As Michael have indicated all the way, we won't be able to accomplish a
solution that works as everyone wants independent of tagging
philosophies, type of music in the library and settings in LMS.
We have to accept this and find an alternative where at least a
significant amount of people can be happy. Tagging with
ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists is pretty common and I also think tagging
with ALBUMARTIST on all albums is pretty common. It depends on the
tagging software but I know I for a long time believe I didn't use
"ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists" but then I start to look at the tag and it
was actually there and had been added automatically by the tagging
software.
Now from my perspective, the whole purpose of doing the separation into
two menus is to make it easier to find things, due to this my feeling
is:
ALBUM ARTISTS
- Should contain music explicitly tagged with ALBUMARTIST and
independent if it's compilation album or normal album it should appear
under the relevant ALBUMARTIST tag in the list. This is important
because some people tag compilations with ALBUMARTIST set to things like
"Various Soundtrack Albums" or "Various Instrumental Albums" and for
this to be useful it's important that these albums appear under the
relevant album artist and not just under the generic "Album
Artists/Various Artists" menu. Yes, I know this sounds like GENRE tags,
but it's really also a way to organise compilations into a structure
that works reasonably good in most music library management software.
- Should also contain a "Various Artists" menu which should contain
music tagged with "ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists" or music which have been
detected as compilations. This is important to make sure all music can
be found under the "Album Artists" menu. It doesn't matter if it appears
under "V" or at the top, the important part is that it's included in the
list. People who want to have an easy way to access compilations can add
a top level "Compilations" menu with Michael's plugin. Note that this
means that a compilation album tagged with "ALBUMARTIST=Various
Soundtrack Albums" will be found both under "Album Artists/Various
Soundtrack Albums" and under "Album Artists/Various Artists", but this
is not an issue, it's better that it appear in two places than no where
att all.
- Should also contain music which has been taged with ARTIST but not
ALBUMARTIST as long as they aren't detected as a compilation, for these
albums the album artist should be considered to be the same as the
ARTIST tag.
ALL ARTISTS
- Should not contain any "Various Artists" entry, the whole purpose with
this menu is that you want to find music where an artist is involved
independent if the artist released the album or was just featured on a
specific track. It doesn't matter if it's a compilation or normal album,
the menu should just be a flat list of all artists.
- My personal feeling is that the "Composer, Conductor, Band" setting
will still be useful for this menu, so I don't think these options
should be hidden. In a library where 98% is pop/rock music it's very
uninteresting to start listing composers and conductors in the menu,
while in a library where there are a lot of classical music listing
composers are going to be important.
Of course, someone are going to have a different opinion than me, but my
feeling is that we should try to make sure all music can be found
through both menus so you don't have to switch menu to find things
because you don't remember how you tagged it.
I also suspect that automatically setting the album artist during
scanning if it isn't already set in an ALBUMARTIST tag is going to
greatly simplify the browsing logic to accomplish all this, but I'll
leave up to Michael to decide when it's appropriate to look closer at
this.
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets (both free and commercial)'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland).
If you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third
party plugin/applet development, 'consider purchasing some plugins'
(http://license.isaksson.info))
*Interested in the future of music streaming ? 'ickStream - A world of
music at your fingertips'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?98467-Pre-Announcement-ickStream&p=743516)*.
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