SongKong Eliminator released 12th February 2021

We are please to announce the release of SongKong Eliminator, named after the 8th album by ZZ Top

 

 

This release fixes a number of issues with matching box sets, before this release SongKong could handle multidisc releases upto 4 discs, but could not properly match larger boxsets. The Box set algorithm has been completely rewritten for better matching

We also introduce a new feature for Roon users, sometimes Roon users use the ROONALBUMTAG to keep thew discs of a boxset together, even if they edit the disc to use the original albums the boxset is comprised of. We can now do this automatically with the Add RoonAlbumTag to albums identified as box sets checkbox on the Format tab

There are also many bug fixes and minor improvements in this release.

Improvement

• [SONGKONG-1015] - BoxSets:When matching against multiple disc release match to discs with same no of tracks first
• [SONGKONG-2010] - Classical Files more likely to fall foul of 255 char limit per path segment causing duplicates
• [SONGKONG-2161] - Roon:Add support for ROONALBUMTAG (for boxsets)
• [SONGKONG-2175] - If existing Genre metadata includes Classical then mark songs as Classical

Bug

• [SONGKONG-2153] - Filename clashed warning does not update the Errors and Warning progress indicator
• [SONGKONG-2155] - NullPointer saving artwork if writing song to root
• [SONGKONG-2156] - RemoteGui:Allows Move Matched folder to be set to blank even if MoveMatched is enabled
• [SONGKONG-2157] - Ensure if Is Move Matched is enabled but Matched Folder is blank then option ignored.
• [SONGKONG-2159] - Use Windows Compatible Characters is only applied to filename not the folder part of path
• [SONGKONG-2160] - Sometimes failed save gives misleading PrepareStatement Error
• [SONGKONG-2162] - Roon:SongKong not recognizing boxset folder structure
• [SONGKONG-2164] - folder.none issue
• [SONGKONG-2166] - ArtistRelationshipsAndCredits.addInstrumentsFromPerformerRoles Error trying to remove Vocals
• [SONGKONG-2167] - Unable to do complete byFolder section of Report:null
• [SONGKONG-2169] - When SongSaver task is cancelled for taking too long message doesnt say what group was cancelled
• [SONGKONG-2170] - SongKong limits BoxSet identification to 10 folders
• [SONGKONG-2176] - Classical album split into four folders because of duplicate filenames due to Windows total filepath restriction
• [SONGKONG-2178] - Not creating credits correctly when performer play multiple instruments on one track

 

 

SongKong Magdalene 7.1 Released 22nd January 2021

This release is very much focused on improving integrating with the roon 20 music player and server. You can load your music library into roon and it will try and automatically match them to its database, but you will get better results if you run SongKong on your music files first

Although focused on roon most of the improvements have been applied in a general way that can be useful for many non-roon applications, and we also have some MinimServer specific improvements

We have also add a new roon category 16 to the forum. There are some new articles about SongKong with Roon, but all you really to do to get good results is use the new Roon, Fix Songs profile

 

 

Improvement

• [SONGKONG-952 2] - Save a SongKong Id to files so can be found even if moved by iTunes, and know if has been processed.
• [SONGKONG-1018 2] - Give option to make Artist separate values like Artists field
• [SONGKONG-1259 1] - Roon:Use INVOLVEDPEOPLE instead of PERFORMER
• [SONGKONG-1741 5] - Roon:Add Recording Date and Location
• [SONGKONG-1898] - Add Sort Fields for important Non Performer Roles.
• [SONGKONG-1921 1] - Roon: Add roles such as PRODUCER as both individual field and INVOLVEDPEOPLE on all formats
• [SONGKONG-2025 3] - Roon:Look at better integration with ROON Section tag
• [SONGKONG-2135] - Add option to FixSongs to Ignore Previously Checked Files that were Not Matched.
• [SONGKONG-2136] - MinimServer:For ID3 write performers to a PERFORMER field
• [SONGKONG-2137] - Roon:Modify ORIGINAL_ALBUM_DATE mapping to ORIGINALRELEASEDATE so picked up by Roon
• [SONGKONG-2139] - Classical matcher check for Genre =Classique
• [SONGKONG-2140] - Roon:Added support for roon VERSION field
• [SONGKONG-2141] - Roon:Added support for roon LIVE field
• [SONGKONG-2148] - Need a way to empty specific fields
• [SONGKONG-2149 1] - Roon:Add ARTISTATIST_SORT/ARTISTS,ARTISTS_SORT to never populate for Classical
• [SONGKONG-2150] - BrowseByArtist needs to allow for AlbumArtist could now being multiple value

