Highlight owned stuff (releases, recordings, …) with “mb. COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTER”

MusicBrainz
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Continuing the discussion from Is it possible to get a discography completion stat/missing tracks?:

The main reason I use MusicBrainz is to keep track of my collection.

When I am in a flea market, second hand shop, CD shop, I want to know if that compilation or single will bring me recordings I don’t already own in this artist albums or if I already have any edition of that album, etc.

There used to be such a feature in old version of MB but it was very limited as a feature, only the equivalent of the release groups were managed.

I wish this collection all item highlighting can become part of MBS one day:

Until then, I have to use the following Android funny stuff:

mb. COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTER

This is a UserScript that highlights all your release collection elements (releases themselves, but also their recordings, works, artists, groups, …) everywhere, in every pages of MusicBtainz.

Remember that you can even use this on smartphone.

But for now, until we can have some visual feedback of our collection, I used my userscript that tells me which release group, release, recording, artist are or are not in my collection(s):

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Here I can see the albums I have, they have that purple highlight.

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Here I can see that in that other edition, there is a recording that I don’t have in my edition.

If I have already listened to and rated these missing tracks, I can also know if I really would like to buy this new edition, just for the bonus tracks.

I can also prepare an artist wanted albums by going to the artist works tab, click the few works I don’t already have and by browsing through its recordings, see what release I am missing.
The possibilities are wide because this script will highlight my stuff in every conceivable page.

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I am working on a huge new version.

The new stuff, for the moment is that

  • the collection loader is at least 7 times faster (also tested on Android 9 Kiwi Browser, super fast, no problems)
  • all kinds of huge releases can be loaded (even those with dozens of mediums and thousands of recordings and works, there is no limit any more)
  • the included release groups will also be highlighten, for instance, if you have an album anthology, all its included album release groups will be highlighten, same with a single anthology of anything else using this relationship
  • small interface (GUI) enhancements

All above features are completely implemented.

More are coming. In particular, a rewrite of a more stable sustainable dynamic loader, to fix recent regressions due to MBS enhancements (release pagination). I plan to do that by using what I just did for the initial collection loader, based on stable, sustainable, maintainable web service code.

@Cheezmo and @kellnerd already have it, but you can install the super cool beta version if you want, before it is complete and released.
There is a link over there:

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It’s ready and released now.
I didn’t have time to convert the dynamic Remove feature (OFF and Remove from collection buttons) to web service mode but it still works for most cases and also it is the less used feature, I guess.

I will convert my new entity loader to a library, with a small update, and then I will be able to use it in MASS MERGE RECORDINGS as well.

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@bricas @Cheezmo @kellnerd @Lotheric @loujin @Toad_King

I browsed the script bug tickets to try to guess who is using it.
But please other users of this script, join the 2 polls! :slight_smile:

There is a regression around labels, reported by Toad King (now fixed).

Personally, I don’t use labels.
I would like to drop support for labels highlighting.
What about you?

  • I need labels highlighting
  • I don’t care

0 voters

And also, settings are not be required any more IMO because now the collection loading is very very fast, even when all options on (contrary to before, now there is no loading time difference, whatever the settings).
I would like to save my time even more in maintenance and drop support for settings.
What about you?

  • I need on and off settings for recordings, artists and works
  • I don’t care

0 voters

As @kellnerd pointed out, no settings would mean that recordings, artists and works would always be highlighted.

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I guess this means the highlighting of recordings, artists and works will also be enabled by default? If that’s the case, I still need the setting to disable the highlighting of artists because I don’t want them to be highlighted (for the same reason I do not highlight labels: I don’t feel like I have collected that label or artist while I have that feeling for release groups, recordings and works).

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Post rewritten on 2022-02-04

The bug when not highlighting all entity types has been fixed on 2022-01-31! :smile:

I see that the settings are useful and that some people do need them and we don’t all have same needs.
So I keep them, as the bug is fixed.

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Really nice userscript. Very helpful.

A small question. I have five collections this is linked to. One of those collections is my CDs. Sometimes I Remove a release from a collection (when on the Release page) and add a different Release from the same RG. I have noticed that this sometimes confuses the collection highlighter. At this minute, when I look on my CDs Collection I see some items are not highlighted.

Is there a way to force a refresh of just one collection?

I see this list:
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That shows one of my collections is intentionally not highlighted. Which is great.

So I hit Reload on the first one… hoping to refresh just that list. And it dropped the highlights to the others.
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For next time - is there are more correct way I could have refreshed just that first collection? Or a way to drop and then re-add just one collection?

(Meanwhile, it doesn’t take too long to re-add 2000 releases so not really a problem :grin: )

Thanks

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To remedy this, you can click the force ON link in the release sidebar. It should work.

Except sometimes it is not immediate for me, and I don’t understand why but after some minutes or hours, the release gets highlighted, without reclicking Add or ON.

If you click Append, it will add this collection releases (and their content) to your current list of highlighted releases (and their content).
It does not remove any stuff. And no problem if a release is in more than one collection.

It’s the link you are looking for.

The other links, Load and Reload will wipe your list of highlighted stuff, first, then reconstruct the list with only this collection.

It’s called Load or Reload but it’s the same reset then load.

Maybe I should find better names.

And also, this script is in the middle of a rewrite and some stuff is not working, like, I forgot what.

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Nice. That makes sense. So in this case “Append” becomes “Refresh” when I click on it.
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I will also look at the “Force On” link in the release sidebar next time I manage to confuse things. See if that helps. I can especially confuse things when I am “moving” my CD from one release to another one in the same RG. i.e. I add a new Release, and then delete an old one sometimes I end up with a slightly confused set of highlights.

I am good at breaking things. :laughing:

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I have tested this case many times, it should not cause problems.
There is no preferred order to do it (remove first or add first).
But you must wait for the end of the first task before making the second task.

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If I ever work out the pattern of how I break it, I will let you know. I run this in Vivaldi on Win10. And yes, I will wait for the dialog to tell me it has finished before closing the browser tab. Maybe it doesn’t like it if I go look at another tab while it is updating?

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You don’t need to keep this tab the active one.
No problem.
Just not updating the collection in several tabs at the same time.

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is there any chance of adding support for recording collections, for those of us into digital media?~ especially since there’s now a collection type for owned recordings as of a few days ago

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Just wanted to say thank you for this. I installed the script a while back but never bothered to learn how to use it. Now that I have, it is IMMENSELY helpful.

One request - would it be possible to assign different colors to different collections? I have a couple collections for physical and lossless and another one for lossy. Would love to quickly see that I own an album, but only in mp3.

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Thank you very much for sharing your experience on this userscript (the MBS feature that is the most missing for me).

By the way, if you have any ideas of what could have helped you understanding how it works, faster, please let me know. :slight_smile:

I agree it would be great!
There is already this feature request logged:

But honestly I really don’t know if I will ever have time to implement this.
Fixing bugs on my userscripts is already quite late behind.

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Honestly looking at it now, I’m not sure how I missed it. I think I installed it when re-installing other scripts of yours that I use regularly and for some reason I thought I’d be manually configuring the Collections to use rather than going to that page and doing something. But seeing your screenshots made me realize how much it was exactly what I needed - if I’m CD/vinyl hunting half the time I open Plexamp and look at what format is listed. :man_facepalming:

No worries. Maybe it forces me to actually try my hand at some of this coding…

In the meantime, it’s now obvious that I actually have to pick up those 2 Yo La Tengo collabs that I skipped. :sweat_smile:

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