AlbumArtist tag behaviour broken in 7.3.2.

[Aguida]

I have been running on 7.1 for sometime without any problem, but I have
decided to give 7.3.2 a try and noticed that the behaviour related to
the "AlbumArtist" tag is changed and in fact (at least from my point of
view) it is broken now.

It used to be in such a way that if I had specified an "AlbumArtist"
tag for the songs in an album that album will show under
Artist->"AlbumArtist" and not under all the various track artists.

In 7.3.2 beside appearing under Artists->"Album Artist" it also appears
under each of the track artists. Is there anyway to turn this off? The
perfect behaviour would be to have under those track artists all their
"full albums" and then a "also apperas on..." entry under which to list
all the compilaitons this artist is part of. Since I imagine this would
be a major new feature I would be perfectly happy to go back to the
previous behaviour or to have an option in the settings to choose what
kind of behaviour I want.

I tried to change the three settings that seems to have something to do
with this but none of those reverted Squeezecenter to the old
functionality.

Also I must specify that the whole library is in Flac format and all
the tags are clean and do not include any "Compilation", "Band" or
other tags other than "AlbumArtist" for those albums with various
contributing artists.

Is there some new option I didn't see or is just a new bug?

Thanks.


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Philip Meyer]

Aguida;381666 Wrote:
> I have been running on 7.1 for sometime without any problem, but I have
> decided to give 7.3.2 a try and noticed that the behaviour related to
> the "AlbumArtist" tag is changed and in fact (at least from my point of
> view) it is broken now.
It's still working okay for me.

There's an option to list songs by each artist, or "Group compilation
albums together". You need to pick the later. This should not require
a rescan.

Track artists (artists that are contributors when there is an album
artist tag on a song) are then not displayed in the main Browse Artists
list, unless they also have regular albums.

When browsing an artist, all albums that the artist has involvement on
will be listed. That includes regular albums, compilation albums,
guest performances on albums by another artist, etc.

You can sort the albums for that artist by "artist, album", and the
albums will be sorted by the album artist if there is one, so all
compilation album appearances would be sorted together under "Various
Artists", which is almost what you want.

eg. "Browse Artists > R.E.M." then sort by "artist, album":
Automatic For The People by R.E.M.
Green by R.E.M
Murmur by R.E.M.
Best of the 80's by Various Artists
Best of the 90's by Various Artists


--
Philip Meyer
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Meyer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=95
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Aguida]

Philip Meyer;381706 Wrote:
> It's still working okay for me.
>
> There's an option to list songs by each artist, or "Group compilation
> albums together". You need to pick the later. This should not require
> a rescan.
>
> Track artists (artists that are contributors when there is an album
> artist tag on a song) are then not displayed in the main Browse Artists
> list, unless they also have regular albums.
>
> When browsing an artist, all albums that the artist has involvement on
> will be listed. That includes regular albums, compilation albums,
> guest performances on albums by another artist, etc.
>
> You can sort the albums for that artist by "artist, album", and the
> albums will be sorted by the album artist if there is one, so all
> compilation album appearances would be sorted together under "Various
> Artists", which is almost what you want.
>
> eg. "Browse Artists > R.E.M." then sort by "artist, album":
> Automatic For The People by R.E.M.
> Green by R.E.M
> Murmur by R.E.M.
> Best of the 80's by Various Artists
> Best of the 90's by Various Artists

Thanks, but what you describe is exactly not how it used to work. What
you describe is the behaviour of the aggregating for various artists.
Adding the "AlbumArtist" tag use to override the normal behaviour and
only list the album under the "albumartist" (whatever that would be)
but not under the track artists (not even if they had full albums
listed).

I have thousands of albums and under one artists I want only to see the
5-10 albums have on that artist. If I get listed also 20 compilations
for wich the artist as only one or two songs it makes it really
difficult to browse. Often my wife and guests at our house ask the same
question: "Why is there only one song in this album?". That's because is
not what people would expect to see when browsing one given artist's
albums (unless as I wrote above those were grouped one level below
under a "Also appears on..." entry.

Also it doesn't make any sense to me that those single tracks album are
listed only if the track artist has also some full album in the
database, otherwise are not. Either I should be able to always see not
complete albums listed or I shoudl be able to turn this behaviour
completely off.

As it was before at least I could control this myself. If I wanted the
behaviour you describe I did not use the "albumartist" tag, but if I
wanted the behaviour I described then I just used the albumartist tag
(for instance for albums with duets I am interested in listing the
album only under the main artist on not under every artist that
contributed).

Does anybody know if this change in behaviour has happened by istake or
was intentional?

Thanks


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>Thanks, but what you describe is exactly not how it used to work.
>
It is exactly how it has always worked for me.

>Adding the "AlbumArtist" tag use to override the normal behaviour and
>only list the album under the "albumartist" (whatever that would be)
>but not under the track artists (not even if they had full albums
>listed).
>
It still does for me.

>I have thousands of albums and under one artists I want only to see the
>5-10 albums have on that artist. If I get listed also 20 compilations
>for wich the artist as only one or two songs it makes it really
>difficult to browse.
>
It's always functioned like that.

I actually like it like that; I hardly ever browse to compilations and play them, so there would be some music by my favourite artists that I'd never think of playing if they weren't available when I browse to that artist.

As I said, you can sort albums by artist, and then compilations would be grouped somewhere near the bottom of the list.

Alternatively, you could go to Music Library > Browse Albums, sort by artist, and then navigate to your chosen artist. You will see artists' albums grouped together, and compilations under "Various Artists".

Alternatively, you can install CustomBrowse plugin, that defines new Browse menus (or you can configure your own), such that only regular albums are displayed when browsing an artist.

>"Why is there only one song in this album?". That's because is
>not what people would expect to see when browsing one given artist's
>albums
>
Browsing to an artist displays all music by that artist. I would expect all songs that an artist has been involved with to be listed under any artist that I browse to.
If I only wanted to play a regular album by the artist, I'd probably still use Browse Artist and simply ignore the albums that I know are compilations, if I wanted full albums. It's not exactly hard. Or I'd Browse Albums, Years, Genre, etc. But I'd always expect Browse Artist to display all music by an artist.

>Also it doesn't make any sense to me that those single tracks album are
>listed only if the track artist has also some full album in the
>database, otherwise are not. Either I should be able to always see not
>complete albums listed or I shoudl be able to turn this behaviour
>completely off.
>
SqueezeCenter is working exactly the same as any other music library software I've used. eg. iTunes. Sort by artist, or filter by artist, and you will see all music by that artist, irrespective of whether they have an album, album artist, compilation, or no tags other that artist and song name (eg. singles).

>As it was before at least I could control this myself.
>
It's always worked this way.

Phil

[Aguida]

Thanks for all your answers, but I am getting terribly confused. Let's
take one of my albums:

Frank Sinatra's Duets. "Albumartist" is Frank Sinatra and songs are:

1. Title: The Lady Is A Tramp. Artist: Frank Sinatra, Luther VandRoss
2. Title: What Now My Love. Artist: Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin
....
and so on.

I want to see this album only under Frank Sinatra. It doesn't make
sense to have it mentioned under Aretha Franklin. I have already 30+
albums by Aretha Franklin and adding one more with only one song for
which she is just in a duet it's really not interesting.

That's not right what you wrote in your answer. I just tried with 6.5.2
and with 7.1. Both versions would list the album only under Frank
Sinatra.

7.3.2 lists the album with one song under each of the other artists as
well. So the behaviour is changed. Is this intentionally or just a side
effect of some other fixes?

If it wasn't intentional is Logitec going to revert it back to the
previous behaviour? And, if not, is there anything I can do
settings-wise in order to go back to the previous behaviour (hopefully
without having to retag 1000s of albums)?

For now I have downgraded to 7.1. again and everything is fine. But at
some point I would like to be able to upgrade again to the new versions
without getting my library screwed up.


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>I want to see this album only under Frank Sinatra. It doesn't make
>sense to have it mentioned under Aretha Franklin. I have already 30+
>albums by Aretha Franklin and adding one more with only one song for
>which she is just in a duet it's really not interesting.
>
When browsing for all music by Aretha Franklin, it makes perfect sense to display all music by Aretha Franklin.

What if that album had many songs by Aretha Franklin. Some really special songs that don't appear anywhere else.
What if you want to play all songs by Aretha Franklin?

I have 1,896 singles (songs that I have not tagged as belonging to an album). In SqueezeCenter, these are all stored as ALBUM=No Album. If I browse to an artist, it displays all music by that artist, including a "No Album" album, listing only the songs (singles) that the artist performs on that are not on an album. For Tori Amos, I have 224 "No Album" songs. I do not want to browse Albums > No Album and wade through 1896 songs to find those 224.

I also have songs that have composers/conductors/bands/orchestras. If I browse to Beethoven (being a composer), I want to see music that he composed, not only music that he is the primary performer on (the ARTIST tag).

It works sensibly exactly how it is. And for me, it has always worked that way.

>That's not right what you wrote in your answer. I just tried with 6.5.2
>and with 7.1. Both versions would list the album only under Frank
>Sinatra.
>
Maybe there is a subtle change to the way that compilations/album artist tags are read/stored for your specific case. Eg. do you store your album artist in the BAND tag (TPE2 in mp3 id3v2.3 tags)? There was a change to support that in SC (wasn't supported in 6.5.2, not sure about 7.1) - before that, when you thought you had an album artist, you probably didn't - you would have had a Band contributor instead, which meant your "album artist" albums would have been listed as compilations.

