Subsonic plugin observations

[simonbun]

Hi Giovanni,

As discussed on the WiiM forum here are my very early observations. I've just realised that I'm going to struggle to dedicate much time to this over the weekend, but I wanted to get over my initial thoughts so apologies for the formatting and terseness.

I've just tested the latest image and it does indeed fix the issue I saw with multiple album artists, so thanks for that.

Artists

• Should use displayArtist/displayAlbumArtist where available. I think it's used for album artist but not track artists.
• Should use <upnp:artist role="AlbumArtist"> for album artist not just <dc:creator>. This is why BubbleUPnP doesn't display the album artist in album listings.
  If you're going to supply <upnp:artist role="AlbumArtist"> at the track level (more to follow) it should come after <upnp:artist> for compatibility (some control points simply use the first).
• With the above fix could you stop appending album artist to the album title, or make it a disabled by default option for control points that don't display the tag?

Track Artists

• BubbleUPnP isn't displaying track artists. I think (having experimented with MinimServer) it's because you're not sending the <upnp:artist role="AlbumArtist"> tag, though that feels like a bug in BubbleUPnP.

Artist indexes.

• I can't imagine a situation where I would want an artist list unsorted. Is it slow because you have to download everything then sort it? If so, why can't you simply display them all instead of a page at a time?
• Most people use the album artist index, so there really needs to be a sorted version.
• I think the [Artist, AlbumArtist] text here just clutters the display and doesn't add anything.

Playlists

• Don't pass <upnp:originalTrackNumber> through, or set it as 1 - N.
• Why use object.container.storageFolder and not object.container.playlistContainer (the type drives how the control point displays the contents)

Albums with multiple disc titles

• Any reason why you're treating individual discs as object.container.storageFolder instead of object.container.album.musicAlbum? I ask because control points display storageFolder different to musicAlbum.

Happy to help with testing on any of the above changes.

[GioF71]

Hello, quite a lot of suggestions and considerations, I will try to understand how to implement all of these. But I wanted to respond immediately to this one:

I can't imagine a situation where I would want an artist list unsorted. Is it slow because you have to download everything then sort it? If so, why can't you simply display them all instead of a page at a time?

That is because we simply don't have an api method that can return a portion of the available artists, let alone sorted.
See getIndexes and getArtists, and compare it to something like getAlbumList2: no offset on the first two. We just get everything. The whole artist list. And this might take long enough to trigger timeouts. See this issue on LMS, I opened it.
Of course LMS, on its own interface, can display all the artists easily by querying its own database. But though the subsonic api, this is the current situation.

But there is hope, represented by the OpenSubsonic initiative. This topic like this one has been discussed here. There might be other similar discussions. The problem is that we don't know when new endpoints will be available. There must be agreement before actual implementations appear.

So we just wait? Yes, and no.

We could implement initial caching (maybe optional) and load artists during startup. If during navigation we meet a new artist, we update the cache accordingly. By doing this, we can enable the plugin to display artists in new ways.
That's what Symfonium does, being an application that scans library before making tracks available for consumption.
An app like Supersonic instead behaves more similarly to my plugin, in the sense that everything it displays comes from the server directly. No initial caching. You might want to verify that Supersonic also can take very long time to display list of artists.

[GioF71]

I'd start with this:

Artists
Should use displayArtist/displayAlbumArtist where available. I think it's used for album artist but not track artists.

I don't seem to see "displayArtist" in artist or artists endpoint responses.
Can you provide an example of what you mean? Even a postman screenshot will do.

Instead I see Album and Album lists have displayArtist, so I am already starting using it instead of the "artist".

[simonbun]

I don't seem to see "displayArtist" in artist or artists endpoint responses.

Sorry I should have made it clear that I was referring to album and track listings, except my remarks in the Artist Indexes section.

