What's new?

Fixed:

• Main Screen: hiding the alphabet bar would leave an empty space
• Details panel: Action Bar didn’t always show the correct buttons

Music Collector offers powerful batch commands, for performing actions on multiple albums in one go, e.g. editing, removing or updating from Core.
However, we are finding that many users have never use these these batch actions, either because they are not aware of their existence or because they don’t know how to actually select multiple albums (by Shift or Ctrl-clicking).

In today’s update we addressed these issues:

New Selection Checkboxes in the List View, for easy selection of multiple albums

The List View now features checkboxes on the left. Use the checkboxes to easily select multiple albums, no Shift or Ctrl-clicking needed. Of course the classic Shift/Ctrl-clicking still works too, this is just an extra method.

Don’t need the checkboxes? You can hide them using Tools / Options / Customization.

A new Action Bar with batch actions

As soon as multiple albums are selected (that is, more than 1), a new Action Bar appears above the list. It shows how many are selected, plus offers buttons for the most popular batch actions.

Also new: Action Bar above Details Panel

At the same time, we also added a new Action Bar above the details panel, for quick access to commands operating on the selected album.

TIP: The commands in this new Action Bar have been removed from the main toolbar, to make that one a bit cleaner. However, if you are upgrading from an older version, it will remember your toolbar. To get the new clean main toolbar, choose View / Toolbars / Reset.

Don’t need or want this new bar? You can hide it using Tools / Options / Customization.

Fixed:

• Find Cover: images weren’t scaling correctly
• Edit Screen: Grid Icons weren’t scaling correctly
• Improved loading speed for Cover Flow view
• Edit Track: title bar wasn’t wide enough

You can now loan albums in Music Connect: just find and select an album (or select multiple with the Select tool), and click the “Loan” button at the top!

Loan Manager

Click the menu top left, and then Loan Manager to access the new Loan Manager where you can see all your loaned out items, and directly return them. Alternatively you can also use CLZ Barry to scan a barcode of an album, find it in your outstanding loans, and return it.

In the Loan Manager, you can click on a loaned item to modify the loan date, due date, return date, loaner and notes about the loan.

Print current loans to PDF

You can print out all your current loans to a PDF file by clicking the Print to PDF button in the Loan Manager screen.

Alternatively, you can select a loaner from the dropdown menu there, and only print out his/her current loans to a PDF file!

New:

• Loan albums by selecting a couple in your list, or by viewing the details of an album, and then click “Loan” at the top.
• Return albums straight from the loan manager or by scanning their barcodes with CLZ Barry.
• Check outstanding loans and loan history in the Loan Manager.
• Edit outstanding or returned loans by clicking on them.
• Print out current loans to a PDF file

Coming up:

We will be adding the syncing of loan information to Music Collector for Windows and macOS, and CLZ Music for iOS and Android.

New for the Add Albums screen:

• Add button is now bigger and easier to spot (some new users missed the little round “+”).
• Add button now “remembers” your collection vs. wish list selection. No need to pick from the Collection/Wish List popup menu every time you add anymore.
• Remove from queue button is now bigger and easier to spot. Tap and hold on a barcode in the queue to select barcodes you want to remove.

Fixed:

• Accented characters in sortnames/titles were sorted incorrectly.
• Main screen: the over-sensitive quickscroll bar in the thumbnail view has been fixed.
• Edit: ‘Done’- button doest not scroll from screen on manual scroll.
• Edit: New ‘Unsaved changes’ dialog.
• Cloud sync: Sync reporting ‘invalid xml’ in rare cases.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “CATraxx” to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “CATraxx” import tool in Music Connect!

You can find the “CATraxx” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “Delicious Library” to Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “Delicious Library” import tool in Connect!

You can find the “Delicious Library” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

New for the Add Albums screen:

• Add button is now bigger and easier to spot (some new users missed the little round “+”).
• Add button now “remembers” your collection vs. wish list selection. No need to pick from the Collection/Wish List popup menu every time you add anymore.

