Ok, first things first: What is a compilation (and what is not)? Needless to say, this is critical. To use the tagging information in files and groups of files (albums) to decide whether an album is a compilation or a non-compilation. Get that part right and the rest should be fairly straightforward.
(BTW, in the database I notice that the 'compilation' marking of an album has three states - true, false, and NULL. Bad design. When SlimServer is done marking compilations, it should (no, it MUST) know whether an album is a compilation or not. There can be _no_ "maybe".) The tags that affect the decision: ARTIST ALBUMARTIST (or two-word ALBUM ARTIST) BAND COMPILATION And their id3v2 equivalents. There's no id3v2 tag equivalent to ALBUMARTIST, but a TXXX tag of ALBUMARTIST appears to be recognized by SlimServer. I think most everyone agrees that the COMPILATION tag should only be necessary in unusual cases. For the most part, SlimServer should be able to correctly figure out whether an album is a compilation without it. Logically, the COMPILATION tag should be used to _override_ the other decision making factors. But I'm betting there are cases where this doesn't work. So we can save that discussion for later... A compilation album is basically an album with: Different tracks by different sets of ARTISTs. I say different "sets" because tracks can have more than one ARTIST per track, but if the tracks all have the same (two, three, etc.) artists then it's a non-compilation. How does ALBUMARTIST affect this? I propose that: If an album is tagged with an ALBUMARTIST, then the album should be a non-compilation. Example (from my library): ALBUM=Brazil Classics 2: O Samba TRACKNUMBER=1 TITLE=A Deusa Dos Orixás ARTIST=Clara Nunes ALBUMARTIST=David Byrne TRACKNUMBER=5 TITLE=Formosa ARTIST=Ciro Monteiro ALBUMARTIST=David Byrne What artist should be displayed in the "by" line for this album? The ALBUMARTIST, David Byrne. These albums should not be grouped with compilations under the catch-all 'Various Artists' pseudo-artist. -- JJZolx Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36062
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