Bug

• [SONGKONG-2143] - IS_SOUNDTRACK field not getting added whe matched to MusicBrainz
• [SONGKONG-2144] - Undercounting number of fields by one when writing Flac files without a VENDOR string

 

 

 

SongKong 6.11 Floodland Released 16th November 2020

 

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 6.11 Floodland, named after The Sisters of Mercys goth masterpiece released in 1987.

This release is mainly small improvements and bug fixes.

Most notably we make some inprovements to the import of metadata from Naim Wav files. We fix an issue whereby Delete Duplicates would always stop if didn’t complete after one hour, made some improvements to the Delete Duplicates report and we handle some occasional issues with Fix Songs.

Bug

• [SONGKONG-2097] - Problems writing metadata for DSF files larger than 2GB

• [SONGKONG-2098] - SongChangesReport:java.lang.NullPointerException

• [SONGKONG-2101] - Melco: No files showing when start task

• [SONGKONG-2103] - Duplicate record written to SongDiff table, looks like related to renaming file to duplicate

• [SONGKONG-2105] - Invalid coverart error doesnt tell you what the problem file is

• [SONGKONG-2107] - songkong.sh not starting in gui on linux

• [SONGKONG-2108] - Delete Duplicates doesnt show fullpath of moved file so not clear which one is

• [SONGKONG-2109] - Delete Duplicates doesnt load all songs, if takes more than 1 hour to load them all.

• [SONGKONG-2112] - Double processing of files at Save stage related to DiscogsUpdate

• [SONGKONG-2115] - Naim Matching, add to Errors and Warnings if unable to map from songs to cddbinfo.txt for some reason

• [SONGKONG-2116] - Naim Matching, better parsing of filename when named as a multi-disc album

Improvement

• [SONGKONG-2088] - Linux:Move to Java 14 

  [SONGKONG-2106] - Naim UserEdits only does track mapping if have cddbinfo.txt or amginfo.xml file 

  [SONGKONG-2117] - Try and create artist artwork folder if parent exists instead of complaining it doesn't exists

 

Full details at https://community.jthink.net/t/songkong-6-11-floodland-released-16th-november-2020/9595

 

 

SongKong 6.10 Odelay Released July 23rd 2020

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 6.10 Odelay, named after my favourite album by Beck released in 1996.

The main purpose of this release is to introduce a brand new Windows installer, solving most installer issues.

We also remove the Izpack linux installer because this required a windowed system to run the installer and did not install desktop shortcuts properly, for now we just provide a simple tar installer that can be extracted to preferred location.

There are also a number of important bug fixes.

Improvement

• [SONGKONG-2002] - Windows:Move to Java 14
• [SONGKONG-2082] - Windows:Replace Izpack installer with JPackage installer
• [SONGKONG-2087] - Make it possible to run songkong.sh from Docker

