones]

Binary package hint: rhythmbox

The 'Genre' column is largely useless by default, and seems to be placed in a nonsensical place.

Title - Genre - Artist - Album doesn't make any sense. Title - Artist - Album does. If you still want Genre, make it Title - Artist - Album - Genre, like iTunes. Otherwise, it is confusing for new users.

Upstream will not be interested in fixing this (he doesn't seemed concerned with the UI, which is the only area of RBox which I think is still lacking), but he may be willing to accept a patch.

Thoughts?

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

Just out of curiosity, how many people here actually keep the 'Genre' column? Everybody I know has gotten rid of it.

[R4kk00n (r4kk00n)]

Do you mean the "Genre" column in the main track table? Never seen it there. I always enable it as the browser column though.

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

Here is it not making sense (the default):
http://imgur.com/T3q56.png

Here is what it looks like without genre column:
http://imgur.com/r9Nvi.png

Here is a more sensible alternative (but will be a slightly harder patch):
http://imgur.com/eTXnS.png

I think #2 is the simplest and easiest solution right now.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

could somebody send this to bugzilla.gnome.org ? Thanks.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for sending this upstream. Linking here.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This is not a papercut. See upstream comment at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594807#c1.

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

Why, Martin?

[Dag Odenhall (dag.odenhall)]

Arguably, genre is a useful defining property of a song. First, you have title to identify known songs. If the song is unknown, you can get a sense of the song from the genre. Artist and album are secondary to these main properties of identification and definition.

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

That's not an argument!

How in the world could "Rock/Pop" be more useful in terms of identification than the _name of the person who is going to be singing to you_ ??!! If it is still included, why should it be given such priority? - at least move it! And why would it be "Unknown" - it is my library, this is all the music I added, I know what I'm listening to. I don't think that's an appropriate example.

As I mentioned upstream:

"It's because the genre information doesn't directly pertain specifically to the song.

It's an issue of order of importance. Title-Artist-Album-Genre is descending in
terms of importance. Title-Genre-Artist-Album doesn't have any order - it is
nonsensical."

Ex, iTunes: http://www.theater-pro.com/content/images/itunes.jpg

I think that the funniest thing about this is that even on their OWN screenshots page, they have changed the default behaviour because it is so stupid and ugly: http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/screenshots/rb-auto-playlist.png

I'm surprised there is actually resistance to this.