Fixed

• Add Screen:
  • By CDID: Fixed some issues with adding multidiscs / multiple single albums
  • By CDID: Fixed the counter of the add button bottom left
  • By Barcode: For single barcode results the single add button (bottom right) didn’t work.
• Reassign Album Index / Select Sort Fields:
  • Fixed an “Access Violation” when changing the sort order.
  • Fixed an enable/disable problem for the “Save” button.

Improvement to the Add Screen

When adding by barcode and compiling your multidisc entry using the checkboxes, the Add button bottom right can now also add the compiled result as a multidisc.

New collection status icons

We added new collection status icons to the main screen’s list view and card view to make the screen less clogged up and easier on the eye.

Various DPI scaling improvements and fixes

We did some more DPI scaling fixes, including:

• Main Screen:
  • Cards view: Collection status icons now scale correctly
  • Images view: Default size and maximum size is now DPI dependent
• Add Albums screen:
  • The pop out on the Add Album button was too big
  • Right click menus were too big
  • Auto-read toggle didn’t scale
  • The default width of the panels is now correctly set
• Edit Screen: Help and Manage Picklist buttons now scale correctly
• Various screens: Rating Stars now scale correctly
• Options screen: Various layout problems have been fixed

Fixes

• Add Albums screen:
  • CD ID tab: Adding scanned albums as multidisc would not add the CDID
  • Barcode tab: Adding albums by barcode as multidisc would not add the barcode

Fixed:

• Crash when adding or syncing on devices running iOS 9 or lower.

We’ve added new fields to sort on to change the order in which your albums are displayed in your list. Your album list will adapt to sort and show the field you’re sorting on. On top of that we’ve redesigned the Select Sort Order screen to make it more clear what you’re choosing.

Open the Select Sort Order screen by tapping the menu top right, then tap “Sort order”.

All available sort fields:

• Artist, then Year (Desc) (New!)
• Artist, then Year (Asc)
• Artist, then Title
• Album Title
• Release Date
• Nr. of Tracks (New!)
• Length (New!)
• Order of Entry (New!)
• My Rating (New!)
• Purchase Date (New!)
• Purchase Price (New!)
• Current Value (New!)
• Quantity (New!)
• Index

All fields can be sorted either ascending or descending. Tap the field you wish to sort on, then tap “Apply” to confirm.

Never a dull moment at the CLZ HQ… Here we were, working on nice improvements for our software, when suddenly… the guys at Apple had a brainwave: In their ultimate wisdom, they decided to start phasing out 32-bit applications.

Since April 12, users of macOS High Sierra are getting a “not optimized for your Mac” warning when they start a 32-bit application. Which includes the Music Collector software for macOS 🙁

On top of that, Apple have already stopped allowing 32-bit applications in their App Store and rumours are that they may even stop supporting 32-bit applications in a future version of macOS, requiring every application to be 64-bit!

Of course, we were already aware that Apple would be going this route some day; the rumours have been around for quite a while. So we had already been working on a 64-bit version of our software, as a “back-burner project”.

But the introduction of last week’s “not optimized” warnings suddenly made this a high-priority project. So… we dropped everything we were doing and finalized our 64-bit project. And I am happy to report:

A fully 64-bit v18.1 version of Music Collector is available now!

Not exactly what we were planning to do this month, but hey, this is what the Update Plans are for: your guarantee that we deal with everything the world throws at us 🙂

A small user interface tweak today:
The Add Albums screen is now a pop-up screen that lays over your album list.
(previously it was a separate full screen page)

Looks cooler, feels more “snappy” and while adding albums, you can actually see the new additions appear in your music list in the background!

New:

• Add Albums: The results cells now scale according to your screen settings.