>7.3.2 lists the album with one song under each of the other artists as
>well. So the behaviour is changed. Is this intentionally or just a side
>effect of some other fixes?
>
It's always done it, and it is by design - intentional.

If there's anyone else reading this thread, can they deny/confirm whether they have noticed a change in behaviour?

There have been a few threads about this in the past, certainly before 7.3, requesting an enhancement to show only regular albums and not all music by the chosen artist. More people have said that they don't want that, than the people that have requested that behaviour.

An option would be okay, but it would not be okay to lose the current behaviour because many people like it that way. But if anything, I'd prefer a filter choice on the album list page, a bit like the WebUI sort order choice. This is not be available on the SB classic UI interface though.

[davig]

If you can give me any advice Philip, much appreciated.


--
davig
------------------------------------------------------------------------
davig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22883
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[JJZolx]

Aguida;382196 Wrote:
> Thanks for all your answers, but I am getting terribly confused. Let's
> take one of my albums:
>
> Frank Sinatra's Duets. "Albumartist" is Frank Sinatra and songs are:
>
> 1. Title: The Lady Is A Tramp. Artist: Frank Sinatra, Luther VandRoss
> 2. Title: What Now My Love. Artist: Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin
> ....
> and so on.

Good example. I have the same album (one of his worst).

> I want to see this album only under Frank Sinatra. It doesn't make sense
> to have it mentioned under Aretha Franklin. I have already 30+ albums by
> Aretha Franklin and adding one more with only one song for which she is
> just in a duet it's really not interesting.

Can't do it. SqueezeCenter is designed to work this way.

> That's not right what you wrote in your answer. I just tried with 6.5.2
> and with 7.1. Both versions would list the album only under Frank
> Sinatra (provided that all the songs are tagged with
> "Albumartist"="Frank Sinatra".

I've never seen this behavior.

> 7.3.2 lists the album with one song under each of the other artists as
> well. So the behaviour is changed. Is this intentionally or just a side
> effect of some other fixes?

No, it's filtering the songs by the artist under which you're browsing,
which makes having the album there no so obtrusive. What you get under
Aretha Franklin is all of Aretha's tracks that are in your library.

> For now I have downgraded to 7.1. again and everything is fine. But at
> some point I would like to be able to upgrade again to the new versions
> without getting my library screwed up.

Strange.


--
JJZolx

Jim
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Aguida]

JJZolx;382383 Wrote:
> Can't do it. SqueezeCenter is designed to work this way.
>

I am not sure wheter it is by design or it just happened by accident.
Since there are no specifications written in advance to hold the design
and implementation against we can only assume the functionalities in
older versions are the baseline. I will post pictures tomorrow to show
that exactly the same albums give the different results I have
described under 7.1 and 7.3.2.

Also semantically makes no sense to me. I am browsing by artist and
under an artist it shows that artist's albums plus some other artist's
albums! Like showing a Frank Sinatra album under Aretha Franklin.

Anyway I don't expect everybody to want to browse their library like I
do. For me albums are more important and I almost exclusively listen to
one album at the time, but I understand that other people might be
interested in browsing their libary by song and therefore they want to
see all the songs belonging to a given artist even though are in other
artist's albums (though I use the search function if I want to do
that).

I think both approaches are valid and therefore I liked as it was
before as both were possible. If one used the "albumartist" tag he/she
got the behaviour I like, but if one didn't use that tag then he/she
got the behaviour you like. I see no reason to change the
functionalities so that now only one behaviour is supported (I paid too
much money for the transporter to now suddenly sit with something that
works differently than when I bought it and in a way I don't like), and
since you didn't have any problem before either I don't see any reason
for not reverting it.


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>Also semantically makes no sense to me. I am browsing by artist and
>under an artist it shows that artist's albums plus some other artist's
>albums! Like showing a Frank Sinatra album under Aretha Franklin.
>
Makes perfect sense to me. Browsing an artist shows all music by that artist. Songs happen to be shown grouped by album, and therefore songs that don't appear on an album appear on "No Album", and songs that appear on compilation albums appear under the name of the compilation album, and songs where the artist was a guest performer show under the name of the album. It also lists songs where the artist composed the music, conducted the music, or is the band/orchestra. i.e. you see everything.

Also on the artist's page is an "All Songs" command, to play all songs by that artist. If I press All Songs, I expect all songs from that artist to be played, not just songs on that artists regular albums - the path to get there is "Browse Artists > [artist name] > All Songs. There is nothing to do with albums in that browse chain.

>I liked as it was before as both were possible. If one used the "albumartist" tag he/she
>got the behaviour I like, but if one didn't use that tag then he/she got the behaviour you like.
>
Not true. If you don't use an ALBUMARTIST tag, the album would become a compilation album, or if a COMPILATION=0 tag was present, the album would be split into several albums (one per artist).

I have used ALBUMARTIST tags for many years to group songs on an album when there are guest performers on the album. As far as I can recall, the behaviour I like (displaying albums where the artist was a guest on someone else's album, or a performer on a compilation album) has always worked.


I do agree though that it would be nice to have an optional group-by mode, to group albums by contributor type:

Albums:
<list of regular albums>
Also appears on Compilations:
<list of compilations that the artist has songs on>
Guest artist on:
<list of albums primarily by another artist that the artist has performed songs on>
Conductor of:
<list of albums where there are songs that the artist is the conductor>
Composer of:
<list of albums where there are songs that the artist is the composer>
Band/Orchestra of:
<list of albums where there are songs that the artist is the band/orchestra>

In the future (SC 8.0), that could also include Mix artist, Cover artist, maybe other contributor types.

Maybe just groupings of Regular Albums and "Also Appears On", to keep it simple.

You want an additional options so that you only see regular albums, but I think it would be fair to avoid many options. If there was this grouping capability, would that meet your needs (you would only look for albums under regular albums, and simply ignore the other "Also appears on" group of albums)?

Phil

[Aguida]

Phil, First of all I really appreciate the time you are taking to
discuss this issue, to the benefit all SC users.

Philip Meyer;382780 Wrote:
> >Also semantically makes no sense to me. I am browsing by artist and
> >under an artist it shows that artist's albums plus some other
> artist's
> >albums! Like showing a Frank Sinatra album under Aretha Franklin.
> >
> Makes perfect sense to me. Browsing an artist shows all music by that
> artist. Songs happen to be shown grouped by album, and therefore songs
> that don't appear on an album appear on "No Album", and songs that
> appear on compilation albums appear under the name of the compilation
> album, and songs where the artist was a guest performer show under the
> name of the album. It also lists songs where the artist composed the
> music, conducted the music, or is the band/orchestra. i.e. you see
> everything.
>
That's how it is with semantics, it depends on the context :-)

I work professionally with commercial software development (the kind of
that is sold to millions of users worldwide) and we employe a small army
of user experience specialist to analyze scenarios and personas for our
software. Therefore I tend to take very seriously the feedback I get
from users using my software. If I was responsible for SC development
and most people exposed to the software would come back with comments
like "Why there is only one song in this album?" or "Why is there a
Louis Armstrong album under Ella Fitzgerald" my conclusion would be
that the software is not as intuitive as it should be. People that have
been working or using a software in a long time are not the best to
judge usability of a product as they are acquainted with all the tips
and tricks necessary to make it work. This is at least if Logitech
wants a world-class product anybody can use and drive sales of lots of
squeezeboxes/duets/etc..

Again I am not arguing that one way is better than the other but just
observing that many people (really many if you search in bugzilla and
this forum) prefer to not see those alien albums when browsing one
specific artist's albums. I agree to you that would rather avoid too
many option and having those other albums grouped under something like
"also appears on..." or "singles..." would at least makes it clear for
a browsing perspective what I am looking at.

Philip Meyer;382780 Wrote:
> >Also on the artist's page is an "All Songs" command, to play all songs
> by that artist. If I press All Songs, I expect all songs from that
> artist to be played, not just songs on that artists regular albums -
> the path to get there is "Browse Artists > [artist name] > All Songs.
> There is nothing to do with albums in that browse chain.
>
Glad that you have brought this up yourself. As it is now by hitting
the play "all songs" for an artist will in many cases create a playlist
full of duplicates as many of the songs that I have on a given artist
album also appear on other compilations. On the other hand with the old
behaviour if you had lots of singles you will not be able to browse or
play those by artist. So again it's a matter of preferences whether you
would rather play the same songs over and over again or rather miss some
of an artist singles.

Furthermore, if I go along with the current implementation and your
line of thinking (want to be able see artists songs taht appears on
other artists albums) and accept to leave with all those duplicates,
still I would not be able to see those artists that do not have at
least one full album. Ins't it right (unless there is some magic
combination of tags and settings that allows this)? Seems to me an
half-solution that really do not satisfy completely anybody.

After more thinking, actually this is back to something that has been
discussed millions of times on these forums: why the "group
compilations album together" does not do what it says? The help says:
"You can choose to have compilation albums appear together under
"Various Artists" or have them appear under each artist in the
compilation. It doesn't say "... but only if they happen to have a full
album too. If this function was implemented to do exactly what it says
it would probably remove all the guesswork and make everybody happy.

