Strange Artist Sort Order

[Uncle Bob]

I'm having some issues with how SC sorts my music collection. I've spent a some considerable time trying to understand how SC deals with tag info but just when I thought I understood how it works - I get the following (see attached screenshot);

Notice that Eric Clapton is listed between Faith Hill and George Harrison - and also David Coverdale appears between Genesis and Roger Glover. I believe I know what is causing this but I don't understand the underlying logic.

In the case of David Coverdale - he appears as a contributing artist on an album by Roger Glover - one track of that album has ARTIST=David Coverdale, ARTISTSORT=Glover, Roger and ALBUMARTIST=Roger Glover and Guests. However, there is a similar arrangement for the artist Glenn Hughes on the same album but in that case it hasn't changed the sort order that SC uses.

The arrangement or relationship between Eric Clapton and George Harrison is less clear. The only commonality I can find between them is that they both appear among several 'guest' artists on a Jools Holland release.

I had a similar issue with Dire Straits appearing among the K's because of a multi artist arrangement with a best-of release; some tracks were credited to Dire Straits and some to Mark Knopfler, while the tag ALBUMARTIST=Mark Knopfler. Changing just the ALBUMARTIST tag to Dire Straits restored a correct sort arrangement.

As far as SC library settings are concerned;
- group compilation albums together is selected
- list albums by band is selected
- treat TPE2 mp3 tag as album artist is selected

I'm not using iTunes

SC 7.3.3 - 27044 under Fedora 10 (vortexbox)

I'd be grateful for any insights anyone might have regarding the logic of this and any tips/workarounds

[aubuti]

The arrangement or relationship between Eric Clapton and George Harrison is less clear. The only commonality I can find between them is that they both appear among several 'guest' artists on a Jools Holland release.

That's SC's artificial intelligence at work. It puts EC and GH together because it knows they were both married to Pattie Boyd.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Phil Leigh]

well this is easy...
artistsort determines where things come in the lists (if it is populated) so if you have a track with artistsort of "glover, roger" and artist of "David Coverdale", guess where that track will get sorted? - yep, in the "G's"
What you should do on that example is have artistsort (which is a TRACK tag not an ALBUM tag) set to "Coverdale, David"...

try it and see

[Phil Leigh]

That's SC's artificial intelligence at work. It puts EC and GH together because it knows they were both married to Pattie Boyd.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Does this have any bearing on why my Oasis album comes next to The Beatles?

[Uncle Bob]

well this is easy...
artistsort determines where things come in the lists (if it is populated) so if you have a track with artistsort of "glover, roger" and artist of "David Coverdale", guess where that track will get sorted? - yep, in the "G's"
What you should do on that example is have artistsort (which is a TRACK tag not an ALBUM tag) set to "Coverdale, David"...

try it and see

Phil

Thanks for you reply.
You are indeed correct that amending the tag entry as described cures that paticular issue. However I still cannot grasp the logic that is being used.

For example, amending that entry restores the correct sort order - why then do the other track tags on that same album with similar cross-linked artists not cause a similar problem?

Also, reference the Harrison/Clapton issue, why did SC choose to sort in that way it did because both were contributing artists on a release by a third party? (and where there were other similar relationships by other artists in the library).

And, ARTISTSORT does not consistently behave in the expected manner. I have a Jools Holland CD in my library which has a different collaborating artist on each track. So I have the following tag set up

ARTIST=Holland, Jools; <contributing artist>
ARTISTSORT=Holland, Jools
ALBUM ARTIST=Jools Holland

but SC insists on listing under J

Actually, while writing/thinking about this, and reading other forum posts about tagging - I thought part of the problem may be contamination of my tags by Picard, which didnt suit my needs but has left it's mark upon my library. But deleting all Musicbrainz related tags from Jools Holland has hd no effect

[Phil Leigh]

OK - it may take a while to sort this all out...