It looks like you're currently concatenating artists[] instead of using displayArtist for tracks e.g. "Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean" instead of "JAY Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean".
It looks like artists[] is using the standardised name unlike displayArtist which uses the name as credited. I might have to chase that up with epoupon - though I know he's fixing some of this in the next release.

I don't know the distinction between artist and displayArtist.

{
  "subsonic-response": {
    "album": {
      "artist": "JAY Z & Kanye West",
      "displayArtist": "JAY Z & Kanye West",
      "name": "Watch The Throne",
      "artists": [
        {
          "id": "ar-5170",
          "name": "Jay-Z"
        },
        {
          "id": "ar-5171",
          "name": "Kanye West"
        }
      ],
      "song": [
        {
          "album": "Watch The Throne",
          "albumId": "al-3011",
          "artist": "JAY Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean",
          "displayAlbumArtist": "JAY Z & Kanye West",
          "displayArtist": "JAY Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean",
          "title": "No Church In The Wild",
          "albumartists": [
            {
              "id": "ar-5170",
              "name": "Jay-Z"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5171",
              "name": "Kanye West"
            }
          ],
          "artists": [
            {
              "id": "ar-5170",
              "name": "Jay-Z"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5171",
              "name": "Kanye West"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5168",
              "name": "Frank Ocean"
            }
          ],
          "contributors": [],
        },
        {
          "album": "Watch The Throne",
          "artist": "JAY Z & Kanye West feat. Beyoncé",
          "displayAlbumArtist": "JAY Z & Kanye West",
          "displayArtist": "JAY Z & Kanye West feat. Beyoncé",
          "title": "Lift Off",
          "albumartists": [
            {
              "id": "ar-5170",
              "name": "Jay-Z"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5171",
              "name": "Kanye West"
            }
          ],
          "artists": [
            {
              "id": "ar-5170",
              "name": "Jay-Z"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5171",
              "name": "Kanye West"
            },
            {
              "id": "ar-5165",
              "name": "Beyoncé"
            }
          ],
          "contributors": [],
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

[GioF71]

Ok, so I see these are attributes at the song level. Can you suggest how should I map displayAlbumArtist and displayArtist in upnp entries?

[GioF71]

I see BubbleUPnP also displays those E (for explicit or itunesadvisory=1 I assume). What do we need to write to the entry for that information to appear?

MinimServer allows basic scripting and tag formatting, so if ituneadvisory=1 I prefix title with 🅴

So just that exact character? Maybe with a space after it or not? Can you show an example/screeen?
There is also a character for "Clean", so when itunesadvisory is set to 0?

Another question: which tool do you use to inspect a upnp server data and get those xml snippets?

You're already using it :) I used to use the Android app UPnP Tool but upplay is much simpler:

Ah I see it now, thank you!

• File > Preferences > Misc > Log verbosity: 5 (fill out file name too)
• Browse to desired location in upplay
• Open log file and search up from the bottom of the file for "DIDL"

Use displayArtist instead of artist from Albums
Use displayArtist instead of artist from Songs
Use displayArtist instead of artist from Playlist entries

I assume you're falling back on artist[] if displayArtist isn't available? I have no idea if displayArtist will be available across all servers.

Yes, is that correct? But it's just the "artist" not an array. Of course this can change, let me know, maybe show some postman screen with the data that should be displayed!

Add upnp:artist with role="AlbumArtist" for Songs (see this post) (thank you @medoc92 for the precious assistance!)

This has triggered track artists to show in BubbleUPnP which is great, though I still don't really understand why BubbleUPnP requires it!

Are you on iOS using mconnect? I now understand why you're concatenating each album with the album artist as mconnect doesn't display the album artist on a new line. I'll put a couple of screenshots together at some point to highlight the difference.

Will wait for that. Yes all that concatenating was intended to improve rendering, but I'll gladly remove all these hacks!

[simonbun]

So just that exact character? Maybe with a space after it or not? Can you show an example/screeen?