Philip Meyer;382780 Wrote:
> >I have used ALBUMARTIST tags for many years to group songs on an album
> when there are guest performers on the album. As far as I can recall,
> the behaviour I like (displaying albums where the artist was a guest on
> someone else's album, or a performer on a compilation album) has always
> worked.
> Phil
Yes, I agree, and it should still work this way even if the option I
mentioned above would be fixed to work properly. If you have an
"albumartist" tag the album in its entirety should appear under that a

artist. Depending on the "group compilation" setting the single tracks
would also appear under each of the contributing artists.

Philip Meyer;382780 Wrote:
> >You want an additional options so that you only see regular albums, but
> I think it would be fair to avoid many options. If there was this
> grouping capability, would that meet your needs (you would only look
> for albums under regular albums, and simply ignore the other "Also
> appears on" group of albums)?
> Phil

Also agree. As few options as possible. The grouping would definetely
help but I would prefer that the "group compilation albums together"
setting was fixed to work properly.


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>If I was responsible for SC development
>and most people exposed to the software would come back with comments
>like "Why there is only one song in this album?" or "Why is there a
>Louis Armstrong album under Ella Fitzgerald" my conclusion would be
>that the software is not as intuitive as it should be.
>
It's not just software though - it's also down to the users tags. And there are many different ideas that people have over how to tag their library.

The thing is that it's not "most" people who are coming back with comments, just a few. If it were changed, there would probably be a few people who'd say "why can't I see all songs that my artist has been involved with?", but probably just a few.

>Again I am not arguing that one way is better than the other but just
>observing that many people (really many if you search in bugzilla and
>this forum) prefer to not see those alien albums when browsing one
>specific artist's albums.
>
But "many" isn't that many is it? Any idea exactly how many? What is the ratio of people who are happy/sad of the current functionality?
How many does "many" need to be before it's considered an issue that needs addressing? 1% of the community? 10%?

>Glad that you have brought this up yourself. As it is now by hitting
>the play "all songs" for an artist will in many cases create a playlist
>full of duplicates as many of the songs that I have on a given artist
>album also appear on other compilations.
What criteria are you using to assertain that they are duplicates? Sure there may be some songs that are on albums that are duplicated on singles/compilations. But often they are different versions of the same song - different mix, radio edit, etc. Unless you look at song title, artist, genre, length, it's hard to say for sure that they are duplicates, in my opinion.

>On the other hand with the old
>behaviour if you had lots of singles you will not be able to browse or
>play those by artist. So again it's a matter of preferences whether you
>would rather play the same songs over and over again or rather miss some
>of an artist singles.
>
People who rip CD singles may not remove the ALBUM tag name, so will have the single name as the album, and thus they will be in the artists' album list as regular albums, and therefore they will still have "duplicate" song titles.

I generally don't do that - I remove the album tag when it's not an album, so that when I browse albums I don't see lots of singles, because I don't tend to play them (allow them to come up in random mixes). However, I do like to browse to them from an artist (via album=No Album) - one collection of all non-album tracks.

>Furthermore, if I go along with the current implementation and your
>line of thinking (want to be able see artists songs taht appears on
>other artists albums) and accept to leave with all those duplicates,
>still I would not be able to see those artists that do not have at
>least one full album. Ins't it right (unless there is some magic
>combination of tags and settings that allows this)? Seems to me an
>half-solution that really do not satisfy completely anybody.
>
Just a single setting to change that behaviour: "List compilation albums under each artist" will show all artists in Browse Artist, whereas "Group compilation albums together" shows only a list of artists that have full albums.

>After more thinking, actually this is back to something that has been
>discussed millions of times on these forums: why the "group
>compilations album together" does not do what it says?
It does do what it says. It could say more, but what the setting does say is true.
If an artist only appears on compilations, that artist won't be listed in the browse artists list if "group compilations together" is chosen. But, if you do navigate to the artist from a track on a compilation, you would see all compilations by that artist (i.e. you can still browse to any artist, but the artists may not be in the browse artists list).

Actually, I have raised a bug on this in the past, because it doesn't work consistently. If you browse into an album, it will show composer, conductor, orchestra/band and track artists where applicable. If you click on any of those artist links, you will only see music where the artist has that contributor role. (eg. if you click a track artist link, you will only see music by that artist where they perform as guests on other albums; you don't see their regular albums or compilations, etc). To be consistent in the app, all artist links should show all music, in my opinion. Much less confusing.

>"You can choose to have compilation albums appear together under
>"Various Artists" or have them appear under each artist in the
>compilation. It doesn't say "... but only if they happen to have a full
>album too. If this function was implemented to do exactly what it says
>it would probably remove all the guesswork and make everybody happy.
>
If that option were to do what you are suggesting, my list of ~600 artists would double, as I have many artists that only appear once on a compilation album. Not many people actually want that, but do want to be able to browse to the music from an artist that is in the list.

>Also agree. As few options as possible. The grouping would definetely
>help but I would prefer that the "group compilation albums together"
>setting was fixed to work properly.
It is working properly, and it's not just compilation albums that you are seeing that you don't want to see. You are saying that you only want to see music by the chosen artist where the artist is the album artist (either a regular album, or defined by an album artist tag). In other words where the contributor role is ARTIST or ALBUMARTIST. You don't want to see compilations, band/orchestra, composer, conductor or track artist roles (guest appearances on someone else's album). Changing the "Group compilation albums together" to do something else won't stop the other contributor roles from appearing in the list.

Actually, artists on compilation albums have contributor_role_id=1 (which is "ARTIST", not "TRACK ARTIST"). Artists on an album that has an ALBUMARTIST tag (i.e. guest performers) have contributor_role_id=6.

I'm not sure if that really makes much difference to things, because album albums where the artist appears on as any contributor role are displayed. But it does matter for the bug that I raised on following artist links that are filtered by contributor role.

Phil

[Aguida]

Phil,

Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with extra performances like for
instance Christmas songs?

If you browse to Artists->Louis Armstrong->Play All Songs are you happy
with playing a mix of Jazz, Christmas and Disney songs? (Just an example
:-) ).

The way I had worked this around was to use the albumartist tag
"Various Artists - Christmas" for all Christmas song albums. Now that
the behaviour is changed I am getting all christmas songs as well in
the mix!

Genres does not seem to be useful either as many artists have different
genres so if I want to see all the genres for an artist but not
Christmas does not seem to be an easy way for doing that.


--
Aguida
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguida's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9285
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with extra performances like for
>instance Christmas songs?
>
Artists->[artist-name]->Play All Songs should always play all songs. I don't often want to play all songs from a single artist, but when I do, that is what I do, because how else would you do it?

If it happened to start playing a song that I didn't want to hear, I'd skip to the next song in Now Playing.
If it was one of a bunch of songs, eg some xmas songs, I'd use the CustomSkip plugin to automatically skip over songs with genre=Christmas.

>The way I had worked this around was to use the albumartist tag
>"Various Artists - Christmas" for all Christmas song albums. Now that
>the behaviour is changed I am getting all christmas songs as well in
>the mix!
>
I don't see how that helps. If you have one christmas song on an album, where the other songs are not christmas songs, how would you tag that? What if it isn't a various artists album? eg. an album of Louis Armstrong songs, but one guest performer on one track, duetting on a christmas song. It's not an album by "Various Artists - Christmas", it should be an album by Louis Armstrong. If you play all songs, it would play the christmas song.

>Genres does not seem to be useful either as many artists have different
>genres so if I want to see all the genres for an artist but not
>Christmas does not seem to be an easy way for doing that.
Use Custom Browse to define your own ways of browsing your music library, or use CustomScan to not care about the extras and skip them if it encounters something you don't want to play.

Phil

[firedog]

Example: in my Duet controller under artist-John Lennon/albums, I get
All of John Lennon's solo albums in my Library, plus all the Beatles
albums on which he composed a song!

I know that is what the Duet is doing b/c in the "artist - John
Lennon/albums" the Beatles albums are listed, but the song lists of the
albums don't include songs not credited to Lennon.

The weird thing is that in the Squeeze Center interface, the listings
are as I want them - only John Lennon albums listed under Lennon - no
Beatles albums.

How can I get the Duet to list the albums the same way as they are
listed in SC?

Thanks


--
firedog
------------------------------------------------------------------------
firedog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11550
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Briain]

Hi

I have placed a long (and probably somewhat tedious) sticky post
regarding tagging the albumartist field and how it impacts on
SqueezeCenter/Duet, Sonos and TwonkyMedia. If you use it for all
albums, SC and Sonos see it as the Artist. If you use it for all but a
few albums, any without an entry will not be displayed. Twonky
distinguisned them as different fields so you can list either.

If anyone needs any further info (like how to configure Mp3tag) the
full post is here


--
Briain
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Briain's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17262
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[firedog]

All songs labelled with: artist, albumartist, album.

Example 3 versions of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"

labeled like:

album: unique name for each
albumartist: "Mussorgsky" (same for every song on each of the 3
albums)
artist: different for each one:
Mussorgsky/conductor1
Mussorgsky/conductor2
Mussorgsky/conductor3

again, each each song on the 3 albums has "Mussorgsky" as albumartist

Result: only one of the albums appears under "Mussorgsky" in
"Artist>Mussorgsky"

I can't figure this out.