Bug

• [SONGKONG-0605] - Installer:Rationalise short cuts created during Windows installation
• [SONGKONG-1359] - Windows/Linux:Applescript warning
• [SONGKONG-1581] - Windows:Self Extracting Zip installer does not always work
• [SONGKONG-1687] - Windows:Uninstaller doesnt work properly
• [SONGKONG-1996] - Linux:Izpack Installer could run as console but missing console impl of FinishPanel
• [SONGKONG-2069] - songkong64.bat doesnt work on first install, need to run songkong64.ini first
• [SONGKONG-2071] - Windows:javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure
• [SONGKONG-2072] - Possible for song to try and save same song twice, must be issue with SingleSong match, DiscogsSongMatch
• [SONGKONG-2073] - Check Version doesnt show if have current version updates period.
• [SONGKONG-2076] - Mandatory fields such as MB RECORDING ID and MB RELEASE ID are missing from Status Report
• [SONGKONG-2077] - NullPointerException at org.jaudiotagger.tag.mp4.field.Mp4GenreField
• [SONGKONG-2078] - StatusReport says unreported error if just unable to load an audio file (because corrupt)
• [SONGKONG-2080] - Melco:Fix Songs Progress bars dont seem to be updating even though SongKong working
• [SONGKONG-2083] - Drop in users internet connection caused NullPointerException
• [SONGKONG-2085] - Remote:Watch Songs progress not updating as songs fixed.

Full details at https://community.jthink.net/t/songkong-6-10-odelay-released-23rd-july-2020/9320

Jaikoz 10.1.0 Released July 5th 2020

Jaikoz 10.1.0 Pavement is now available for all platforms

Major MacOS Changes

 

We now support Dark Mode

and Apple Music App

and MacOS Notarization

Major Windows Changes

We now use a new installer, this is a much more robust installer that works better with Windows

Metadata Tagging

New version of tagging library containing over forty fixes for reading and modifying audio files.

Java Changes

We have moved from Java 8 to Java 11, this provides many fixes and improvements delivered with Java 11. It also means that we can provide a smaller Java Runtime containing only the libraries that Jaikoz needs

Note Java 11 also means we no longer support Windows 32bit, since this is not available with Java 11

• [JAIKOZ-1189] - OSX:Issue with About and Quit handler
• [JAIKOZ-1202] - MacOS:Formatting of some Preferences tabs not quite right
• [JAIKOZ-1215] - MacOS:Quit Handler Exception
• [JAIKOZ-1218] - Removal of Lock on Save can cause problems with M4as because can use temporary files.
• [JAIKOZ-1239] - Not respecting Only allow match if all songs on album are matched option when matching directly from MusicBrainz
• [JAIKOZ-1249] - MacOS:Cannot configure Player app because chooser doesnt let you select Application folders
• [JAIKOZ-1251] - Fixes for Music Tagging Library
• [JAIKOZ-1265] - MacOS:iTunes Add New Tracks sometimes complaining nexttrack not defined

Improvement

• [JAIKOZ-887 ] - Add way of marking Tracks as Instrumental
• [JAIKOZ-1184] - OSX:Font size on detail panel only smaller than it used to be
• [JAIKOZ-1237] - MacOS Mojave and later:Add Support for Dark Mode
• [JAIKOZ-1252 1] - Update to Java 11
• [JAIKOZ-1253] - MacOS:Add support for stricter MacOS Notarization controls
• [JAIKOZ-1254] - MacOS:Add Support for Music app instead of iTunes
• [JAIKOZ-1255] - Remove support for Windows 32bit version
• [JAIKOZ-1257] - Build custom Java runtime with only the classes needed
• [JAIKOZ-1262] - MacOS:Remove Cross-Platform option for MacOS
• [JAIKOZ-1263] - Move to latest version of OneMusic Image Archive
• [JAIKOZ-1264] - MacOS:Preferences:MusicBrainz:Format is not formatted correctly on MacOS

SongKong 6.9 Released - April 24th 2020

SongKong 6.9 Released - April 24th 2020

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 6.9 Mercury, named after the album by American Music Club released in 1993.

Java 8 to Java 11

In order to resolve various issues this new release now uses Java 11 instead of Java 8 , this was a major change that required alot of work behind the scenes.
It also means that:

• There is no Windows 32bit version because does not exist for Java 11 onwards
• SongKong is no longer compatible with Java 8, used by some linux users

 

Improvements for MinimServer and Classical

We have added some new options design for classical music customers using SongKong with MinimServer uPNP server.

Add Composer to start of Overall Work, this is used by MinimServer for indexing Classical Works

When using MinimServer uPNP server to play your classical music with the SongKong Classical profile enabling this option will show the composer as part of the work name in the Work index. This can be very usual for distinguishing between completely different works with very similar names written by different composers.

Add Composer to start of MinimServer Group, this is used by MinimServer for playing Classical Works

When you play a Classical work with MinimServer uPNP server enabling this option will show the composer when you play the group corresponding to the work. This can be very usual for distinguishing between completely different works with very similar names written by different composers. Because MinimServer only allows groups for work containing multiple contiguous movements enabling this option also includes adding the composer to title if the work has no movements.

 

Other Classical Improvements and Fixes

Classical compilations album could end up with unwieldy album titles if the Add Composer to start of Album Title options was used, so now we limit to use a maximum of three composers in the album title.

 

Improvements for Mp4 Processing

Before this release SongKong would sometimes have to use tmp files when modifying mp4 audio files, this could cause issues due to operating system permissions. Now we no longer need to use tmp files this is more reliable and quicker than the old

SongKong 6.8 Rumours - released January 31st 2020

Please to announce SongKong 6.8 Rumours now released

Mainly a bug fix release ,full details here

SongKong 6.7 Closer - released November 26th 2019

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 6.7 Closer, this release is named after the deeply dark second album by Salford band Joy Division. 

Improvements for MacOS 

This release contains some key improvements for Apple MacOS, especially the latest version of the operating system -  Catalina.                                                                                                                   

Notarization

With Catalina Apple added an additional security mechanism called Notarization. Essentially we have to send SongKong to Apple and it does an automatic scan for malware, only if it passes can customers install without a warning. SongKong 6.7 is notarized.

Apple Music App Support 

With Catalina Apple replaced the iTunes app with the Music app, you may not even have noticed because it looks very similar, the key difference being that movies have now been moved to a different TV app. However it Music is a different application and SongKong did not support it, now on Catalina we integrate with the Music app instead of the iTunes app if customer enables it.

Dark Mode

Since MacOS Mojave you can now select a Dark Appearance rather than the default Light Appearance, and this has become increasingly more popular, this had some effect on SongKong but did not work properly.

We have now added support for Dark Appearance to SongKong. If you select this then SongKong will start in Dark Mode, otherwise SongKong will start in the usual Light Mode. (Note, if you change appearance when SongKong is already started it will not switch SongKong appearance.)

Other Improvements

Not all improvements in this release are for MacOS, we also have added:

MusicBrainz Release without Type

Sometimes SongKong matches songs to a MusicBrainz release that has no release type such as Album, E.P or even Other. If this is the case we now default to Album

Roon Artist Credits Import

If you are using Roon, running SongKong over your songs first can greatly increases the number of albums that Roon identifies. It also means that Roon will display decent metadata for those albums it still cannot identify. With the recent Roon 1.7 this includes artist credits added by SongKong such as the musicians and their instruments. But Roon cannot handle instruments that contain curly brackets () such as drums(drumset) as added by MusicBrainz. So now we replace () brackets in the instrument with [] brackets and this resolves the problem.

See here for all improvements and fixes.

 

SongKong 6.6 Red - released October 23rd 2019

We are pleased to announce the release of SongKong 6.6, this release is named after the album by Taylor Swift. Red was the album that kickstarted her transformation from country singer to pop princess, crammed full of classic pop tunes.

Improved Reports 

Most of the improvements in this release are related to reports. 

Artwork Size

 
We now show the size of artwork (width in pixels) as another label on the image

Show Labels 

 
But you can remove this and all other labels by unchecking the Show Labels checkbox so you can see your artwork unobscured.

Text Search 

 
You can do a text search to only show the items that match the search.

Filters

 
And you can combine this with filters.

For the Artist page we can filter on artists that have/not an artist images, artists that have/not cover art for all their albums and artist that have/not all their albums matched to either a MusicBrainz or Discogs album.

New Browse Sections

We have added Browse by Artist and Browse by Folder to a Browse drop down menu because we have now added some new ways to browse your collection.

