Today, if an album is tagged with a single ARTIST tag and no ALBUMARTIST tag, it's in the database only represented under the "Artist" but no "Album Artist" exists for the album in the database. The result of this, if we want to keep the query logic simple, is that such artist wouldn't appear in the proposed "Album Artists" menu, it would only appear under "My Music/All Artists" menu. Is this ok or should we risk adjusting the scanning so it sets the album artist automatically in the database if the same single ARTIST tag exists on all tracks of the album and no ALBUMARTIST tag has been set ?
> What about the case where multiple values have been set in the ARTIST > tag but it's the same on all tracks of the album, should we consider all > the artist to be an album artist for the album in this case ?
There is a contributor column in the albums table which might get close to what you're asking for. But as you say: it fails when there are multiple ARTIST values etc.
My response to your question therefore would be: no, let's not try to be smart. If the user wants to be able to browse by ALBUMARTIST, he shall fix his tags. If we try to guess, then we'll always fail for some users. If we strictly follow the user's data, then it's up to him to create the data he wants to get.
FWIW: we've tried to be smart in the past and often failed.
The easy solution would be to just make "My Music/Album Artists" contain stuff which have been explicitly tagged with ALBUMARTIST tags. I
You get my vote.
personally feel this would be recommended since this will work for most users who use tagging software which automatically set both ARTIST and ALBUMARTIST tags in all scenarios (unfortunately it's typically set even for compilation albums where it's set to "Various Artists"). People with more strict tagging philosophies would just have to adapt and set ALBUMARTIST tag if they want stuff to appear in the "My Music/Album Artists" menu. The solution would not add more complexity to the scanning and it would ensure that the browsing logic for the "My Music/Album Artists" menu can be kept reasonably simple.
I strongly believe that we should make any of these additional browse modes optional. Most users don't care about artist vs. album artist, and therefore don't have the metadata ready. Those who do care, though, most likely have tagged their files appropriately.
-- Michael _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