--
firedog
------------------------------------------------------------------------
firedog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11550
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[elziko]

I also have the problem where multiple artists in the ARTIST tag cause
SC to list albums for an album artist where that artist does not appear
in the ALBUMARTIST tag even though I have "List albums by band" set.

For example, under the artist "Me'Shell NdegéOcello", I have an album
listed called "Kish Kash".

However, that album is not by "Me'Shell NdegéOcello" it is by "Basment
Jaxx".

My only solution is to remove the extra artists from the ARTIST tag -
which is not ideal.


--
elziko
------------------------------------------------------------------------
elziko's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11835
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[MrSinatra]

i'm not surprised people perceive issues with how SC handles these
things, not surprised at all.

there are basically two camps, one camp bases how they do any and
everything based solely on how SC will deal with it. so, essentially SC
decides for them how they will tag their stuff.

the other camp basically wants to be able to do their own tagging their
own way, and/or allow auto-taggers to do it, and have similar user
experiences across multiple apps, including (obviously) SC.

trying to find common ground between these two camps should not be a
mutually exclusively proposition, however, current bugs, of which there
are many, make it difficult to even address the issue. full rescans
should NOT be required to pick up tag changes. using the string
"Various Artists" in the album artist field should not cause your music
to disappear. these and other bugs make finding common ground dfficult
to say the least.

SC imo needs to rethink from scratch how it is going to catalogue and
store ones collection in a DB. the logics are faulty, presumptuous,
non-intuitive and cause problems, and don't respect the de facto
marketplace standards that are in place and bigger than SC, right or
wrong.

issue: album artist tags should not have any impact on if something is
a comp or not.

issue: comps should not be FORCED to be "auto" detected.

issue: no string in a tag, especially one as common as "Various
Artists" should cause the music to NOT be listed.

issue: regardless of how you feel about the above, its ridiculous to
stick any and everything that SC determines is a comp into ONE HUGE COMP
category.

issue: why do we need "track artists"? each track can have an album
artist role, and an artist role, why do we also need a "track artist"
role which is not a 1 to 1 match with an equivalent corresponding tag?

i hope the new schema will bring new ways to approach how the DB /
scanner / interface work, b/c i think there are ways to do everything
that would make BOTH camps happy.


--
MrSinatra

www.lion-radio.org
using:
sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbr (parent's home) - w/sc 7.3.3b - win xp pro
sp3 ie8 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

Oh no, not again.

>current bugs, of which there are many
Such as? There aren't many scanning bugs.

>full rescans should NOT be required to pick up tag changes.
I agree with you on that one though ;-)

>SC imo needs to rethink from scratch how it is going to catalogue and
>store ones collection in a DB. the logics are faulty, presumptuous,
>non-intuitive and cause problems, and don't respect the de facto
>marketplace standards that are in place and bigger than SC, right or
>wrong.
>
Rubbish.

>issue: album artist tags should not have any impact on if something is
>a comp or not.
>
The compilation tag definitively indicates whether an album is a compilation or not. Why don't you use that? Then the album artist tag is irrelevant to whether the album is a compilation or not.

>issue: comps should not be FORCED to be "auto" detected.
>
Yes they should, for the majority of people will not have comp tags, and would have a multiple single-song albums if they were not joined up in some way.

>issue: no string in a tag, especially one as common as "Various
>Artists" should cause the music to NOT be listed.
>
True, but this is not a scanner issue, more of a browsing issue, but mainly due to incomplete tagging (from SC's perspective). Remove the albumartist="Various Artists", or add a compilation tag.

>issue: regardless of how you feel about the above, its ridiculous to
>stick any and everything that SC determines is a comp into ONE HUGE COMP
>category.
>
Not absolutely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you mean that you don't think that albums classified as compilations should not be listed together under Browse Artists > Various Artists? Don't know why you don't think that's a good idea. I'd prefer it if Various Artists was not listed in Browse Artists, and instead there were a dedicated "Browse Compilations" menu, but it's certainly not ridiculous.

>issue: why do we need "track artists"? each track can have an album
>artist role, and an artist role, why do we also need a "track artist"
>role which is not a 1 to 1 match with an equivalent corresponding tag?
>
Track Artists is an interesting one. I think it must have been added as an attempt to make it easier to change settings for browsing the music collection, but hasn't been fully implemented/maintained. I believe the concept was that "Artists" always appear in Browse Artists list, whereas "Track Artists" can be hidden from the list (if they are guests on an album, only the album artist will be listed in the Browse Artists list). However, compilation albums work differently, not sure why.

Largely irrelevant - it's how the SC internals work (although for some reason they are displayed as "Artist:" or "Track Artist:" labels when you browse song info).

>i hope the new schema will bring new ways to approach how the DB /
>scanner / interface work, b/c i think there are ways to do everything
>that would make BOTH camps happy.
The new schema will not change any of that. Schema is just how stuff is stored in the DB; changing the schema may help or hinder performance, and maybe expand to allow more information to be stored.
The data that is currently stored in the current schema is fine; it has the ability to represent a music collection how you want it. It's how the data is collected (scanner) to be stored in the DB, or how it is retrieved to be used by the app that you want to get changed.

[MrSinatra]

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >current bugs, of which there are many
> Such as? There aren't many scanning bugs.

i named two i think are fairly serious, so you have your "such as."
but there are others, bugzilla has them as you know, you can find them
yourself.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >full rescans should NOT be required to pick up tag changes.
> I agree with you on that one though ;-)

and it has festered for YEARS.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >SC imo needs to rethink from scratch how it is going to catalogue and
> >store ones collection in a DB. the logics are faulty, presumptuous,
> >non-intuitive and cause problems, and don't respect the de facto
> >marketplace standards that are in place and bigger than SC, right or
> >wrong.
> >
> Rubbish.

fantastic argument.

i stand by what i said. there are BETTER ways for SC to do what it
does, and there's no excuse for what it currently does to not at least
be optional. how many times phil, do you need to see examples like this
thread in the forums to sow you that people do NOT intuitively
understand what SC is doing?

i think that should be an OBVIOUS design goal.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >issue: album artist tags should not have any impact on if something
> is
> >a comp or not.
> >
> The compilation tag definitively indicates whether an album is a
> compilation or not. Why don't you use that? Then the album artist tag
> is irrelevant to whether the album is a compilation or not.

i turn that around on you...

why not make VA detection optional, give no comp meaning one way or the
other to albumartist tags, and then all a user would have to do is use
comp=1 tags to let SC know something is a comp. thats one way SC could
be informed thats flawless. directory location (user defined) is
another. user submitted string recognition is another.

all would be an improvement over the current system which is not
compatible with many auto-taggers or varied user tagging styles. and
i'm just saying make it OPTIONAL, it doesn't have to be removed.

the fact that in some cases SC NEEDS comp=0 to work right is
ridiculous.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >issue: comps should not be FORCED to be "auto" detected.
> >
> Yes they should, for the majority of people will not have comp tags,
> and would have a multiple single-song albums if they were not joined up
> in some way.

and again, i am saying not be FORCED, but ALLOWED to be OPTIONAL. let
people choose! it should be a slam dunk.

i would also point out that the whole browsing system is silly, home ->
artists, home -> albums, etc... some allow art, some don't, etc... its
stupid.

there has to be smarter ways to handle these issues.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >issue: no string in a tag, especially one as common as "Various
> >Artists" should cause the music to NOT be listed.
> >
> True, but this is not a scanner issue, more of a browsing issue, but
> mainly due to incomplete tagging (from SC's perspective). Remove the
> albumartist="Various Artists", or add a compilation tag.

and this is why you are in the first camp. and btw, i don't know that
adding a comp tag over-rides that bug, (i haven't tested it). but
again, i think SC should be more intuitive, and less demanding.

i'm not saying garbage tagging should be allowed or accommodated, but
just that i think better methods could be derived.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >issue: regardless of how you feel about the above, its ridiculous to
> >stick any and everything that SC determines is a comp into ONE HUGE
> COMP
> >category.
> >
> Not absolutely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you mean that you
> don't think that albums classified as compilations should not be listed
> together under Browse Artists > Various Artists? Don't know why you
> don't think that's a good idea.

yes; i thought that was pretty clear? as to why... b/c putting
hundreds to maybe thousands of albums, that SC thinks are comps, into
one jumbled mammoth category is SILLY.

i have many, many comps. i also have things SC would INCORRECTLY call
comps IF i didn't use an album artist tag. the only way to get them
where i want, is to use album artist tags. (and i NEVER plan to use
artist sort tags, its simply too much trouble). i put TV stuff under
"Soundtracks" movie stuff under "Original Soundtracks" multiple artist
music cds under "Various Artists" and so on... this allows me to get
things to file where i want them to be found.

this of course means SC doesn't think i have any comps. i'm not sure
where the would sort if i added a comp=1 tag, but again, seems like
something that could be done better. meaning, why not let me choose
what to sort by?

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
> I'd prefer it if Various Artists was not listed in Browse Artists, and
> instead there were a dedicated "Browse Compilations" menu, but it's
> certainly not ridiculous.

i'm not sure that would be much of an improvement and i still think its
ridiculous.

