Music library management

This release contains some fine-tuning to various aspects of bliss.

We now show the size of the art when bliss asks you to confirm the art you want, or to change existing art.

bliss also reports the current albums that are being inspected and fixed.

We added an extra query to MusicBrainz to bring back a wider variety of results. These results are never applied automatically though, because although they are useful for badly tagged albums there's also a chance they won't be correct.

Also, previously ignored albums can now be refreshed and updated and bought back into cosy album art compliance!

I hope you find these little tune-ups useful!

In the beginning (well, 2002 anyway), there was the computer. The computer was very useful. You could read and write documents, listen to music, play videos and reminisce with embarrassing old photographs.

Over time, all this data began to grow in size. It became difficult to fit it onto a hard disk on a standard computer. We began to want to backup the data, because losing precious music and photos would be A Bad Thing. Then, as we added more computers to our home in the shape of netbooks, smartphones and tablet computers, we wanted access to all this data from all these devices.

To solve this, we decided to centralise the data.

We moved all our data to computers responsible simply for data storage. These computers are called NASes (Network Attached Storage). They offered far higher capacities, could provide your documents, music, photos and video to whatever computer in your house requested it, and were easier to backup. They tended to run continuously at a low power draw, so as soon as you wanted your data, there it was. Now, companies like Buffalo, Linksys and LaCie make affordable, easy to use home NASes that provide all of these benefits.

This worked well until we found it wasn't just the data that we wanted to centralise in our homes, but the actual applications too. For instance, music streaming servers like Squeezebox and Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) like MythTV would work, in the background, while you got on with your life. This new wave appears just ready to break through. Microsoft's Windows Home Server product is a version of Windows that you can install on servers. Linux is another popular option amongst hobbyists, as is the Mac Mini.

Where does music management fit into this?

There's no reason why music management should be something a collector has to laboriously step through on a constant basis. If we define rules by which our music should be managed, music management can be done on a continual, fully automatic basis. When new music is added to the collection, rules kick-in to ensure that the music library is maintained in a consistent, complete and correct state. If the application of the rules is not certain, then we can ask a human via normal methods such as email or a Web interface, as humans are great at creativity and problem solving.

So, the result is much less time tagging and more reliable and consistent results.

bliss is written to run on a home server.

This is why it has a web interface, so that it can be reached from anywhere in your home network. It is also why, most importantly, it applies the rules you define when new music is added to your collection. This way, you dictate the rules, and bliss does all the hard work.

Where will home data storage go next? Some say 'the cloud', a vague, loaded term that tends to refer to online storage of data over the Internet (and lots more besides). While this is an excellent solution for a number of reasons, as yet such an infrastructure is not capable of storing data in all its guises, for instance the lossless music beloved of audiophiles is simply too large both in terms of the capacity required to hold it and the bandwidth required to upload/download.

It'll be interesting to see in what directions home servers go, but so far it appears it will make music library management quicker and more accurate.

This week's release turbo-charges the change art screen. For any album, we now offer the ability to choose from a range of alternatives bliss has found, provide your own URL, or ask bliss to refresh and have another go at picking (this could be useful if there was, say, a temporary problem with your Internet connection).

Check it out:
We also made some BIG improvements in the amount of data downloaded as bliss works. This amount should be much smaller now.

This week's release is all about improving the first time experience for new users. The settings are now an expandable region in the activity page, and pop open on first use. I have also hidden the size options so that fewer options are presented immediately.

Press the 'settings' link to reveal the settings, and press 'hide settings' to hide them again. Each '?' reveals extra information about the setting, and the size options are hidden behind the 'advanced' link.

I changed the status indicator so progress is fed back quicker once you have changed music library. For large music libraries there would sometimes be a noticeable gap between starting bliss and getting any information back that bliss had even started scanning your music library.

Finally, a bug in the Amazon art downloader has been fixed which may have caused bliss to hang under certain situations. Not good, but fixed now!

As usual, existing licences will work for this release.

It's been a little longer between releases than I'd like. We endeavour to produce weekly releases with new features and any bug fixes. Over Christmas we started work on some more complex re-writes of the underpinnings of bliss, which took longer than anticipated, but now the changes are complete, tested, and ready for download!

We've made a number of improvements to the UI. First, the albums are now all sorted alphabetically and paginated, so you can filter down the list of albums and pending questions to a more manageable size if you prefer.

I lost a couple of dear friends last Friday: my pair of Ultimate Ears Super.fi 3 Studio Earphones.

They were the best in-ear headphones I ever owned.

When I'm on the move I need in-ear earphones to listen to music and podcasts. Primarily I wear them each morning and evening, walking to and from work in London.

Over the years I've tried numerous headsets/earbuds. I tried expensive Sennheiser and Sony earphones where one earbud would just stop working (and clumsy attempts with a soldering iron didn't improve things). I tried earbuds that come free with other equipment; but they all sound tinny and don't block out road noise. I tried a Bluetooth set for a while; the things kept disconnecting, treating everyone around to a sample of my music (for some reason it always seemed to be something embarrassing playing at the time).

I needed a pair of earphones robust enough to withstand my walking and that sound good enough so I can enjoy what I am listening to.

I found that in the Ultimate Ears earphones. The buds themselves are very robust. A 5cm or so length of wire where the cable connects to the buds is mouldable to the shape of your ear, so the wire goes up and over the ear. This lessens the impact on the wire when walking. The earbuds themselves are removable and replaceable, lest they stop working (they never did). Musically they sound good. Not as rich in bass as some Sennheiser 'phones I used, but then at least they worked longer than a couple of months.

The last time I saw my earphones was when I was returning a hire car. For all I know, they're lying in a car hire car park in King's Cross right now. Fair well, old friends.

If you are looking for a pair of tough, robust, long lived earphones, I strongly recommend the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 3 Studio Earphones. Don't tell the old pair, but a replacement pair are already on order.

Another week, another release!

Just a couple of little items... First I added a drop down box to choose the location of your music library. Before you had to type it in (remember that bliss can be installed on a separate computer, so this has to show the files on the computer bliss is running on).

I also improved the shortcuts generated as part of a Linux install.

Download from the downloads page.

Thanks to everyone downloading and buying so far. Your feedback is invaluable!