1) ARTISTSORT is connect to ARTIST and not directly to ALBUMARTIST. What is in ARTISTSORT applies the sort order to whatever is in the artist tag. Therefore having any track on any album with an ARTISTSORT of "Glover, Roger" and anything other than "Roger Glover" in the corresponding ARTIST tags makes no sense. (except for example 4 below).
2) ALL tracks in the same album MUST have the same ALBUMARTIST... if you are using ALBUMARTIST. AA is optional because it should not really be needed - I never use it.
4) In my collection I have SO by Peter Gabriel. This has one track which is a collaboration with Kate Bush. So I have ARTIST="Peter Gabriel" for all tracks except one which has ARTIST="Peter Gabriel";"Kate Bush". Note that I make ARTISTSORT "Gabriel, Peter" for ALL tracks. For this album, all tracks have the extended tag COMPILATION set to 0 (zero). This prevents SC splitting the album into 2 sets of tracks based on the different values in ARTIST.
This album then shows up under "G" in album browse as "So by Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush". It does not appear under B, where all my Kate Bush albums appear.
Searching for Kate Bush (or browsing under B for artists) shows up SO in the list.

For me this works perfectly.
5) for real compilations (defined as any album where the ARTIST tag is not constant across all tracks) the COMPILATION tag needs to be set to 1.

For your Dire Straits/Knopfler example you need to decide whether to treat it as a DS or a K album, then set ALBUMARTIST accordingly and COMPILATION=0
If it was me I would set artist = "Mark Knopfler";"Dire Straits" on all tracks except for the solo MK efforts.

Note: until all of your tags have been sorted out you may see strange things, vbecause of the non-deterministic behaviour of the scanner, based on the scan sequence and the fact that ARTIST tags are merged with other contributer tags such as COMPOSER...

Happy tagging!

[gringo hairpiece]

Hi Phil,

the above post was very useful in helping me understand some of the issues that I have been having with the way squeezebox server sorts artists.

I am keen to adopt the same method that you have outlined above i.e. No album artist values, using artist sort instead but I would be greatful if you could clarify further on a couple of examples I have given below.

I have some genuine compilation albums but I also have some single artist mix albums for instance 26 Mixes for Cash by Aphex Twin. The tracks are by lots of different artists by the overall album is considered an Aphex Twin album rather than a compilation album because he has extensively remixed the tracks. How would you handle this?

Similarly I have The Trip created by Saint Etienne where they have compiled an album of their favourite tracks by artists that have inspired them. Again most people regard this as a Saint Etienne album (including MusicBrainz, Amazon etc.)There are many examples of this like the Back to Mine and Another Late Night collections.

I would also be grateful if you could let me know what settings you have for the fields in the compilation section.

I assume that you have Group Compilations Albums together checked but which options do you take for the two fields that follow? Do you have "List Albums by Band" checked and "Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist" checked?

Your thoughts on the above would be greatly appreciated.

[gringo hairpiece]

Also how do you handle soundtrack albums? For instance I have the soundtrack to the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair which is mainly musical pieces by Bill Conti but also includes tracks by Sting, Nina Simone etc.

[gringo hairpiece]

The other issue is I make extensive use of iTunes and I would like the solution to work for that as well.

[Phil Leigh]

Hi Phil,

the above post was very useful in helping me understand some of the issues that I have been having with the way squeezebox server sorts artists.

I am keen to adopt the same method that you have outlined above i.e. No album artist values, using artist sort instead but I would be greatful if you could clarify further on a couple of examples I have given below.

I have some genuine compilation albums but I also have some single artist mix albums for instance 26 Mixes for Cash by Aphex Twin. The tracks are by lots of different artists by the overall album is considered an Aphex Twin album rather than a compilation album because he has extensively remixed the tracks. How would you handle this?

Similarly I have The Trip created by Saint Etienne where they have compiled an album of their favourite tracks by artists that have inspired them. Again most people regard this as a Saint Etienne album (including MusicBrainz, Amazon etc.)There are many examples of this like the Back to Mine and Another Late Night collections.

I would also be grateful if you could let me know what settings you have for the fields in the compilation section.

I assume that you have Group Compilations Albums together checked but which options do you take for the two fields that follow? Do you have "List Albums by Band" checked and "Treat TPE2 MP3 tag as Album Artist" checked?

Your thoughts on the above would be greatly appreciated.

OK - I'll try...
for your Aphex Twin / St. Etienne albums, I'd actually set ALBUMARTIST to "Aphex Twin" etc and set track artist to the actual track artists. Set Compilation=1

I tend to allow SBS to treat OST albums as "Various Artists" (ie as normal compilations - no special tagging, just set the correct track artist for each track.) I'm not sure you can have a set rule for OST's since some are genuine single artist albums (for example, Ry Cooder has done several).


As far as the library settings are concerned, actually I have "list compilations under each artists" and "list albums by all artists" set.

I don't have any TPE2 MP3 tags...

as for iTunes - sorry, I can't help you with that.