Yes that exact character appears in the DIDL followed by a space. Given I've already attached a screenshot of BubbleUPnP showing 🅴 what screen are you after?

There is also a character for "Clean", so when itunesadvisory is set to 0?

I don't tag clean edits.
It's worth pointing out that these are in no way official, I simply browsed https://www.compart.com/en/unicode looking for something to use:
🅴 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F174
🅲 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F172

Yes, is that correct? But it's just the "artist" not an array.

That's fine; I was worried that you'd switched to soley using displayArtist on my say so without any fallback. Whilst I know LMS quite well I don't know much about the other OS solutions, let alone the legacy Subsonic ones.

Will wait for that. Yes all that concatenating was intended to improve rendering, but I'll gladly remove all these hacks!

It's always difficult to strike that balance, especially with the limited options available on iOS.

[GioF71]

So just that exact character? Maybe with a space after it or not? Can you show an example/screeen?

Yes that exact character appears in the DIDL followed by a space. Given I've already attached a screenshot of BubbleUPnP showing 🅴 what screen are you after?

You're right. But maybe an upplay screenshot showing the minimserver entry with that value might help. Anyway I will try this

There is also a character for "Clean", so when itunesadvisory is set to 0?

I don't tag clean edits. It's worth pointing out that these are in no way official, I simply browsed https://www.compart.com/en/unicode looking for something to use: 🅴 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F174 🅲 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F172

Yes, is that correct? But it's just the "artist" not an array.

That's fine; I was worried that you'd switched to soley using displayArtist on my say so without any fallback. Whilst I know LMS quite well I don't know much about the other OS solutions, let alone the legacy Subsonic ones.

I try to always avoid assuming that all the subsonic server implement all fields, so I generally add fallback options :-)
Let's hope I did it right.

Will wait for that. Yes all that concatenating was intended to improve rendering, but I'll gladly remove all these hacks!

It's always difficult to strike that balance, especially with the limited options available on iOS.

Actually I don't use iOS (although I have a very old iPad which still runs mConnect). But from time to time I try mConnect on Android and see if there are specific issues

[simonbun]

You're right. But maybe an upplay screenshot showing the minimserver entry with that value might help. Anyway I will try this

I tagged a track as clean and both icons were rendered correctly in Upplay (though with a blue background in light mode), BubbleUPnP, Hi-Fi Cast and mconnect.

Actually I don't use iOS (although I have a very old iPad which still runs mConnect). But from time to time I try mConnect on Android and see if there are specific issues

That's good news, so whilst it's "nice to have" to work with lousy control points, it's better to get the majority looking good :-)

[GioF71]

You're right. But maybe an upplay screenshot showing the minimserver entry with that value might help. Anyway I will try this

I tagged a track as clean and both icons were rendered correctly in Upplay (though with a blue background in light mode), BubbleUPnP, Hi-Fi Cast and mconnect.

Does doing this break scrobblers? Or somehow the title remain as it should be, so without that character?

[GioF71]

• I think the [Artist, AlbumArtist] text here just clutters the display and doesn't add anything.

Hello, about this, you can use

subsonicappendrolestoartist = 0

to disable the appending of artist roles in artist entries

[GioF71]

Does doing this break scrobblers? Or somehow the title remain as it should be, so without that character?

You mean app scrobblers that scrape the media notifications? I don't use one, but I can see that might be a problem.

yes, let's leave this aspect aside for a moment, it's really something niche IMO.

I also want to try the Random Songs change, so I'll update tomorrow.

Nice! Looking forward to hearing some feedback!

That works well, maybe a little too well :-) How is it faster than the Album queries (Random Albums) given it needs 250+ covers (Random Albums only needs 20)? I'd have thought it would be significantly slower.

