The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Website: http://www.gsoft4u.com/

Overview

The Music Collection is a free program that allows you to archive your music collection. Using it you can enter in a collection any kind of music media that you own or you intend to. Also you can add or edit any kind of information concerning the albums in the collection.

The album info can be manually entered or automatically via the Internet. After saving the albums, you can browse them, filter albums by all possible criteria and search for particular album tracks you are interested. Also the program can display and print all data from your music collection in different ways, so you can pick the desired one.

The idea for creating the program was to manage my own music collection and i hope that it would be also useful to any music collector.

More screenshots here.

Download portable version: http://www.gsoft4u.com/down.php?file=Mu ... ection.zip

License: Freeware

Most interesting, an utility to manage the ever growing emusic chaos in the brave new digital realm -- and all in a measly 5MB portable package.

I just wish the author would have gone with the sqlite or firebird database engine instead of (high maintenance M$) mdb.

In the "Albums in grid view", there should be an option to turn gridlines off and to customize the size of the album cover thumbnail image (it's much too small currently).

The portable version seems to be packed in a different executable (I could find no settings to make it portable...) and BTW version 1.7.1.0 is already out.

I haven't tested exporting functions nor the interaction with digital files metadata (ID3 tags, for MP3s), but this looks definitely a keeper...

Midas wrote:The portable version seems to be packed in a different executable (I could find no settings to make it portable...)

What do you mean?

Midas wrote:and BTW version 1.7.1.0 is already out.

Why did I put 1.7.0.0? Who knows...

lautrepay wrote:What do you mean?

It appears there are two discrete executables, the portable one and the installable...

Midas wrote:

lautrepay wrote:What do you mean?

It appears there are two discrete executables, the portable one and the installable...

No problem. I felt a little bit confused with your comment.
By the way, thanks for your mini review.

First of all, thanks for writing this software. Then thanks for discovering it.

I like that:
- it is portable (I did not discover anything with Regshot)
- it is quite a small package
- it is free
- you can add albums with sort of a web assistant (searches for album data, tracklist, cover art etc)
- there are different viewing, grouping and sorting modes
- you can skin it

However, some things could be improved:
- Adding and editing albums seems a little buggy to me (web search may result in awkward album-tracks-cover mixups) or at least a little uncomfortable to use ("saved" popup annoys me, sometimes it takes ages for it to occur and for you to be able to continue). Is it mdb's fault?
- Viewing and, in particular, grouping and sorting albums could have more options: Can I sort all albums in my collection alphabetically and albums by same artists in that very same list chronologically?
- The interface could be more polished. I don't need eye candy, but as of now it seems a little coarse, and most of the skins aren't really beautiful. See also Midas' post above.

I'll try and catalogue my CDs with it...

Honestly, the more I use it, the buggier or stranger it seems...

- Album web search does all kinds of strange stuff, e.g. scramble multi-word band names, cut off initial "The"s in band and album names...
- There are all sorts of UI glitches, e.g. albums in the list seem to have been marked although they aren't etc.

I am not sure whether this is the programmers fault or whether these are just problems caused by what the web delivers or what can be done with mdb.
By the way, where exactly does it retrieve album information? Amazon?

What's new in Music Collection 1.72
July 8, 2012
Added album sorting in images view.
Added album type/artist role check.
Added artist grouping in manage artists.
Fixed some bugs.

Download portable version: http://www.gsoft4u.com/down.php?file=Mu ... ection.zip

v1.7.3.0 is out:
- Added sorting options in grid view.
- Visual enhancements.

I am very happy with the new functions and bugfixes of the last two versions, especially sorting troubles and UI glitches seem to be gone.

v1.7.4.0 is out

v1.7.4.3 is out

What's new in Music Collection 1.76
November 22, 2012
Added export to (html, excel, csv, txt) files.
Fixed some bugs.

What's new in Music Collection 1.75
October 10, 2012
Added support for proxy server.
Freedb submit redesigned.
Fixed some bugs.

Download @ http://www.gsoft4u.com/down.php?file=Mu ... ection.zip

BTW, where's Emka?

My dear lautrepay, care to edit that first post of yours to remove the "1.7.0.0" version information from its subject? It would make the subject of this topic more evident. TiA,

Midas wrote:My dear lautrepay, care to edit that first post of yours to remove the "1.7.0.0" version information from its subject? It would make the subject of this topic more evident. TiA,

Done, my excuses and thanks, Midas.