Default filters / presets for music library?

[einarpersson]

Hi! I'm not sure if this question belongs here or in mpd. Or if it is at all possible. But here we go:

Let say I have a large music library. Some of it is classical music. I like classical music but I rarerly jump between classical music and other music (pop, rock, ...).

Is it somehow possible to maintain a unified music library but also have something like presets/defaults so that only a subset of the music library is available for exploration? I would like to more or less be able to start rmpc in different modes, which has different "global filters". On the other hand, I supppose it would be best if something like this was available in the mpd protocol as you'd then want to have it in all clients...

Would this require me to effectivly have two separate folders and two separate mpd-instances today? Or is there a way to get it working even today?

[mierak]

Hi! Solving this with some sort of a global filter would require rmpc to alter every single library listing command to include this filter. Additionally it would bring in issues such as stored playlists, what subset would these playlists belong to? I cant really think of a satisfactory solution be it in MPD or rmpc.

I think that having two MPD instances on different ports with two different music_directorys as you suggest is probably your best bet.

Though this might sort of become possible in the future as a side effect of some improvements to rmpc I am planning, but really no specifics on this.

[jgregoire]

You might try multiple mpd servers (assign each a different port, and may need to be run as separate users), then write aliases for rmpc/mpc/etc that use the different port numbers.

There's also the concept of mpd "partitions" which I have never explored, but may hold the solution to your use case.

[mierak]

Partitions do not have separate library though, they have separate queues and can play different songs. Then you can switch outputs between the partitions. Rmpc has full support for partitions if you want to play around with them.