What's new?

By popular demand, we have added more editable fields to CLZ Music:

Fields that are now fully editable:

• Sortnames for composers
• Original Release Date (exists next to regular release date)
• Packaging
• Media Condition (the old Condition field is now “Package/Sleeve Condition”)
• Vinyl Color
• Vinyl Weight
• Vinyl RPM
• Disc Title

But wait, that’s not all: All the above fields now also sync to and from the CLZ Cloud!

Secure HTTPS connections, for your security and privacy

As indicated in our GDPR email, we are updating our software and services, to be more secure and to better protect your privacy.

Starting with version 4.11 CLZ Music now uses secure HTTPS connections for all communications with our servers:

• for logging in with your username and password
• for syncing your data with CLZ Cloud
• for sending your searches to Core.

To make this possible, we have created new secure “entry points” on our servers, that are only allowing secure HTTPS connections. The new CLZ Music app only communicates with those secure entry points.

For your privacy and security, we strongly recommend updating your app to v4.11.

A new sort option:

A couple of months ago we introduced new sort orders, including “Artist, then Year (Asc)” where it would sort the year ascending. By request, we’ve now added “Artist, then Year (Desc)” so you can also have your years in descending order. The regular “Asc.” and “Desc.” toggles for those two sort options will only affect the Artist sort order.

A couple of weeks ago, our CLZ Cloud (and Music Connect) has been updated with 8 more fields and loan information. Today’s version 18.4 now supports the syncing of all these new fields and your loan information to the CLZ Cloud and your CLZ Music mobile app!

Added for syncing:

• Sortname for composers
• Original Release Date
• Packaging
• Media Condition
• Vinyl Color
• Vinyl Weight
• Vinyl RPM
• Disc Titles

Heads up: after updating to version 18.4, the software will automatically mark most of your albums as “changed”, to force the upload of your data for the new fields to the CLZ Cloud.

CLZ Music for iOS and Android will be updated in the coming days to allow the new fields to be synced there too!

Fixes:

• Drag and drop of discs to other albums now works
• Fixed a problem with freezing columns in 2 panel mode
• Fixed a problem with dragging columns in list view around

A BIG update for your Music Collector software today, with an important change:

Secure HTTPS connections, for your security and privacy

As indicated in our GDPR email from a couple of weeks ago, we are updating our software and services, to be more secure and to better protect your privacy.

Starting with version 18.3, Music Collector now uses secure HTTPS connections for all communications with our servers:

• for logging in with your username and password
• for syncing your data with CLZ Cloud
• for sending your searches to Core.

To make this possible, we have created new secure “entry points” on our servers, that are only allowing secure HTTPS connections. The new Music Collector software only communicates with those secure entry points.

For your privacy and security, we strongly recommend updating to version 18.3.

Two updates for the Music Connect software and the CLZ Cloud viewer today. One a big step forward in usability, the other a nice cosmetic improvement:

Album Details now integrated in main screen

Up till now, when you clicked an album entry to see its’ full details, you were taken to the album details page, that is, a new page in your browser. One had to click “Back” to get back to the album list again. Often resulting in an annoying back and forth clicking, each time causing you to lose your position in the list.

But not anymore! Starting with today’s update, the album details are now integrated in a panel within the main collection view:

No more back and forth clicking. Just click an album entry to see its’ details, click another one to see that album’s details. Nice and easy, never lose your spot again.

Choose from two Layouts:

• Horizontal Split: folders on the left, list on the top right, details on bottom right
• Vertical Split: 3 panels side by side, folder, list and details

In either layout, the 3 panels are fully resizable by dragging the black “splitter bars” between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.

The album details panel comes with its’ own “action bar”, with the main actions you may want to take on the selected album (Edit, Share, Delete, Duplicate, Loan and Link with Core).

Improved Cover View and Card View

At the same time, we made some small tweaks to both the Card View and Cover View, so that they’re making better use of your specific screen width. Both now use a “fully justified” layout, with the Cards auto-resizing to fit your screen width and the Covers distributing over the width, both resulting in a cleaner, less “jagged” view.

We fixed an issue in two panel mode where, on start-up, the items in your database sometimes wouldn’t show up correctly.

By popular demand, we have added 8 more fields to Music Connect, and we’ve moved some fields around. Most new fields can be found on the new “Edition” tab in the edit album popup!

• Packaging
• Media Condition
• Vinyl Color
• Vinyl Weight
• RPM
• Disc Titles
• Composer Sort Names (use the Manage Pick Lists page to modify sort names of composers)
• Original Release Date (this one exists next to Release Date)

Of course, most fields can also folder grouped on, added as column, sorted on, etc.

Note: We renamed the old “Condition” field to “Package/Sleeve Condition” so you now have a “Package/Sleeve Condition” field and a “Media Condition” field.

We will be adding these fields to the desktop and mobile app sync within a couple of weeks too.

Fixes:

• Several Access Violation errors in the main screen.
• List View: Double clicking on checks would make list unresponsive.
• Edit Screen: Using Next/Prev would cause strange effects with checkboxes in main screen.
• Main Screen: The width of the columns wasn’t remembered correctly sometimes.
• Main Screen: “Follow album” option didn’t work correctly.
• Multiple Selection Action Bar didn’t always show the “check all” check box when switching between Album and Track view.

Over the last week Joël from team Connect worked on splitting the settings into more logical places, and added new tooltips to explain what all the buttons do. The full what’s new:

Added tooltips

Hovering your mouse over the various buttons will now show tooltips to explain what the buttons do! Hover your mouse over the buttons to see what they do.

Split the settings

All settings used to be together in one screen, but they weren’t easy to find so we decided to split the settings up into their own logical pages. You can now find them by opening the menu (top left), and look for:

• Field Defaults: to set up default field values for new items
• CLZ Cloud Sharing: to set up all your CLZ Cloud sharing options
• Settings: with just the behaviour and display settings

A cool user interface update for your Music Connect software today, in which we makes it easier to select albums and easier to perform batch actions on the selected albums.

Select using checkboxes

To select albums, just click the checkboxes on the left of each album entry in the list. Checkboxes are also available in Card View and Images View, just hover your mouse over an item.

No more need to go into “Select Mode” first. The Select Mode is automatically activated as soon as you checkbox the first album, clearly indicated by the blue Batch Action Bar that replace the regular toolbar.

Batch Action Bar

While in Select Mode, the blue Batch Action Bar is visible, always showing you the number of selected albums. Also:

• Use the “Select all” checkbox to select all albums in the current list in one go
• Use the “x Cancel” button on the right to leave Select Mode
• And of course, use any of the action buttons (Edit, Delete, Print, Export, Duplicate and Loan) to perform an action on the selection albums

As indicated in last week’s GDPR email, we are updating our software and services, to be more secure and to better protect your privacy.

Starting with version 18.2, Music Collector now uses secure HTTPS connections for all communications with our servers:

• for logging in with your username and password
• for syncing your data with CLZ Cloud
• for sending your searches to Core.

To make this possible, we have created new secure “entry points” on our servers, that are only allowing secure HTTPS connections. The new Music Collector software only communicates with those secure entry points.

For your privacy and security, we strongly recommend updating to version 18.2.

Fixed:

• The “Multiple Selection Action Bar” didn’t show the “Edit Track” button in Track View.

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.