SUMMARY
This is a feature request. It is currently possible to have albums imported from different source folders. However, all imported albums live inside a single albums list. I would like to suggest the possibility to separate albums into different collections. Unlike playlists, collections aren't lists of songs but they separate albums on a more fundamental level. In short, albums, tracks, artists and genres would be placed in its own separate workspace for each collection.

A common use case I often come across is the need to separate "music albums", "audio books", "language learning CDs", to name a few, from each other since they are different in nature. Thus, an advantage would be that audio books, for instance, can have different genres like "science-fiction" or "fantasy" and would not mix up with music genres like "classic" or "rock". These different genres would not appear in a single genres super list but would rather have a separate genres list for each collection. This would help to keep a clean library which I think is in accordance with the design goal of Elisa being simple and easy to use.

In terms of implementation I could think of two ways: One way could be to create a new collection and add albums manually from the default albums list. Another way could be to associate each collection with different source folders, so that collections would be updated automatically when adding new files to a folder. Of course, technically it is also possible to combine both ways, i.e. collections would automatically be updated when their associated folder contents change, plus, albums could be deliberately moved from one collection to another despite its file origin remaining in another/unassociated folder.

Example:

Actual folders in home directory:
~/Music/Music Album 1/        (genre tag: Classic)
~/Music/Music Album 2/        (genre tag: Rock)
~/Audio Books/Audio Book 1/   (genre tag: Audiobook / Science-Fiction)
~/Audio Books/Audio Book 2/   (genre tag: Audiobook / Fantasy)
~/Granny's Xmas Songs/        (genre tag: none)

Collections inside Elisa:
(1) Albums ( = Music Albums)
    -> references ~/Music/ folder
    (a) Album 1
    (b) Album 2
    -> manually added files
    (c) Granny's Xmas Songs
(2) Audio Books
    -> references ~/Audio Books/ folder
    (d) Audio Book 1
    (e) Audio Book 2

Generated genres list (in the same manner for artists and other tags):
+ Genre (All)
    + Albums
        - Classic (1 album, 20 tracks)
        - Rock (1 album, 15 tracks)
    + Audio Books
        - Fantasy (1 album, 40 tracks)
        - Science-Fiction (1 album, 30 tracks)

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
not applicable

OBSERVED RESULT
not applicable

EXPECTED RESULT
not applicable

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
any

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
none