Fixed:

• Edit Multiple: Labels weren’t scaling correctly.
• Various small scaling fixes (Edit Track, Sync with CLZ Cloud screen and more).
• Images View: You can now size your images in the images view up to 2x.

Following yesterday’s Full DPI Awareness build it seems we went a bit too far: the details view templates (and preview templates in the Add Albums screen) also followed your DPI settings, making them very sharp, but also very small. We fixed that in today’s build!

Some of you also mentioned the tracks tab in the Edit Album screen was acting up. This happened if the program itself was set to use bigger fonts. This has also been addressed now.

Fixed:

• Details View Templates and Preview Templates were displayed too small on screens with higher DPI settings.
• Edit Album: Tracks tab had bad scaling if the program font was set bigger than normal.
• Image popup status bar wasn’t scaling correctly.
• Background color in the trial popup was incorrect.
  

Fixed:

• Sync with CLZ Cloud:
  • In the past disc information may not have been uploaded correctly, causing some discs to download incorrect information when down syncing. This version will correct this and all albums that are affected will be flagged dirty so they can up sync the correct information again. You may get a few automatic sync changes because of this.
  • Sometimes the “Local changes to be uploaded” counter didn’t show the correct number.
  • When a cover could not be downloaded during down syncing it would stop and not continue. Now it will continue and show a report of any errors that have occurred.
  • Sometimes covers weren’t uploaded when they should have.
  • The error: “This database is different from the one in CLZ Cloud” would show up in rare cases when it shouldn’t.
• Main Screen:
  • There were still some cases where “follow edited item” option was not working.
  • Folder grouping on a credit role would show folders for all credit roles instead of just the one selected.

Full support for larger text sizes (Full DPI Awareness)

With super hi-res 4K (or even 5K) screens becoming quite common, more and more people are running Windows with the Font Size (DPI scaling) set to 125% or 150%, to keep text readable. So earlier this year, we released maintenance builds for all Windows editions to fix various layout problems when running Windows with “large fonts”.

Today, with version 18.1 we’re taking the next step: Music Collector is now fully “DPI Aware”. Starting with this version, if you have increased your font size in Windows, the program will actually follow that setting and use bigger text fonts in all screens!

On top of that, texts now look sharper, less fuzzy, making full use of your hi-res screen.

Old version:

New version:

Improvements to the Add Albums from Core screen

• Single Search Box: Just one box for searching (e.g. like Google or Amazon). No more separate Artist and Title boxes. Just enter (part of) the artist’s name and (part of) the title and you will get the best matching results. (see the screen shot below with “metallica justice” results”)

• Changed timing of “Report missing barcode” popup: The missing barcode popup now pops up when you click on a “not found” result instead of interfering while you’re still scanning barcodes.

• Easier way of adding multi-disc albums: Add multi-disc albums by selecting multiple results from your search. Just check the boxes next to the results to compile a multi-disc album and add it to your collection straight away:

Adding Multi-Disc Albums by Artist and Title:

Adding Multi-Disc Albums by Barcode:

Fixed:

• Edit Album:
  • Index field had a typo
  • Clicking next or previous could create a second + button in the User Defined Fields tab
• Edit Multiple: Enabled acquire button in edit multiple
• Quick Search: We’ve fixed normalization for quick searches so words with umlauts/accents etc. are now easier to be found.
• Fixed a problem with folder paths for users that have their Documents folder rooted to an external drive (program wouldn’t install properly).
• Link Screen could show “Link Selected” button even if there were no matches.
• Template: Fixed an issue where the template could become “white” if arrow keys were used on the keyboard
• Light Skin: Better visibility for selected items in your lists.
• User Defined Fields: It was possible to create invisible User Defined Fields which would then never show up in the edit screen.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “Music Label” to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new Music Label import tool in Music Connect!

You can find the Music Label import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from Music Label:

Persistent barcode queue

Barcodes scanned on the add page are now remembered! This means you can scan your barcodes into the add queue, leave the page, return later and still add the barcodes you scanned.

