>> The "list albums by band" option otoh is being used when displaying >> albums (in some places only, as mentioned above). It is one of the prefs > >I'd have to defer to Phil as to what this option should or could be used >for. In the other recent thread on the subject, he mentioned a situation >where he thought it was necessary, but I never fully understood the >reasoning. >
Sorry, coming into this late (the option has already gone)? Anyway, thought I'd just note my understanding of the purpose of the preference. "list albums by band" or "by artists" - I believe was to change the way that an album was displayed. Remember in id3 tags, TPE2 represents Band/Orchestra. The pref was an option to select whether to display the Band contributor(s) or the (track) Artist contributor(s). We had the checkbox prefs to select whether to display Band/Orchestra contributors in the Browse Artists list, but then when clicking on a band name it would show the "album by artist(s)". I prefered the Band/Orchestra name to override the display of artist(s). I like to put full artist names as artist contributors, so they match with solo artist appearances. I then put the name as appears on the album in the band field. The idea being that it displayed a shorter name as the band in the list of albums, but I could still follow links to other works through the actual artist contributor roles. A similar feat can be obtained by using Album Artist to hold the Band name instead, as album artist always overrides how the "<album> by <artist>" is displayed. However, this isn't as good as the Band really applies to the song, not to the album. On compilation albums, there can potentially be different track artists and different band/orchestra on each track. So with the display of "<album> by <artists>", <artists> was calculated in the following order: 1. album artist(s) 2. band/orchestra(s) 3. artist(s) The setting affected whether to include (2) in that display priority order. Effectively, by removing the option to show band(s) instead of artist(s), anyone wanting to denote the band name will now have to put the band name tag into an artist tag, or make the album artist. There is less reason to have specific band/orchestra contributors, and could just bung them all in as artists? It would be good if presentations of "<album> by <artist>" ould follow that contributor display priority, whilst "<song> by <artist>" would only consider band or artist roles. I have many examples of this that I have used in the past: 1) There was a band originally called "A Silver Mt. Zion", who changed their name slightly on each album over time - "A Silver Mount Zion", "A Silver Mt. Zion and Tra La Band", "The Silver Mount Reveries", etc. I elected to make the Artist "A Silver Mt. Zion" consistently on each album, and use Band to denote the name used on the album. I can then see all of their albums in one list, but see the correct name displayed when viewing the list. 2) "Unplugged by Page / Plant". I tag this album with artists Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and set the Band to "Page & Plant". Some "A Silver Mt. Zion" songs and "Page/Plant" songs appear on compilation albums. I consistently apply artist and band on these songs too, leaving Album Artist for the name of the album (eg. Various Artists for a compilation album, calculated automatically). _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