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >issue: why do we need "track artists"? each track can have an album
> >artist role, and an artist role, why do we also need a "track artist"
> >role which is not a 1 to 1 match with an equivalent corresponding
> tag?
> >
> Track Artists is an interesting one. I think it must have been added
> as an attempt to make it easier to change settings for browsing the
> music collection, but hasn't been fully implemented/maintained. I
> believe the concept was that "Artists" always appear in Browse Artists
> list, whereas "Track Artists" can be hidden from the list (if they are
> guests on an album, only the album artist will be listed in the Browse
> Artists list). However, compilation albums work differently, not sure
> why.
>
> Largely irrelevant - it's how the SC internals work (although for some
> reason they are displayed as "Artist:" or "Track Artist:" labels when
> you browse song info).

it ends up being confusing and probably unnecessary.

what seems inarguable, is that its very unclear, and that gets back to
the point that SC/slim has no documentation saying "given this set of
data, this is the expected behavior"

Philip Meyer;423437 Wrote:
>
> >i hope the new schema will bring new ways to approach how the DB /
> >scanner / interface work, b/c i think there are ways to do everything
> >that would make BOTH camps happy.
> The new schema will not change any of that. Schema is just how stuff
> is stored in the DB; changing the schema may help or hinder performance,
> and maybe expand to allow more information to be stored.
> The data that is currently stored in the current schema is fine; it has
> the ability to represent a music collection how you want it. It's how
> the data is collected (scanner) to be stored in the DB, or how it is
> retrieved to be used by the app that you want to get changed.

i don't want to split hairs on this, the point is its all connected,
and changes to the way they do the schema MAY bring new ways of how its
handled.

one of the design goals i believe is to not require rescans just b/c
options are changed. i think that alone would help make what i'm
proposing more realizable.


--
MrSinatra

www.lion-radio.org
using:
sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbr (parent's home) - w/sc 7.3.3b - win xp pro
sp3 ie8 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>i named two i think are fairly serious, so you have your "such as."
>but there are others, bugzilla has them as you know, you can find them
>yourself.
>
Yeah, but your examples and many things about scanning, are not actually bugs but enhancement requests. The app works largely as designed (although I do agree that there could be more done to document how it works/should be used).

>> >SC imo needs to rethink from scratch how it is going to catalogue and
>> >store ones collection in a DB. the logics are faulty, presumptuous,
>> >non-intuitive and cause problems, and don't respect the de facto
>> >marketplace standards that are in place and bigger than SC, right or
>> >wrong.
>> >
>> Rubbish.
>
>fantastic argument.
>
rethink from scratch how to store info in a DB - What exactly do you think is wrong with the schema?
logics are faulty - WRONG
presumptuous - WRONG
non-intuitive - FAR FROM IT
cause problems - SUCH AS?
de facto standards - BOWL OF PETUNIAS

>i stand by what i said. there are BETTER ways for SC to do what it
>does, and there's no excuse for what it currently does to not at least
>be optional.
WRONG. A lot of things are optional; much more so than other applications.
More options make it harder to support and maintain and that means more chance of bugs.

>how many times phil, do you need to see examples like this
>thread in the forums to sow you that people do NOT intuitively
>understand what SC is doing?
>
How many of those people don't understand tagging in general; don't understand how other applications treat their tags. How many other applictions have good forums like this one?
What is the percentage - how many people do understand tagging and think what we have is great?

How many actually see serious problems that they find unacceptable, and how many are not too bothered (minor issues).

In many cases, a few minor explanations, and people catch on and do then see the intuitive nature of the tagging/scanning/browsing.

>why not make VA detection optional
Because there's absolutely no need.

If there are album artist tags for every album, then there will be no compilation albums.

If all songs are by the same artists, then the album is not a compilation.

If songs are by different artists, and there's not album artist tag, then the album is a compilation. If it wasn't automatically marked as a compilation, it would think that each song with a different artist is a different album, unless you want it to belong to one of the artists picked arbitrarily. i.e. turning off this auto compilation detection would likely cause other problems.

[MrSinatra]

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
> >i named two i think are fairly serious, so you have your "such as."
> >but there are others, bugzilla has them as you know, you can find
> them
> >yourself.
> >
> Yeah, but your examples and many things about scanning, are not
> actually bugs but enhancement requests. The app works largely as
> designed (although I do agree that there could be more done to document
> how it works/should be used).

BS. the two i named were that the scanner doesn't pick up changes,
(without a full clear and rescan) thats a BUG, and i don't care if you
don't agree with such an obvious thing.

the other was that if you have "Various Artists" as a string your music
DISAPPEARS! thats a BUG, OBVIOUSLY.

you want to say they aren't? RIDICULOUS. you want to say they work
that way INTENTIONALLY? even if so, and i doubt it, that would be
STUPID in the extreme. why would anyone intend that behavior?

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
>
>
> >> >SC imo needs to rethink from scratch how it is going to catalogue
> and
> >> >store ones collection in a DB. the logics are faulty,
> presumptuous,
> >> >non-intuitive and cause problems, and don't respect the de facto
> >> >marketplace standards that are in place and bigger than SC, right
> or
> >> >wrong.
> >> >
> >> Rubbish.
> >
> >fantastic argument.
> >
> rethink from scratch how to store info in a DB - What exactly do you
> think is wrong with the schema?

i should have been more clear... what i am complaining about is the
end user EXPERIENCE you get from using SC. that experience is made up
of many different related parts: scanner, schema, webui, etc...

what i am saying is that the way SC is designed to handle a library
needs a total rethink. the problem isn't JUST the schema, but the way
the logics / scanner handle what goes into it, and then how the webui
handles what results.

for instance, i should be able to sort via any tag i want. i should be
able to turn artwork on or off from anywhere. i should have more
options to define what is and isn't a comp then just the VA logic or
explicit comp tags. i should NOT need different "start points" to get
the look i want, (ie. home > artists, home > albums, etc...)

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, SC needs to respect de facto standards, such as
the INDISPUTABLE FACT that many tagging sources ALWAYS fill in "album
artist" comp or not. or that users have their own ways of handling
tags, that aren't "SC compliant" but nevertheless make sense on their
own merits.

what bothers me about your opposition is that i don't think doing all
this would impact you in the slightest! i think more flexability for
others would not mean a break with how it works now. its just a matter
of options.

and frankly, b/c you and others opposed simple yet SENSICAL changes,
like bug 8001, (TPE2 = Album Artist as an OPTION), you don't have much
credibility with me.

it should be obvious to you now, that MOST mp3 users use TPE2 as album
artist in other apps, either knowingly or unknowingly, ...well this
isn't any different.

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
> logics are faulty - WRONG
> presumptuous - WRONG
> non-intuitive - FAR FROM IT
> cause problems - SUCH AS?
> de facto standards - BOWL OF PETUNIAS

gee, more great insights! wow, you've changed my mind! (whats the
smiley for eyes roll?)

just look at this thread, or the NUMEROUS others, take your head out of
the sand.

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
>
> >i stand by what i said. there are BETTER ways for SC to do what it
> >does, and there's no excuse for what it currently does to not at
> least
> >be optional.
> WRONG. A lot of things are optional; much more so than other
> applications.
> More options make it harder to support and maintain and that means more
> chance of bugs.

so why have any options? that excuse is such a cannard. the idea that
something as abstract as a music library DB product that sold to the
masses should be LIMITED on options is laughable.

winamp DWARFS SC in options. so do lots of other apps, come on, be
real.

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
>
> >how many times phil, do you need to see examples like this
> >thread in the forums to sow you that people do NOT intuitively
> >understand what SC is doing?
> >
> How many of those people don't understand tagging in general; don't
> understand how other applications treat their tags. How many other
> applictions have good forums like this one?
> What is the percentage - how many people do understand tagging and
> think what we have is great?

so only those that think SC is great understand tagging? seems kind of
chicken/eggish don't you think? not to mention elitist.

SC should be trying to get customers, not proselytize the word of
phil.

yes, users should understand tagging better in general. but i believe,
contrary to you, SC should respond MORE FLEXIBLY to what users do or
auto taggers do, especially if its widespread. i don't think its a
stretch to have such a position.

winamp has a great forum btw.

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
> How many actually see serious problems that they find unacceptable, and
> how many are not too bothered (minor issues).
>
> In many cases, a few minor explanations, and people catch on and do
> then see the intuitive nature of the tagging/scanning/browsing.

how many people try it, think its 'naff,' and never bother to post?

how many people, like me, were put off by the lack of TPE2 as AA
support until 8001?

what i think makes no sense at all is this attitude that 'IF you want
to use SC/slim stuff, then frankly, do it our way or its the highway.'

thats just a BAD presentation for an audio consumer goods company to
make to prospective buyers imo.

far better would be, 'we're flexible and in most cases can be made to
work EASILY with your existing data.'

SC thinks far too highly of itself, IF it thinks its so great that
others should conform to it come hell or high water. i'm not saying it
should do stupid things, i'm just saying it should be more flexible and
more AWARE of the environment out there then it is now.