If you wish to remove barcodes from your queue, use the Edit button top right of the list of barcodes!

Fixed:

• Main screen:
  • “None” folder for user defined fields didn’t display.
  • Main screen could freeze in some cases when folder grouping on a user defined field.
• Auto sync could crash the program in some cases.

Fixed

• Editing Saved Folder Presets could break the folder grouping.

Version 18 is finally here! And it not only bring the promised Auto-Cloud-Syncing, but also many improvements to the main screen, making it both faster and more stable.

NEW: Fully Automatic CLZ Cloud Syncing!

The free CLZ Cloud service is at the center of all our cataloging solutions (desktop, mobile and web), the glue that binds them all together.
Tens of thousands of users are using the CLZ Cloud syncing every day, to transfer data between their desktop, Connect and mobile software, to update their online collection list, or simply for keeping an online backup of their precious database.

Now, it is time to take the CLZ Cloud to the next level, with automatic syncing:
Add or edit albums in Music Collector and these changes will auto-upload to the CLZ Cloud instantly. Did you make changes using the CLZ Music mobile app or directly in Music Connect? Just start your software and changes will download automatically.
No more need to go to the Sync with CLZ Cloud screen, ever.

With “Sync Automatically” switched on…

1. Your online cloud backup is always up-to-date.
2. Your cloud viewer always shows the current state of your collection.
3. All your CLZ tools (desktop, mobile and Connect) will always be in-sync.

Automatic Cloud Syncing is an optional feature, switched OFF by default. If you don’t want to auto-sync, or don’t want to sync with the CLZ Cloud at all, just leave it switched OFF.

Main screen now faster and more stable

In the past few months, we have spent a lot of time rewriting important parts of the main screen. For instance, the code that refreshes the folder panel (which was slow, especially with the “counters” switched on) and also the part that restores your selection in the list after editing. At the same time, we reduced the program’s “memory footprint”, making it more stable overall.

The result is that the program is now a lot more enjoyable to use. It starts quicker, it refreshes much faster (after adding or editing) and switching between folder types is quicker.

The speed-up will be most noticeable on large collections, with thousands of albums. Especially when having LOTS of folders in the folder panel (e.g. Artist folders).

Fixes

• Cloud syncing:
  • After duplicating an album, the duplicate would not be marked for syncing to cloud.
  • In some situations, a down-sync could update empty fields with data from Core.
  • In some situations, cover images would not upload automatically.
• Main screen:
  • For startup performance, the program now always starts in album view.
  • After editing, the edited items would not be selected after refresh.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from Discogs to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new import from Discogs screen for Music Connect!

You can find the Discogs import under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from Discogs:

Last week we updated the field selection popup for Connect and CLZ Cloud, and this week we bring that same field selection popup to your “Export to Text” and “Print to PDF” pages.

The update also includes an update Preview box for Export to Text, and an updated way for dragging/dropping fields for your columns or sort order.

Open up your Export to Text or Print to PDF screen via the menu top left in Connect.

New field selection popup:

Updated “Export to Text” page:

With new preview panel:

Updated “Print to PDF” page:

The ability to select your own Columns for the List View is an important customization feature of Music Connect. The same holds for selecting the Sort Order fields.

However, the “field selection” screens for doing these customizations were a bit outdated and finding a field could be tricky. So we decided to re-imagine the field selection screens to make them easier to understand, easier to use and better to use on mobile devices too.

Redesigned Field Selection screen:

• Available fields are now grouped, like the tabs in the Edit screen.
• Easily find the field you want with the search box top left.
• Use checkboxes on the left to select fields.
• Use the “x” button on the right to remove fields.
• Drag and drop fields on the right side to change the order.
• For sorting: use the ASC/DESC button to change the sort direction of that particular field.
• Works great on both your desktop and mobile browsers!

Select Columns screen:

Select Sort Order screen: