hello my friend,

I'm afraid there's no such connection. I considered to use one, but I though those where always paying (I didnt know freedb, and looking at the name, its looks like it's free! is it? I'll take a look)

so there's no way to automaticly add the songs in every album. in fact, there was a pseudo-solutions for that, bu its status was so BETA (beta, beta, beta, beta) that I decided not to include it. It was a script wich took the information from your iTunes catalogue and pushed it into Music Collection. It worked fine for me (because I wrote it knowing that my iTunes was properly classified), and actually the songs you can find in the demo in this site were all added using this script.

but o course, this is useless if you haven't your cds on iTunes, and of course it doesnt work on LP.

in fact I even wrote a script to find and push into MC the lyrics! (all the lyrics you can find here were added by this method), but also, due to its exteme-beta status, I didn't include it.

so, sorry, I cant help you on that... but I'll try to find out it there's a rellistic way to include a "freedb" connection into music collection (that would be absolutely fantastic)

all the best,
Germi

That would be absolutely brilliant.

I use it all the time when I rip cds for my own server - as Audiograbber uses it to download songs and albuminfo.

Also, when using other tools to rip to FLAC one of the choices is freedb.

Take a look at http://www.freedb.org

If this was a part of the system, I would buy it in a heartbeat. But as my collection is just to big - my wife would kill me if I sat around punching in the songtitles of thousands of old LPs

I understand.
I'll begin to work to try to include the freedb connection.

I'll let you know if I succed !



GREAT suggestion

Hi, I really like the demo and would be very interested in Music Collection for CD reviews, but adding tracks one by one is a real pain in the neck. Downloading from a database would be a nice option. It would also be nice to be able to modify the template of the CD presentation: smaller cover and album details aligned on the left and then review and tracks underneath cover and album details. Have a look at my site (reviews, records) http://www.runmovies.eu/. Again a very promising component. Jim

hello Jim,

as you can read a few lines above, I'm working to integrate Music Collection with some external (free) CD database to make the process of adding tracks automatic.
However, this is not available (yet). Today I haven't found yet a convincing system. I tried to see if freedb.org was a good solution, but, at the moment, there's no way I can integrate it into MC.

Maybe you know some other external free database site? that would be great

about the template of the CD presentation: you are able to modify it very, very, very easily. Music Collection is programmed so the programming logic is completely separated from the template system, so any one can add/modify the templates of each part (CD presentation, artist, song, etc)

It will be really easy for you to customize MC. one of the best points of MC is that it is higly customizable, not only in the visual aspect but also in its functionality

in the SUPPORT area there's a (small, incompleted ) tutorial of how to modify the templates. also, I can answer any doubt or question oyu have about it.

thanks for your interest,

Germi

I just taked a look at your site.

modify the template to look the way you have it now would take about... lets say 2 minutes, at most
easy, easy, easy...

Nice site by the way

Germi, many thanks for your reply and nice comment.

Well I don't know any other external free database site, but what would do is; copy-paste of all tracklisting into one field. I'm using a very nice software called "CD Orange Suite" and I could download all tracks and then copy-paste them into Music Collention within seconds.

Regrading the template of the CD presentation: "2 minutes at most". Well maybe for you, if you could help with that one, I'm buying:woohoo:

All the best
Jim

sure I can help you. Support is included in the purchase of the component!

Hi Germi, component bought and installed today. I surely need your help to modify the template to look the way I have it now.

http://www.runmovies.eu/

good

the template for the CD presentation (I call it the "Album View") is in the file

components/com_muscol/views/album/tmpl/default.php

this is mainly a HTML document that renders the album data. each "variable" (such as album name, artist name, year, etc) is stored in a "user friendly" variable name.

for instance, the artist name of the album is stored in

$this->album->artist_name

so, in the place where this information is written to the output, you'll see the sentence

echo $this->album->artist_name;

I tell you all this just for you to have some information of the structure

tell me: are you familiar with HTML? with CSS? and with PHP? (knowing php is not really necesary to change templates, but is always useful)

what you need to do:

just copy the structure of the album template you want to have from an example album page (some album page that you have already in your site, for instance)

and then start copying/pasting each PHP that writes some information there where you want it to show up.

oh, and you'll need probably to change some CSS styles: the css file for the Album view is in

components/com_muscol/assets/album.css

just start opening the first file I told you (default.php) and take a look at it: you'll see how easy is to change the place of any piece of album information.

tell me if you understood this explanation and if I can help you in any way

Maybe discogs.com is an alternative for a free database.

They provide a developers api.

http://www.discogs.com/help/api

And I think they have all the informations that are needed for music collection.

I also remember a free component for joomla 1.0x which used the freedb database?!?!

I think it was http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/directory-&-documentation/thematic-directory/2986/details

Well Germi, I've checked those files and I know a little html and I know what php and css is but moving those files around is still a little Chinese to me? Here is what I had in mind:

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=mwhjymjyjy3&thumb=6

Thanks again for a great component...

I can create the layout file for you, if you want...
just need you to send me an example HTML file of what an album view would be. I'll add the php tags and all necesary, and give you bakc the file so you can replace the current one

wow

I've been looking at discogs.com and it looks very promising!!

I'll try to integrate it so Music Collection can take song names from there automaticly

great!

That would be cool if you can make the connection met discogs

germi, here is the HTML file, many thanks for your help.

Sounds great.

I really like discogs and the idea to integrate it.

You can get the songs, album name, artist name, and the covers.

Maybe thhere should be a solution to integrate an artist and all of the albums in one step. So you have the full discography in one step!

Germi here's another alternative for a free database http://musicbrainz.org/

great. I'll take a look