It's all the processing that is done for each album... those operations might go away once a preloading is implemented... but if we want the local database to auto-align to new albums that might be added after the initial preloading is done, I'm afraid it's necessary.
But sometimes I also think this is pure overkill, it's mostly just to have that "quality badge" around.
But unfortunately on the subsonic api we have no information about the quality of the tracks in the albums list.
Should I remove all those "quality badge" shenanigans, things might generally be quite a bit faster.

It seems that most control points simply replay previously visited nodes, so revisting Random Songs (List) results in the same "random" list. BubbleUPnP has a reload that seems to refresh just that node, whereas the WiiM Home app has a Refresh which seems to invalidate the entire browsing cache (not artwork) so performance takes a hit. I don't think there's anything you can do about that though so it's a nice improvement.

Actually with BubbleUPnP you should be able to hit "Reload" on the three-dots menu on the top right of the screen: by doing so you get another set of random tracks.
I also use "Method 2" in the "Library Browse Method" in the settings of the specific media server, which seems to me to reduce caching by the control point.

Are you in control of the Oldest Albums query or is that an API call, as I was wondering if it could be based on coalesce(original date, release date)?

I'm struggling to remove the resolution from albums titles, though it doesn't appear on all of them even though they're all CD rips. I've tried specifiying it on the docker command (-e SUBSONIC_APPEND_CODECS_TO_ALBUM=no) and in upmpdcli-additional.txt but some still display the [16/44k] (mostly under the Artist index). If that's the correct option I'll double check everything and report back. subsonicappendrolestoartist works well so thanks for that!

Yes, you might want to set these variables:

subsonicallowappendartistinalbumcontainer = 0
subsonicallowappendartistinalbumview = 0
subsonicallowappendartistinsearchresult = 0

subsonicallowqbadgeinalbumcontainer = 0
subsonicallowqbadgeinalbumview = 0
subsonicallowqbadgeinalbumsearchresult = 0

and maybe also, if you don't want "Versions":

subsonicallowversioninalbumcontainer = 0
subsonicallowversioninalbumview = 0
subsonicallowversioninalbumsearchresult = 0

Also, to remove years:

subsonicappendyeartoalbumcontainer = 0
# already 0 by default
subsonicappendyeartoalbumview = 0
# already 0 by default
subsonicappendyeartoalbumsearchresult = 0

And in general, please refer to this file which lists all the configuration parameters with a short description an default value.

Most of the appended values would be helpful when browsing with Kodi, which always tries to sort entries and does not show artist for album entries.
I even added option to prepend number to albums, in order to avoid the effects of sorting made by Kodi. Lots of nonsense for a software that's not really intended to be used in this way, at least not for music.
I think not a lot of people use Kodi for browsing these kinds of music media servers, and neither do I. I might revert to more "clean" defaults.

Let me know if this helps!

[GioF71]

About this:

Are you in control of the Oldest Albums query or is that an API call, as I was wondering if it could be based on coalesce(original > date, release date)?

No, I just use getAlbumList2 byYear. Which of the dates are taken into account for sorting, is up to the upstream server.

[simonbun]

But sometimes I also think this is pure overkill, it's mostly just to have that "quality badge" around.
But unfortunately on the subsonic api we have no information about the quality of the tracks in the albums list.
Should I remove all those "quality badge" shenanigans, things might generally be quite a bit faster.

So you're pulling one track (I assume just the header) per album just to get the resolution (and any other attributes)? If it's relatively easy to stub that out it would be really interesting to see how that affects performance.

I also use "Method 2" in the "Library Browse Method" in the settings of the specific media server, which seems to me to reduce caching by the control point.

That's not something I'd even considered changing. Given there doesn't appear to be any documentation I assumed it was to fix problem servers.

And in general, please refer to this file which lists all the configuration parameters with a short description an default value.

I had no idea it was so configurable! Did it start out life as a simple subsetting (each index selection being a filter) UPnP server and evolved over time?

No, I just use getAlbumList2 byYear. Which of the dates are taken into account for sorting, is up to the upstream server.

In that case I'll talk to epoupon about getting that changed.

[GioF71]

So you're pulling one track (I assume just the header) per album just to get the resolution (and any other attributes)? If it's relatively easy to stub that out it would be really interesting to see how that affects performance.

I just have a sec to answer this, then I'll try the other questions.
No, I don't pull one track... when an album has not been encountered before, there is no information about the quality badge on the local db, so I just don't show it, as it is not something mandatory. That is because pulling (even one) track data would require to execute multiple individual getAlbum api calls, and that would be painfully slow when presenting list of albums (I've been there, and rolled back). So I only do that when I need to do that, so when I have to show tracks. From then on, the quality badge is available and shown. Of course everytime the album tracks are shown, that data are updated.

Forgot to mention: we don't get track information in getAlbumList and getAlbumList2. We only get them when calling getAlbum which in turn only returns tracks for one album AFAIK.

[GioF71]

That's not something I'd even considered changing. Given there doesn't appear to be any documentation I assumed it was to fix problem servers.

I believe it's because UPnP has vastly different implementations and each one has its particularities. But yes I also never found any documentation about these modes on BubbleUPnP. The naming also doesn't suggest any particular behavior or set of behaviors...
Maybe somehow could request a clarification here. It's a busy thread though, I don't know what might be the priority for a documentation task. But it might be worth trying!

And in general, please refer to this file which lists all the configuration parameters with a short description an default value.

I had no idea it was so configurable! Did it start out life as a simple subsetting (each index selection being a filter) UPnP server and evolved over time?

Well in time I added features, some would pollute the entry names, some were just intended to make kodi work half decently... so I avoided to apply these changes in a hard-coded fashion and allowed configurability with (what I think are, or was thinking at the time) good defaults.
Ideally each of those variables should have a corresponding variable on the docker image. But the startup script is currently made in bash so it's very hard and time consuming for me to do such a thing.

No, I just use getAlbumList2 byYear. Which of the dates are taken into account for sorting, is up to the upstream server.

In that case I'll talk to epoupon about getting that changed.

He might made the sorting configurable. Or maybe it is configurable already :-)
It's worth trying to ask, he's very cooperative and supportive!

[GioF71]

Maybe have a look a the new version 0.8.23 available in the newest edge image.

Subsonic Plugin Release 0.8.23

• Append Artists to Albums now always default to false for album view and search result
• Only show quality badge in album containers by default
• Add description of configuration parameters in constants.py
• Do not append roles to artists by default
• Add initial support for BubbleUPnP features "Albums by artist" and "Tracks by artist" (context menus on albums)
• Cache artist id lists by artist display name and use them when searching (see use case above, more to implement)

[GioF71]

New Subsonic Plugin Release 0.8.24

• Support BubbleUPnP searches: add ability to search albums by song title
• Support BubbleUPnP searches: add ability to search songs by song title
• Support BubbleUPnP searches: when searching albums by song title, we also search by album title
• Support BubbleUPnP searches: add ability to search artists by title (referred to artist, album or songs)
• Add generate_config.py so I can generate config.md from the ConfigParam enumerated
• Fixed wrong key for artist in Song entry (artist name wouldn't show in BubbleUPnP without "metadata extraction")
• DIDL fragment for album artist role is now configurable, enabled by default

A small note:
Probably due to some of the changes I made, it seems to me that the didl fragment for albumartist might be not needed anymore. BubbleUPnP display things correctly anyway. Also the feature can be annoying because it breaks my incoming version of mpd-subsonic-scrobbler, as mpd does not 'see' the correct artist and matching fails.
You might want to confirm this: you can disable it with subsonicallowsongdidlalbumartist = 0. If confirmed, I'd rather set its default to 0.

[simonbun]

Hi,

I think I'm experiencing analysis paralysis with this project as there's so many avenues to investigate that I don't feel I'm ever in a position to "complete" my testing!

