If anybody is interested…

I’ve put together an excel spreadsheet with some visual basic code that I use for printing a list of the songs on the empeg. It reads the csv file exported from emplode and arranges the tracks by genre, artist and album in a format suitable for printing. I usually produce a one-page list of the artists, and (currently) an 18-page list of the 8700 songs. The number of artists or songs per page (and therefore the size of the type) can be controlled by parameters.

Without the printed lists I would completely forget about some of the music I have. Plus, it gives me a physical way to overwhelm my friends with the amount of music I have in my car stereo…

I use it for other things as well. I can also print a list of all the music on my hard drive or just the tracks on my hard drive that are missing from the empeg. But, I didn’t make that very generic, so it only works if you happen to store all your music files as ..\artist\album\artist – album – track.mp3.

Take a look at the attached and see if it’s useful to you. I threw some comments into it to document how it works. Feel free to do anything you want with it and let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

Thanks,
Bill

A reminder for anyone who wants to print the playlist structure (as opposed to a flat list of songs), that my Playlist Stylesheet, version 2, is available at RioCar.Org.

I've setup a microsoft access database that does similar, it will also allow you to compare your Empeg database to the MP3s on your hard drive. If anyone is interested please reply to this and I'll go ahead and post it.

Cheers, I'd be interested, would make the information far more manageable.

No problem. I'm at work right now, I'll post it as soon as I get home.

Hmmm. I get a 'Runtime Error '13': Type mismatch'. The debugger highlights this line:
' PlayCountCol = Application.Match("play_count", InputSheet.Rows(1), 0)'

No love . I used the .csv from jemplode v.45 and a MKII 2.0b13 with Hijack. Perhaps I should use emplode instead to get the .csv?

-Zeke

I'd be interested too. Post it on up if you get a chance.

Ok, here it is. A few quick notes!!
---- This was written for ME, it might not work for you without modifications ----
--- I am using the emplode CSV file for this
--- This currently only reads ID3v1 tags from the local mp3s

---- How to get your CSV into this app
Open the frmImport_CSV form
Type the path to your CSV file in the text box
Click Import
Your empeg database should now reside in a table called Empeg
There is also a table called links that will be created which is a list of FID connections from your empeg. This will allow you to see which songs are associated with certain playlists..

--- How to scan your hard drive for songs
Open the frmImport_Songs form
Type the path you want to scan
Click Import
All of your local music should now be stored in a table called Songs

There are two queries saved that should get you started on synchronizing your playlists.

Please let me know what you think and any suggestions would be appreciated :

http://www.workbuddies.com/music_tracker_1b.zip

Thanks! I'll give it a spin over the weekend and post findings here.

It refuses to let me type in the path to the .csv file. I can highlight the text, but any typing whatsoever is ignored. W2k, Access 2000.

-Zeke

Sorry about that. I had the forms locked. I went ahead and added a main menu that gives a little easier interface. I also added some error checking to the import procedures so it's not as messy when you mistype a path.

http://www.workbuddies.com/Music_Tracker1.1b.zip

Did anyone get a chance to play with this at all? Problems, suggestions??
Thanks,

Anyone have Office 2000 Developer that can package this up with runtime Access? I can't install Access 2000 on my system since it will hose my Access 97 installation that I have to have for work purposes...

I suppose if it comes to it, I can try it on the laptop or the I-Opener...

I don't think you'll need to upgrade access if I write a VB app that interfaces with the Access DB. I'll mess with it tonight and let you know.

I'm using the column titles in the csv file to find the various columns. The columns have moved a few times under different releases, so I search for the column titles rather than hardcoding their location.

You could replace "play_count" with whatever the csv file from jemplode uses as its column title (I haven't used jemplode). Or just hardcode "PlayCountCol = n" where n is the column number (not letter) that contains the playcount. The same thing may apply to other columns if they are also different under jemplode.

Ultimately, I hoped to generate a list of the most often played songs, like a top 100 most requested songs list. But, the play count doesn't seem to get written correctly to the csv file, so I'm not even using that column at this time.

Bill

Although I'd wanted to, I didn't get an opportunity last weekend; hope to have a bit of spare time over Christmas. Will keep you posted.