Browse by Album

Displays all the albums on a single page so that it is easy to find the album you are interested in regardless of knowing the album artist. It also means that very quickly you can see albums over your whole collection that need some attention.
 
Filters and search are included.

 Browse by Composer/Work

For classical music it is often more useful to be able to browse by the composer and their works, rather than by album artist and album so we have now added this. At the top level it shows all the composers that you have works for and you can select a composer to see their works
 
Filters and search are included. 

Bug Fixing

We have also fixed another seven bugs. Full list of fixes can be found on the news page

 

SongKong 6.5 Doolittle - released October 4th 2019

We are pleased to announce the new release of SongKong, SongKong 6.5 Doolittle named after the second album by Pixies released in 1989. Full of powerful bursts of energy, and one of the first bands I ever saw live, and now thirty years on they are touring the same album !

Continuing the theme of the previous release we have fixed over thirty bugs this months, this includes a number of long-standing and obscure bugs - please see here

Resolving bugs is important since we want to make SongKong totally hassle free, and this in turn reduces the time we need to spend on support, freeing up more time for new features. So there will be some new features soon but I do not apologize for currently concentrating on bug fixing.

Bug Analysis

I thought it might be interesting to categorise the remaining 39 bugs (this is not many at all for a product of this complexity), they are as follows:

Installer:6
iTunes Integration:6
Web User Interface:5
Matching Issues:5
Reading/Writing data:4
Albunack Database:3
Undo Changes:3 
Reports:3 
Error Handling:2
MacOS User Interface:2

Installer 

SongKong is available on many platforms and the codebase is largely the same for all platforms but there are differences. Notably installers very considerably between platforms and do not necessarily use Java like the main SongKong application,  and expectations can change  as new versions of the operating system become available. The two most problematic platforms are Windows (which is complicated), and Linux where there is no clear standard for all Linux variations.

iTunes Integration

Unfortunately Apple do not make it very easy to integrate with their products, and are very secretive about bugs in their products. iTunes integration is difficult and we have to do it twice, once for MacOS and once for Windows

 

Web User Interface 

Originally SongKong only had a regular desktop user interface. Adding a full Web user interface was a major piece of work, and we are still learning about the ever changing web, and have a few issues to fix.

 

Matching Issues

This is the main feature of SongKong and we are always seeking to improve song identification, and have a few minor issues related to this.

Reading/Writing Data 

For some audio formats (mp4, ogg, wma) we sometimes write temporary files when modifying files and this can cause issues for users with a complex permissions model. So we would like to remove the need to use temporary files but this is quite major piece of work, this is the bulk of the issues in 
this category.

Albunack Database

Some improvements require modification to our Albunack Database, this holds our copies of MusicBrainz and Discogs database.

Undo Changes

Another key feature with a few issues.

Reports

Additional Html based problems.

Error Handling

Errors can always happen, and when they do we need to deal with then sensibly, a few issues remain here.

 

MacOS User Interface

Of all the platforms that SongKong supports the MacOS platform is most subject to change and require updates to SongKong

 

SongKong 6.4 Treasure - released September 2019

We are pleased to announce the new release of SongKong, SongKong 6.4 Treasure named after the third album by The Cocteau Twins released in 1984. Never has the word ethereal better described a rock album, utterly different to anything else and one of a number of fantastic albums released by the band.

This release contains more than twenty bug fixes, but we have also added a number of nice improvements.

Added badges to Browse by Folder/ArtistAndAlbum 

We now show a tally of how many songs have been matched to MusicBrainz and Discogs at all levels so you can quickly scan for albums that may need more attention

Add reason why file not loaded to the Not Loaded tab

Previously when we could load a file the file was added to the Not Loaded tab, but the reason we could not load the file was added to the Errors tab, now we show the reason on the Not Loaded tab instead, this makes much more sense.

Use grid for Album Artists with four artists

When an album has multiple album artists we can create an albumArtist image from each artist, when there are four artists splitting the image vertically only make each artist too thin, so now we can arrange as a grid. 