Philip Meyer;423602 Wrote:
>
> >why not make VA detection optional
> Because there's absolutely no need.
>
> If there are album artist tags for every album, then there will be no
> compilation albums.
>
> If all songs are by the same artists, then the album is not a
> compilation.
>
> If songs are by different artists, and there's not album artist tag,
> then the album is a compilation. If it wasn't automatically marked as a
> compilation, it would think that each song with a different artist is a
> different album, unless you want it to belong to one of the artists
> picked arbitrarily. i.e. turning off this auto compilation detection
> would likely cause other problems.

how SC would handle things IF va detection was turned off IS one of the
things i am complaining about.

first of all, lets look at how it works now:

i do NOT want every artist mismatch WITHOUT an album artist tag to end
up as a comp, b/c in many cases it isn't a comp, (like the duets
example).

further, i don't want SC to blindly call all comps AA = "Various
Artists" and stick them all in a category of the same name.

i don't know if comp tags over-ride having an AA tag, as to where it
sorts or what SC populates the AA field with. but i don't want to use
comp tags anyway, if i can avoid it. why can't i specify directorys and
say to SC "consider all these comps, but don't let it affect the sort"
?

a lot of apps NEED an album artist tag FOR COMPS, (like winamp & WMP
among others), so right there, right off the bat, SC is in conflict with
apps MUCH BIGGER than it. (not to mention the gracenotes and other auto
taggers of the world)

i also don't want strings in tags to result in music disappearing from
SC b/c SC isn't smart enough to get it right.

i also want different ways to sort, not just by tags but by directory
location, and i should be able to switch all these views on the fly from
ANYWHERE in the library, not having to go back to "home" to pick a new
path.

look phil, i respect that you like the way it is, i really do and i
wouldn't advocate any changes NOT being "backwards compatible."

but i'm telling you, SC is, from the normal, average, end user
experience, esp noobs, TOO COMPLEX, and not
intuitive/flexible/compatible enough. and you don't have to take my
word for it... i have seen comments in the bug threads FROM SLIM
EMPLOYEES who share my opinion about the "logics" that they shouldn't be
necessary, and these were freely given, not provoked by me. (steven
spies and brandon black i think?)


--
MrSinatra

www.lion-radio.org
using:
sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbr (parent's home) - w/sc 7.3.3b - win xp pro
sp3 ie8 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>BS. the two i named were that the scanner doesn't pick up changes,
>(without a full clear and rescan) thats a BUG, and i don't care if you
>don't agree with such an obvious thing.
>
Of course that's a bug - I raised it! But, there's no faulty logic, design, non-de facto standards, voodoo, whatever you want to moan about - just a bug that in some situations, a scan for changes to files doesn't always work. A full rescan always works, so the logic for how scanning works is generally good.

>the other was that if you have "Various Artists" as a string your music
>DISAPPEARS! thats a BUG, OBVIOUSLY.
>
Yes, but caused because tags aren't right; it's a symptom, not a cause. I'm not saying its not a bug, but if tags were set more meaningfully, there wouldn't be a problem. I mean how often are there albums by "Various Artists" that are not compilation albums?

>for instance, i should be able to sort via any tag i want. i should be
>able to turn artwork on or off from anywhere.
What you are talking about is a richer UI; these things are not bugs, but enhancement requests. The scanner works, the DB holds the information, there's no back-end issue. In fact, third-party plugins have already implemented these things - Try Moose or Erlands CustomBrowse plugin for a new world of browsing options.

>i should have more options to define what is and isn't a comp then just the VA logic or
>explicit comp tags.
>
There are already two ways of doing it, which I won't explain again. It really is simple. How many options are there in WinAmp for defining what is and isn't a comp?

>BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, SC needs to respect de facto standards
>
Give me a break - what de facto standard do you believe it doesn't follow now? SC covers more file format, tag types, standards than anything else that I am aware of.

>the INDISPUTABLE FACT that many tagging sources ALWAYS fill in "album
>artist" comp or not.
>
Well, I dispute that. Using Mp3Tag for example, which is the de facto tool around here for tagging music, it looks up metadata from FreeDB, Amazon or Discogs.com, and doesn't, retrieve album artist tag data.

Anyway, so what? SC can be set up to read the tag if it's there, and works if it's not.

>what bothers me about your opposition is that i don't think doing all
>this would impact you in the slightest! i think more flexability for
>others would not mean a break with how it works now. its just a matter
>of options.
>
Developers are very anti adding new options, because they believe there's too many for new users to get their head around. I generally disagree, but agree to some extent. How options are presented is more important (show basic ones, hide advanced options, etc). Some changes could also break third-party plugins.

Having more options will always complicate the code, support, documentation, maintainability, and ultimately make the software more likely to fail. I also believe that the developer efforts can be more wisely spent on other areas that need more work. If there were enough users complaining about the state of their library and they weren't explainable through currently available options or tagging, the developers would have made changes by now.

The scanning code has mainly been left untouched, and generally the vast majority of users are content.

>> How many of those people don't understand tagging in general; don't
>> understand how other applications treat their tags. How many other
>> applictions have good forums like this one?
>> What is the percentage - how many people do understand tagging and
>> think what we have is great?
>
>so only those that think SC is great understand tagging? seems kind of
>chicken/eggish don't you think? not to mention elitist.
>
Twisting the meaning of my words. What's the ratio between content/unhappy customers? How many would benefit from changes? How many with tagging issues have a perfect library in another app? WinAmp doesn't support compilations; even iTunes has that. So someone who has compilation issues in SC doesn't in WinAmp, because it doesn't support them at all. That doesn't mean that SC is wrong.

>SC should be trying to get customers, not proselytize the word of
>phil.
>
SC ARE getting customers, and not because of the word of Mr Sinatra.

>how many people try it, think its 'naff,' and never bother to post?
>
How many people try it, love it, and never bother to post?

>what i think makes no sense at all is this attitude that 'IF you want
>to use SC/slim stuff, then frankly, do it our way or its the highway.'
>
There are many supported ways, not one.

>far better would be, 'we're flexible and in most cases can be made to
>work EASILY with your existing data.'
>
They are flexible, and probably do make that claim.

>i do NOT want every artist mismatch WITHOUT an album artist tag to end
>up as a comp, b/c in many cases it isn't a comp, (like the duets
>example).
>
But you keep reminding us that everything in the world always sets an album artist tag, so surely all your albums do have an album artist tag, and therefore you don't have a problem.

Again I ask you what you believe SC scanner should do if there's a duets album without comp and album artist tags? You say you want to turn off auto VA processing, but how would you want that album to be stored? What artist would the album be listed under? Some people physically store their music in a strict artist/album/songs folder structure, so the album songs may not even be together. Just how do you expect it to function?

>further, i don't want SC to blindly call all comps AA = "Various
>Artists" and stick them all in a category of the same name.
>
Then give them a different album artist name.

>i don't know if comp tags over-ride having an AA tag, as to where it
>sorts or what SC populates the AA field with.
If a comp tag is set, the album is always a compilation.
If an album artist tag is also set, that album would be listed under that album artist name, and it would be indicated as a compilation.

So you can have a compilation album by "Soundtrack" if you really want it, no problem. Of course, compilation tag isn't really required, because the album artist will keep the tracks together under one artist name.

>but i don't want to use comp tags anyway, if i can avoid it.
Why?

>why can't i specify directorys and say to SC "consider all these comps, but don't let it affect the sort"?
>
How would that work cross-application? Is that one of your de facto standards?
SC should work on tags, not directory path/file names.

>a lot of apps NEED an album artist tag FOR COMPS, (like winamp & WMP
>among others), so right there, right off the bat, SC is in conflict with
>apps MUCH BIGGER than it. (not to mention the gracenotes and other auto
>taggers of the world)
>
You want options: Album artist tags are OPTIONAL in SC. SC works with or without.
SC is not in conflict with anything.

[firedog]

Hi-

Don't want to get into the nasty argument and details here, but...

I'm in camp 2: I have a certain way I want my catalog presented, I'm
not really interested in what certain corporations or other users think.
I want what what works for me.

I like my Duet overall, but when I switched over to it I had to retag
my entire collection and subsequently retag specific albums to get SC to
present it (more or less) in the way I wanted.

I find this strange, as the tagging I started with worked fine in
several other programs and devices. My conclusion from this is that SC
isn't working according to "market" standards, or that the cataloging
has some bugs.

The present method in SC, which asks a only a few predetermined
questions with a few explanations isn't clear, and it isn't clear when
you pick one of the options how the program is actually going to behave
afterwords.

I can't think of any reason not to let individual users who are
interested determine how their music collection is displayed to them.

The whole "problem" seems to me fairly simple. Give users an option
where they can set up their own cataloging hierarchy (tree) if they want
to, instead of the default setup. The user should also be able to tell
the program to ignore certain tags.

This solution should be an elementary programming problem in software
like SC. It also shouldn't be hard in such a setup for SC to display a
preview/or example of the results of the user choices, so the user sees
what the result of his choices will be.

The present tagging and cataloging - not the way "user friendly"
software should work in 2009, IMHO.


