>Is SBS using it's compilation indication for something else than >removing artists from the main "Artists" menu and putting their albums >into "Artists/Various Artists" ? > Just to be absolutely clear, it doesn't necessarily always remove the artists from the artists list; a contibuting artist will still be listed there if the artist has normal albums too.
>I feel that I've probably missed something and "compilation" is used >for something else than this ? > No, not really. Browsing album details in Web UI will show "Compilation: Yes". Compilation albums are listed under a pretend artist record called "Various Artists", and that's about it. >You can put ALBUMARTIST tags on your music and it will just work, put >ALBUMARTIST="European Artists" on some album and "ALBUMARTIST="American >Artists" on some other albums and you will get a "European Artists" and >a "American Artists" menu in your artists list, isn't this correct ? > Yes. >If you have ALBUMARTIST tags on all your music, the "Various Artists" >menu will only exist if there is a ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" tag on >at least one album, isn't this correct ? > I think that's correct. >If you have no ALBUMARTIST tags on some music files, those will by SBS >scanner automatically be assigned to the album artist "Various Artists" >which also will show up in the main "Artists" list, isn't this correct >? Yes, albums with varying contributing artists will be Compilation=1 and Album Artist = "Various Artists" (or whatever the setting is set to). >The above will not only affect the "Artists" menu but you will also get >the same behavior in "Genres/Pop/" menu which also lists artists, isn't >this correct ? > Yes. >So based on this, I still feel that the SBS logic is really about >handling the scenario where some tracks is missing ALBUMARTIST tags and >make sure these are handled appropriately. If you have ALBUMARTIST tags >(which according to MrSinatra most people have) SBS uses it the same >way as other software, if you haven't ALBUMARTIST tags SBS just assigns >these to the "Various Artists" album artist if there are multiple >artists on the track. Yes - exactly. >So to me it feels like SBS already have the possibility to list "Album >Artists" and it does this even better than some other softwares since >it have it's automatic logic to assign album artist to music that >doesn't have ALBUMARTIST tags. > Yes. >THE MISSING PART IS ONLY THAT SBS DOES NOT HAVE A WAY TO DISPLAY \"ALL >ARTISTS\" WITHOUT CHANGING SETTINGS OR INSTALLING THIRD PARTY PLUGINS. > Yes. My feeling is that it's not such a big deal - the majority of users (joe public, who Logitech have targetted) don't need the configurability on the fly. Most people don't care for a list of all artists, where some artists only have one obscure song from a compilation album. I have 3562 distinct artists. To me, producing a list of this magnitude is not all that useful for browsing. Paging through 3562 artists to drill through to play a song is not something I find myself needing to do. I'd either browse to the song that I know is on a compilation that I'm looking for rather than by the artist name, or would search for the artist/song. I have 1151 artists in my Browse Artists list (includes artists, bands and composers). That's pruned 2411 track-only artists out of the list, where the artists only appear on compilations (or guests on albums). I have 1865 artists that have only contibuted on a single song! I think that SBS was really geared up for browsing albums. All Browse menu hierarchies take the user to a sub-set of the library represented as a list of albums. That doesn't mean that it's right, or flexible, but what it does do it does as intended and it works well, on all types of interface. I know everyone is different and some people may have reasons for needing to see all artists, and that having more ways of browsing a collection has to be a good thing. But there is a way to configure the app to see all artists, and perhaps it's a one-time config change, and people would either want to always see an expanded artist is, or a contracted artist list. Could it be more flexible - of course. Custom Browse gives more flexibility, and that's about the best users can hope for; I'd be really suprised to see new ways of browsing local music produced by Logitech as part of the official software release. >So if anything needs to be discussed, it is if SBS needs a way to >display "All Artists" without changing settings. I'd clarify that to "A way to display all artists from any UI", rather than "without changing settings", which I think is the underlying meaning. i.e. On a player UI, that would really mean either some setting to switch the list to show all or some artists, or two menus - one for each list. In fact, perhaps a user might like a "Browse Track-Only artists" rather than "Browse all artists", to browse to these one-track off a compilation album cases. _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