Full details of all changes can be found here

SongKong 6.3 Psychocandy - released July 21st, 2019

We are pleased to announce the new release of SongKong, SongKong 6.3 Psychocandy named after the debut album by The Jesus and Mary Chain released in 1985. This feedback drenched album was like nothing we had heard ever heard before (except maybe elements of the Velvet Underground), but subsequent albums never lived up to this one.

Reports now has Browse by Artist/Album 

In this new release we have introduced a new section called Browse by Artist/Album. This group the songs by the album artist and album metadata and lets you browse the songs in this grouping. This shows all songs processed by Fix Songs, not only the songs that SongKong actually modified.

We show artist and album artwork if SongKong has it, and also add badges indicating how many songs exist for this metadata and how many change.

This new section of the report mirrors the kind of view you would expect to see in many music players and control points and should make it easier to manage your music.

Reports Song Changes section revamped as Browse By Folder 

The Song Changes section has now been renamed, and instead of showing a single tree it now uses tiles to let you browse by folder in a similar way to Browse by Artist/Album.

It now shows all songs processed, not only the modified songs. If a folder has a folder.jpg in the folder then this is displayed as the folder image.

Providing Browse by Artist/Album and Browse By Folder sections make it much easier to identify any discrepancies between file structure and metadata.

Also tiles rather than tree works better for mobile and small screen devices.

Matched to MusicBrainz/Discogs/Song Only/Naim Report Sections all revamped

All these sections have also been revamped to use tiles rather than the tree hierarchy.

Performance Improvements

Additional improvements have been made to performance and there have also been some performance related bug fixes.

Full details can be found on the News Page

SongKong 6.2 Hunkpapa - Performance Release released on 20th June 2019

We are pleased to announce the new release of SongKong, SongKong 6.2 Hunkpapa named after the third album by Throwing Muses released in 1989. This is a really fantastic album, with some great tracks from both Kirstin Hersh and Tanya Donelly. 

Better Performance

In this new release we have made many changes to improve performance, these fall into two categories database and concurrency. This is quite a technical blog post but I thought some of you may find it interesting.

Better Database Performance

SongKong stores your music metadata in a database, this means we can:
- Provide an Undo feature
- Quicker reloading of files instead of having to access fileystem
- Minimal Data stored in memory so SongKong is scalable huge music collections. 

SongKong uses Hibernate on top of the H2 database. Hibernate provides a useful abstraction from the database, but it can lead to inefficient database querying. We have now gone through all queries and made a number of performance improvements to reduce the database load.

We have moved from H2 1.3 to H2 1.4, this is not a minor change. H2 1.4 uses a completely different database format for greatly improved performance.

Concurrency

SongKong is a multi-threaded application, this means there can be more than one thread of activity going on at the same time. The key threads that do most of the work are called the worker threads. 

By default the number of worker threads matches the number of cpus of the computer so we can utilize all cpus

If the computer has only one cpu we still have at least three worker threads. This is because SongKong gets much of its data from the internet so once a request is made to the Internet it just waits for the results, so no cpu is being used. If we have multiple threads than the cpu can service a different request whilst waiting for results.

In this release we have made improvements to how the concurrency works. This will see most improvements on single cpu systems and conversely also high end systems with more than 16 cpus.

Optimization, Control Worker Threads

To reiterate, by default the number of worker threads matches the number of cpus of the computer so we can utilize all cpus, with a minimum value of three.

If customers are running SongKong on a whole collection it is usually recommended it is run overnight. But if you want to limit the number of worker threads because you are actively using the computer at the same time for other work then now you can.

Just modify your general.properties file and add a line workers=n where n is number of worker threads.

i.e.

workers=4

Then when you start a task it will only use that amount of worker threads, you can check this by looking at your songkong_user0.0.log file

When you start a task it should say

21/06/2019 09.30.19:BST:SEVERE: Workers Configuration:4

We have a number of other fixes, and the full list can be found here