There are still some areas I'd like to think more about, but I'll write down what I've got now in fear that otherwise I never will.

I had produced some notes shortly after christmas, and you've clearly been busy as a lot of the suggestions I had have already been addressed.

My configuration is:

subsonicdisablenavigablealbum = 1
# for bubbleupnp
subsonicallowsongdidlalbumartist = 1

Is there any way to add year to album with this config as the options I've tried don't work:

appendyeartoalbumcontainer = 1
appendyeartoalbumview = 1
appendyeartoalbumsearchresult = 1

Albums

• Newest & Oldest Albums
  -- I'll chase this up with LMS as I assume you're still dependent on a fix to getAlbumList2 so it can be based on original release date?
• Alphabetical By Artist
  -- What artist is used for sorting? I assumed it would be sorted by albumartist but it doesn't appear to be.
• Album Browser (Not really looked into properly)
  -- Decade > 1980s > For some selections I'm offered the indexes Artist and All Artists but not for all? The two lists appear to be the same, should one be albumartist and the other all/track artists?
• Favourite Albums
  -- What's the sort order?

Artists

• Artist Roles
  -- Add AlbumArtist as by far the most commonly used - plus I only have images for albumartists so the artist index looks messy 😉
  -- Group all non A-Z characters under '#' rather than an index for each unique character?
  -- Is it possible to only present the A-Z index if greater than x artists are in the category e.g. I have only a few conductors, yet I'm presented with 3 selections, each of which takes me to a single conductor.

Songs

• I don't see the point of "Random Songs" and "Favourite Songs". From a user perspective isn't it equivalent to Random albums?

I'll try and spend some more time looking at it over the next few days, but it certainly seems to be progessing nicely.

[GioF71]

Let's try with small topics so we don't have to write a lot of stuff at once.

appendyeartoalbumcontainer = 1
appendyeartoalbumview = 1
appendyeartoalbumsearchresult = 1

have you added "subsonic" at the beginning of each of them?
But anyway:

subsonicappendyeartoalbumcontainer = 1

this has effect for navigable album, and you have disabled the feature, so it's irrelevant for you.
The other two will cause the album to be appended with year, when showing lists and for search results. E.g., and approximately:

Dark Side of the Moon -> Dark Side of the Moon [1973]

BTW: can you consider creating individual issues (or discussions) for the various topics? That would be a lot easier to govern, update, etc. One or more "umbrella" issues might be useful as well for grouping.

[GioF71]

Albums

• Newest & Oldest Albums
  -- I'll chase this up with LMS as I assume you're still dependent on a fix to getAlbumList2 so it can be based on original release date?

Yes, that view presents albums as they come from the api. Those are already sorted. I can't sort them myself because this would require to obtain the full dataset everytime, sort it, and present the selected portion (offset -> offset + number of items per page).
But these are the kind of features that can be added to the album browser, because that feature entirely relies on a plugin-local database, built during preloading and constantly updated when artists and albums are displayed.

• Alphabetical By Artist
  -- What artist is used for sorting? I assumed it would be sorted by albumartist but it doesn't appear to be.

Same as above!

• Album Browser (Not really looked into properly)
  -- Decade > 1980s > For some selections I'm offered the indexes Artist and All Artists but not for all? The two lists appear to be the same, should one be albumartist and the other all/track artists?

You have found an undocumented limitation of version 0.9.2. There is not paging when showing the "values" for the selected key (considering the current already applied filters), so when the number of those values would be > 100 I deliberately chose to avoid to display the criteria, as clicking on it would likely cause timeout errors or at least a slow response.
In this version, the keys become available when more filters are applied and the number of possible values reduces to <= 100.
Upcoming 0.9.3 fixes this, with a faster algorithm and pagination implemented when showing possible values for a given key. E.g. "Decade" is a key, the actual decades are the values in the above sentences.

• Favourite Albums
  -- What's the sort order?