--
firedog
------------------------------------------------------------------------
firedog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11550
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[MrSinatra]

firedog;423753 Wrote:
> Hi-
>
> Don't want to get into the nasty argument and details here, but...
>
> I'm in camp 2: I have a certain way I want my catalog presented, I'm
> not really interested in what certain corporations or other users think.
> I want what what works for me.
>
> I like my Duet overall, but when I switched over to it I had to retag
> my entire collection and subsequently retag specific albums to get SC to
> present it (more or less) in the way I wanted.
>
> I find this strange, as the tagging I started with worked fine in
> several other programs and devices. My conclusion from this is that SC
> isn't working according to "market" standards, or that the cataloging
> has some bugs.
>
> The present method in SC, which asks a only a few predetermined
> questions with a few explanations isn't clear, and it isn't clear when
> you pick one of the options how the program is actually going to behave
> afterwords.
>
> I can't think of any reason not to let individual users who are
> interested determine how their music collection is displayed to them.
>
> The whole "problem" seems to me fairly simple. Give users an option
> where they can set up their own cataloging hierarchy (tree) if they want
> to, instead of the default setup. The user should also be able to tell
> the program to ignore certain tags.
>
> This solution should be an elementary programming problem in software
> like SC. It also shouldn't be hard in such a setup for SC to display a
> preview/or example of the results of the user choices, so the user sees
> what the result of his choices will be.
>
> The present tagging and cataloging - not the way "user friendly"
> software should work in 2009, IMHO.

heretic! blasphemer! individualist!

-(sshhh, i agree with you)-

SC is way too pushy, way too inflexible... and even when you do things
to make it happy, it still doesn't display things the way you want, and
all you hear is "get a 3rd party ext" to do x y or z. i don't get that.
i'm not saying SC sucks, i'm just saying it could be better, and i wish
more people were open to at least ACKNOWLEDGING what we are saying.
this idea that SC is essentially perfect, or close enough, is just
hogwash.


--
MrSinatra

www.lion-radio.org
using:
sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbr (parent's home) - w/sc 7.3.3b - win xp pro
sp3 ie8 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[MrSinatra]

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
> >BS. the two i named were that the scanner doesn't pick up changes,
> >(without a full clear and rescan) thats a BUG, and i don't care if
> you
> >don't agree with such an obvious thing.
> >
> Of course that's a bug - I raised it! But, there's no faulty logic,
> design, non-de facto standards, voodoo, whatever you want to moan about
> - just a bug that in some situations, a scan for changes to files
> doesn't always work. A full rescan always works, so the logic for how
> scanning works is generally good.

this is so damn common in these back n forths with you...

you lose all track of the context of your own questions and comments as
well as mine, and in so doing, create a strawman for which you expect me
to answer, which of course is NONSENSE on your part! its maddening...

take the above, the original context of my very first post was:

> "...trying to find common ground between these two camps should not be a
> mutually exclusively proposition, however, current bugs, of which there
> are many, make it difficult to even address the issue."

do you see me saying that the bugs THEMSELVES are the INTRINSIC
UNDERLYING problem with "faulty logic, design, non-de facto standards,
voodoo, whatever you want to moan about" as you put it? NO, you don't.

what i did CLEARLY say, is that the bugs make ADDRESSING those things
[that i want to address to satisfy both camps] almost impossible, b/c
they are in the way of actually seeing what SC either is doing, or is
trying/intending to do. so go back and read it again.

in your reply to my first post, you asked "such as?" regarding scanning
bugs. i had ALREADY given you two and bugzilla has plenty more. they
serve as my evidence that its hard to address the underlying issue of
the 'two camps problem,' b/c as i made clear, i feel they get in the way
of doing that and obfuscate the possible solutions. i NEVER said the
bugs WERE the root problem.

make no mistake, i see the PARADIGM as the root problem, and the bugs
as obfuscation to make adjustments to the paradigm to come up with a
good solution that both camps would enjoy.

---

and btw, you raised a version of that bug, based on another discussion
we were having, but others before you had pointed out that the "half
ass" scans didn't pickup new/different things *prior to your bug,* like
artwork for example. you just pinpointed comp tags. i'd guess it
misses more than just art and comp tags, further obfuscating what it
does and making it hard to come up with a solution for both camps, which
is what i said in my first post is my goal and shouldn't be a mutually
exclusive proposition.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >the other was that if you have "Various Artists" as a string your
> music
> >DISAPPEARS! thats a BUG, OBVIOUSLY.
> >
> Yes, but caused because tags aren't right; it's a symptom, not a cause.
> I'm not saying its not a bug, but if tags were set more meaningfully,
> there wouldn't be a problem. I mean how often are there albums by
> "Various Artists" that are not compilation albums?

caused b/c tags aren't right??? hahaha, thats LAUGHABLE.

earlier in this thread anyway, you AGREED that a string shouldn't cause
music to disappear, NOW SUDDENLY you reverse yourself and blame the
STRING and not the holy SC! god, gimmie a break!

and the music disappears if the album has that string in whatever tag
SC calls album artist. it doesn't matter if the album (or track) in
reality is, or isn't, a comp.

on what authority do you say a user or an online DB or another app
shouldn't put ANY STRING they want in there?

i say this next bit with all due respect, and i do respect your vast
knowledge and SC abilities, but...

...even if you hold your logic superior to all others, which would be
very arrogant on something as subjective as a string value in a tag, who
cares? THE REALITY IS NOT, AND WILL NOT, JIVE WITH WHAT YOU THINK BEST,
PERIOD. just as you can't do ANYTHING about TPE2 being hijacked by ill
behaved apps, you also can't do anything about users, apps, & DBs using
strings you don't approve of in places you don't approve of.

frankly, you need to get over your disapproval and acknowledge REALITY.
don't get mad at me, i'm just the messenger! nothing you say or do
will change what i just laid out, so why continue to fight it?

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >for instance, i should be able to sort via any tag i want. i should
> be
> >able to turn artwork on or off from anywhere.
> What you are talking about is a richer UI; these things are not bugs,
> but enhancement requests.

this is where i just lose all patience... NO DUH! when did i say they
were bugs????!?!?!?!? HINT: I DIDN'T!

again, go back to my original post, my desire was to try to find COMMON
GROUND between two camps who approach SC from totally different
perspectives. the only reason i mentioned bugs was to show that they
make approaching the problem difficult if not impossible.

i firmly believe that common ground between the two camps is possible,
IF both sides are willing to understand the needs of the other, and if
some patently ridiculus bugs are fixed first.

so...

fix the current scanning bugs, and THEN we can address the issues, like
the one you quoted by me above, in a way that would satisfy both camps.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
> The scanner works, the DB holds the information, there's no back-end
> issue. In fact, third-party plugins have already implemented these
> things - Try Moose or Erlands CustomBrowse plugin for a new world of
> browsing options.

maybe one day i will, but that is not the heart of the issue, nor do i
think its a good longterm solution, (esp as they are all about to be
broken by new SC versions). i think SC is missing some really basic
elements any decent music library app should have in its core.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >i should have more options to define what is and isn't a comp then
> just the VA logic or
> >explicit comp tags.
> >
> There are already two ways of doing it, which I won't explain again.
> It really is simple. How many options are there in WinAmp for defining
> what is and isn't a comp?

none. winamp doesn't need to know what is and isn't a comp, b/c
gracenote puts strings in TPE2 that indicate its a comp. but winamp is
also different from SC... SC WANTS TO KNOW what is and isn't a comp,
and then it does things based on that, (and 3rd party SC apps make use
of that info as well).

thats another issue i have with SC, what it does with the info. i
don't likehow it handles comps. and again, thats why i'm in the second
camp, but i never said it was a BUG!

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, SC needs to respect de facto standards
> >
> Give me a break - what de facto standard do you believe it doesn't
> follow now? SC covers more file format, tag types, standards than
> anything else that I am aware of.

before i answer that, do you, or do you not, acknowledge that
TPE2=ALBUM ARTIST is, in fact, a de facto standard?

as i mentioned, using strings in TPE2 for comps (OR non-comps) is a
widespread de facto standard, including using "Various Artists"
especially as the string.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >the INDISPUTABLE FACT that many tagging sources ALWAYS fill in "album
> >artist" comp or not.
> >
> Well, I dispute that. Using Mp3Tag for example, which is the de facto
> tool around here for tagging music, it looks up metadata from FreeDB,
> Amazon or Discogs.com, and doesn't, retrieve album artist tag data.

mp3tag? r u serious? and it has what market share?

meanwhile itunes, winamp, windows media player, gracenote (cddb), and
on and on all fill in that info, (and do it in TPE2 mind you).

as to whether or not amazon and discogs have that info, i don't know,
but just b/c mp3tag doesn't use it doesn't necessarily mean it isn't
there. i do think freedb doesn't store that info however.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
> Anyway, so what? SC can be set up to read the tag if it's there, and
> works if it's not.

define "work."

the fact is that SC does not work well or optimally for many users.

take someone who ripped everything with WMP. they have to decide if
TPE2 should be treated as album artist or not. EITHER WAY SC won't work
well. either nothing will be called a comp, OR lots of things that
aren't comps SC will identify as a comp.

you may think thats how it should be, i say thats nonsense. SC should
be, and could be, better, and do it WITHOUT negatively impacting the
first camp.

Philip Meyer;423668 Wrote:
>
> >what bothers me about your opposition is that i don't think doing all
> >this would impact you in the slightest! i think more flexability for
> >others would not mean a break with how it works now. its just a
> matter
> >of options.
> >
> Developers are very anti adding new options, because they believe
> there's too many for new users to get their head around. I generally
> disagree, but agree to some extent. How options are presented is more
> important (show basic ones, hide advanced options, etc). Some changes
> could also break third-party plugins.

i think we fully agree on that.


--
MrSinatra

www.lion-radio.org
using:
sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbr (parent's home) - w/sc 7.3.3b - win xp pro
sp3 ie8 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[JJZolx]

Aguida;381666 Wrote:
> I have been running on 7.1 for sometime without any problem, but I have
> decided to give 7.3.2 a try and noticed that the behaviour related to
> the "AlbumArtist" tag is changed and in fact (at least from my point of
> view) it is broken now.

I haven't noticed any change in behavior.

> It used to be in such a way that if I had specified an "AlbumArtist" tag
> for the songs in an album that album will show under
> Artist->"AlbumArtist" and not under all the various track artists.

Are these compilation albums or non-compilations? Generally speaking,
you don't want an ALBUMARTIST tag on compilations. Specifying an
ALBUMARTIST is in effect saying that "this album belongs to XXX".

In the web interface, if you click on an album you should see an album
listing page (album information at top, track listing below). A
compilation album should show

Compilation: Yes

in the info.

> In 7.3.2 beside appearing under Artists->"Album Artist" it also appears
> under each of the track artists.

That's always worked like this. The only thing you can control is to
suppress the track artists on compilations from the artist list by
grouping compilations in the preferences. The compilation albums have
always appeared among the artist's albums.

BUT: Currently you _cannot_ suppress track artists on
non-compilations.

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5108

So if you're doing something that is causing compilation albums to be
considered non-compilations, you should correct this. A lot of people
use the COMPILATION tag on _every_ single track in their library to
explicitly tell SqueezeCenter whether or not an album is a compilation.
Takes a lot of the guess work out of it.

> Is there anyway to turn this off? The perfect behaviour would be to have
> under those track artists all their "full albums" and then a "also
> apperas on..." entry under which to list all the compilaitons this
> artist is part of.

I believe that's been requested.

> Is there some new option I didn't see or is just a new bug?

If there's been any change in behavior, it might be that the
ALBUMARTIST tag now keeps these albums from being flagged as
compilations. This could lead to the behavior that you're seeing.


--
JJZolx

Jim
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[davig]

Aguida;381666 Wrote:
> I have been running on 7.1 for sometime without any problem, but I have
> decided to give 7.3.2 a try and noticed that the behaviour related to
> the "AlbumArtist" tag is changed and in fact (at least from my point of
> view) it is broken now.
>
> It used to be in such a way that if I had specified an "AlbumArtist"
> tag for the songs in an album that album will show under
> Artist->"AlbumArtist" and not under all the various track artists.
>
> In 7.3.2 beside appearing under Artists->"Album Artist" it also appears
> under each of the track artists.

I've noticed this as well, although not just this version.

For example, I have an album say, "10 Things I Hate About You", with a
number of tracks, each one having a different artist.

These are flac files with tags such:

TITLE - I Want You To Want Me
ARTIST - Letters to Cleo
ALBUM - 10 Things I Hate About You
ALBUM ARTIST - Various

TITLE - FMT
ARTIST - Semisonic
ALBUM - 10 Things I Hate About You
ALBUM ARTIST - Various

What I get in Squeeze in the Album list is 2 entries for the album:
10 Things I Hate About You
10 Things I Hate About You

My server settings are Group Compilations Album together enabled. I've
also tried a number of combinations and still the same result.

MediaMonkey on the other hand shows the one album name correctly, with
a list of the songs relating to that album.

So, what is going on? What is the Squeeze behaviour here or it is a
bug?

(I've been using Squeezebox for a good while, only just upgrading from
version 5.x - the behaviour above only really started for me when I
moved to v6.x a little while ago. I lived with it, then saw a new
version 7.3, upgraded and now have seen this thread).

Help?


--
davig
------------------------------------------------------------------------
davig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22883
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>What I get in Squeeze in the Album list is 2 entries for the album:
>10 Things I Hate About You
>10 Things I Hate About You
>
Are all tracks for the album in the same folder? If they are not and if there is not a COMPILATION tag, they will be considered different albums that share the same name.

>ALBUM ARTIST - Various
>
Part of your problem could be that you haven't set an album artist tag correctly? The tag that SC supports is called "ALBUMARTIST" (no space).
Check that SC is reading your Album Artist tags by navigating to such an album in the web UI and seeing if it displays "Album Artist: <name>" for the album.

[davig]

Will try the above.

I've not set any compilation flag and they are in separate
directories.

It's definitely album artist that I've set not albumartist so I will
give this a try and see what happens.

Will keep you posted.

cheers.


--
davig
------------------------------------------------------------------------
davig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22883
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[davig]

Philip Meyer;382284 Wrote:
> >What I get in Squeeze in the Album list is 2 entries for the album:
> >10 Things I Hate About You
> >10 Things I Hate About You
> >
> Are all tracks for the album in the same folder? If they are not and
> if there is not a COMPILATION tag, they will be considered different
> albums that share the same name.
>
> >ALBUM ARTIST - Various
> >
> Part of your problem could be that you haven't set an album artist tag
> correctly? The tag that SC supports is called "ALBUMARTIST" (no
> space).
> Check that SC is reading your Album Artist tags by navigating to such
> an album in the web UI and seeing if it displays "Album Artist: <name>"
> for the album.

Still no luck I'm afraid. Still the same behaviour.

I have set tags on all tracks in the album so that each track has:

ALBUMARTIST : Various
ALBUM ARTIST: Various
COMPILATION: 1

Still multiple entries shown in the Album view.

Interestingly though when I click on a track in the Web UI, the Album
Artist: <name> that you mention does not display. The Compilation one
does - Compilation: Yes.

I have the Group Compilation Albums Together setting on and the Treat
TPE2 MP3 tag as Band setting on. I've played around with the later and
still no joy, so I'm getting very confused as to what is going on.

I'm now using v7.3 of the software. Have not upgraded to 7.3.1 as yet
though.

HELP!


--
davig
------------------------------------------------------------------------
davig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22883
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>Still multiple entries shown in the Album view.
>
I'm a bit confused as to what your actual problem is - what you want to be displayed.

I think you are saying that you see two albums, instead of the tracks merged into one. This underlying issue is due to the tracks being in different folders, instead of all tracks for the album being in one folder.

But do you want the album to be a compilation, listed under Various Artists, or is it not a compilation (do you want it listed as being by an album artist).

Compilations and album artist tags are usually considered mutually exclusive. A compilation automatically has album artist=Various Artists.

Usually you would set just an ALBUMARTIST tag, or just COMPILATION=1. This works when all tracks are located in one folder.

Because your tracks are not, the tagging required to get it to work for you may be more awkward, because SC is trying to avoid the "Greatest Hits" problem.

Try setting COMPILATION=0 and an ALBUMARTIST tag, or just a COMPILATION=1.

I think there are also issues with SC not completely readjusting the library if you only do a rescan for new/changed files. I raised a bug report on this a while back. So whilst playing around with these sort of tagging issues, it may be a good idea to do a full rescan.

Phil

[davig]

Philip Meyer;382762 Wrote:
> >Still multiple entries shown in the Album view.
> >
> I'm a bit confused as to what your actual problem is - what you want to
> be displayed.
>
> I think you are saying that you see two albums, instead of the tracks
> merged into one. This underlying issue is due to the tracks being in
> different folders, instead of all tracks for the album being in one
> folder.
>
> Phil

I would like to see a compilation album that I have set a COMPILATION=1
tag for all tracks, to just display once in the list of albums.

So in my examples in previous posts I want to see:

'10 Things I Hate About You' to be displayed just once in the album
list. Click on that and it displays the Album and all tracks/artists
on that album.

With a COMPILATION=1 tag for my Ministry Of Sound Anthems album it
works, on the 10 Things I Hate About You album, it does not. So I'm
wondering what else it could be - all other tags are set in the same
way.

So I'm removing any reference to album artist and albumartist and just
setting a compilation tag. See if that works. If it doesn't then I
don;t think Squeeze can do what I want it to do (or least behave in the
same way it used to back in v5).

My music is stored under /artist/album/track.
So a compilation album will be stored under several /artist folders.
All displays fine in MediaMonkey with an album artist flag set to
'Various'.

Will play around and see what happens. In meantime if above clears
anything for you do let me know.

cheers,
Dav


--
davig
------------------------------------------------------------------------
davig's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22883
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57922

[Phil Meyer]

>UPDATE #1:
>
>Just spotted something that may cause the problem - the FLAC codec used for 10 Things I Hate About You is ref lib v1.1.2 and the Ministry Of Sound is v1.2.0. Could this be the cause of it?
>
>UPDATE #2:
>Re-encoded some tracks from the 10 Things I Hate About You album and guess what? Now showing those tracks under the ONE album name in Squeeze. COMPILATION=1 tags were set (as before). So, is there something wrong here - surely I don't have to re-encode all my flac files (and I have thousands!) just to support this?
>
>Thoughts?

I didn't see this part of your post initially, as I normally read via email. Updating messages is a really bad idea.

You shouldn't need to re-encode 1.1.2 -> 1.2.0. I generally have re-encoded my music to the latest FLAC (1.2.1 I think), as I wanted to encode at level 8. But I don't recall ever having issues like you have seen.

Maybe there was a tagging bug in 1.1.2, or specifically something wrong in your tags that has been fixed by re-writing them.

You could try updating the tags in Mp3Tag. i.e. remove all tags (using the red X button), and then force a re-save of FLAC tags (select all, then Ctrl-S).