None, currently. as they come from the api, so sorting probably reflect the order of when the album has been "favorited". Feel free to suggest a different approach.

Artists

• Artist Roles
  -- Add AlbumArtist as by far the most commonly used - plus I only have images for albumartists so the artist index looks messy 😉

There is no such thing as "AlbumArtist" anymore on LMS at least. At least not as a role. But we might show a custom page to show the list of distinct "displayArtist" from albums, which is now available on our album_metadata_v1 table.

-- Group all non A-Z characters under '#' rather than an index for each unique character?

Interesting, I thought about that, will consider. But please also consider that there are also other characters outside A-z as the api supports unicode string.

-- Is it possible to only present the A-Z index if greater than x artists are in the category e.g. I have only a few conductors, yet I'm presented with 3 selections, each of which takes me to a single conductor.

Uhm I don't seem to understand exactly what you mean... can you provide an example?

Songs

• I don't see the point of "Random Songs" and "Favourite Songs". From a user perspective isn't it equivalent to Random albums?

There are function coverage of the available endpoints... but again feel free to suggest. But Random Songs and Favorite songs are very different... why would they be the same thing?
And, random songs will give you a list of songs from different albums, random albums insteads gives you a list of random albums, and if you want songs, you have to browse the individual albums.

I'll try and spend some more time looking at it over the next few days, but it certainly seems to be progessing nicely.

Thank you!!!
Again, please consider following up with individual tickets.

[simonbun]

Let's try with small topics so we don't have to write a lot of stuff at once.

appendyeartoalbumcontainer = 1
appendyeartoalbumview = 1
appendyeartoalbumsearchresult = 1

have you added "subsonic" at the beginning of each of them? But anyway:

Nope, I copied them directly from the configuration parameters page ignoring the "Read this first" section 😞
The correctly named parameters work perfectly. Thanks

• Newest & Oldest Albums
  -- I'll chase this up with LMS as I assume you're still dependent on a fix to getAlbumList2 so it can be based on original release date?

Yes, that view presents albums as they come from the api. Those are already sorted.

I'll chase up all my Album queries with LMS.

-- Add AlbumArtist as by far the most commonly used - plus I only have images for albumartists so the artist index looks messy 😉

There is no such thing as "AlbumArtist" anymore on LMS at least. At least not as a role. But we might show a custom page to show the list of distinct "displayArtist" from albums, which is now available on our album_metadata_v1 table.

I knew there were structural changes in 3.74 related to albumartists but I didn't know about the endpoint role change. I think that's probably a regression so I'll take that up with LMS.

-- Is it possible to only present the A-Z index if greater than x artists are in the category e.g. I have only a few conductors, yet I'm presented with 3 selections, each of which takes me to a single conductor.

Uhm I don't seem to understand exactly what you mean... can you provide an example?

This is functionality available in MinimServer. If the count of returned objects is fewer than ?50? don't display a jump list, instead just display the results.
I have only 3 conductors, so it's really not necessary to present me with a jumplist of C, F and J, one for each conductor.

I don't see the point of "Random Songs" and "Favourite Songs". From a user perspective isn't it equivalent to Random albums?

There are function coverage of the available endpoints... but again feel free to suggest. But Random Songs and Favorite songs are very different... why would they be the same thing?
And, random songs will give you a list of songs from different albums, random albums insteads gives you a list of random albums, and if you want songs, you have to browse the individual albums.

Songs > Random Song|Favourite Song doesn't just return a list of songs it includes the full albumartist's discography i.e. Random Songs > Album > Song | Album | AlbumArtist. I don't understand how these indexes are useful. If you want a random album then Album > Random Albums, if you want a random artist then Artist > ... TBD.
Unless of course subsonicdisablenavigablealbum = 1 should have removed those additional indexes. I think anyone coming from a UPnP server will struggle without that option enabled.

[GioF71]

I considered your thoughts and modified Favorite Songs. See discussion #625.