"Various Artists" in Artists

[erland]

There currently already exists two "Various Artists" entries in the Artists list (special one at the top of every page, and normal artist entry sorted within "V"). A small cosmetic change to set this special label to have square brackets around it (i.e. appear as "[Various Artists]") to show the difference would be good. Also something beginning with "[" naturally sorts to the top of the list, so it would look less odd anyway.

Oh, I didn't look later in the list, I only looked for the first "Various Artists" entry.

I can actually see my album with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" in the second "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V". However, this is new in 7.6, in 7.5 none of the lists contains my ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" album.

In the first entry at the top of the page I only see the albums explicitly marked as compilations and due to this not the one with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists".

Do we really need two "Various Artists" entries ?
Wouldn't it be enough to just remove the top "Various Artists" entry and keep the one under "V" ?

It would be great if someone else using 7.6 also could check if you also see the problematic albums with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" under the "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V".

[Philip Meyer]

>Oh, I didn't look later in the list, I only looked for the first
>"Various Artists" entry.
>
Hence why I think it should really be labelled "Compilations" or "[Various Artists]" - it's not the same as the album artist called "Various Artists".

>I can actually see my album with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" in the
>second "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V". However, this is new
>in 7.6, in 7.5 none of the lists contains my ALBUMARTIST="Various
>Artists" album.
>
So there isn't a problem in 7.6 that needs fixing - already fixed, or is this only after you applied your patch?

>In the first entry at the top of the page I only see the albums
>explicitly marked as compilations and due to this not the one with
>ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists".
>
>Do we really need two "Various Artists" entries ?
>
Yes - compilations can have any album artist name; some of which may be "Various Artists", but can be different for each album. i.e. there is no real relationship between compilation flag and album artist name.

My "Various Artists" compilation list contains:
- Lots of compilations by "Various Artists".
- Some compilations that have been compiled/remixed by other artists, such as "Another Late Night: Groove Armada" - a compilation of songs that were mixed together by Groove Armada, thus AlbumArtist=Groove Armada, Compilation=1.

I can navigate to Artists > Various Artists (the top entry), and sort the list of albums by Artist, Album.

Some people categorise compilations, such as albumartist="Soundtrack", and thus would appear under "Various Artists" but labelled as by "Soundtrack".

>Wouldn't it be enough to just remove the top "Various Artists" entry
>and keep the one under "V" ?
>
No - the top Various Artists is a list of compilations, the one within "V" section is only albums by AlbumArtist=Various Artists.

I think I'm repeating myself somewhat, but it seems peope don't find it clear what the special artist entry at the top of the list of artists contains.

Phil

[erland]

>Oh, I didn't look later in the list, I only looked for the first
>"Various Artists" entry.
>
Hence why I think it should really be labelled "Compilations" or "[Various Artists]" - it's not the same as the album artist called "Various Artists".

Yea that makes a lot more sense now, having two "Various Artists" entries with different contents is very confusing.

>I can actually see my album with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" in the
>second "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V". However, this is new
>in 7.6, in 7.5 none of the lists contains my ALBUMARTIST="Various
>Artists" album.
>
So there isn't a problem in 7.6 that needs fixing - already fixed, or is this only after you applied your patch?

It works in the official version, I hadn't applied any patches on this installation.

>Wouldn't it be enough to just remove the top "Various Artists" entry
>and keep the one under "V" ?
>
No - the top Various Artists is a list of compilations, the one within "V" section is only albums by AlbumArtist=Various Artists.

I think I'm repeating myself somewhat, but it seems peope don't find it clear what the special artist entry at the top of the list of artists contains.

It makes a lot more sense now, when I know there are two different "Various Artists" entries. Sorry if I've caused a lot of confusion in this thread because I only thought there was a single "Various Artists" entry.

I'm not sure exactly what the best solution would be but it's confusing as it works now with two "Various Artists" entries which contains different things. So the top entry should at least be renamed to "Compilations" and preferably moved up to a main menu called "Compilations".

[Philip Meyer]

>I'm not sure exactly what the best solution would be but it's confusing
>as it works now with two "Various Artists" entries which contains
>different things. So the top entry should at least be renamed to
>"Compilations" and preferably moved up to a main menu called
>"Compilations".

What I've been saying all along, and I think even Mr. Sinatra is in approval - got there in the end ;-)

One/Some people don't seem to want another Browse Compilations menu, but I guess it could be hidden if there are no compilations in the library.

Phil

[erland]

>I'm not sure exactly what the best solution would be but it's confusing
>as it works now with two "Various Artists" entries which contains
>different things. So the top entry should at least be renamed to
>"Compilations" and preferably moved up to a main menu called
>"Compilations".

What I've been saying all along, and I think even Mr. Sinatra is in approval - got there in the end ;-)

One/Some people don't seem to want another Browse Compilations menu, but I guess it could be hidden if there are no compilations in the library.

Compilations without any ALBUMARTIST is only shown under the top "Various Artists" entry and not under the one sorted under "V", is that the correct behavior ?

It means that you can't reach these from the "Artists" menu if we move "Compilations" menu to a top level menu, you would have to reach them trough "Compilations" instead.

I guess this is what I should expect if I've selected the "Group compilation albums together" option. And if I've selected the "List compilation albums under each artist" the "Compilations" menu would be hidden and I can instead reach them from the "Artists" menu.

A side effect would be that I can't reach these albums through the "Genres" menu if I've selected the "Group compilation albums together" option. That could possibly be a reason to keep "Compilations" inside "Artists" menu.

[Philip Meyer]

>Compilations without any ALBUMARTIST is only shown under the top
>"Various Artists" entry and not under the one sorted under "V", is that
>the correct behavior ?
>
An album always has an album artist - either:

a) the one specified through tags
b) derived from the artist(s) on the songs
c) if there are varying artists, gets the default Various Artists.

I'd expect all albums to be shown under an artist, so these should be shown under Various Artists.

Are you sure that the albums have "Various Artists" set as an album artist? i.e. if you navigate into the song, is it labelled as being by Various Artists?

>It means that you can't reach these from the "Artists" menu if we move
>"Compilations" menu to a top level menu, you would have to reach them
>trough "Compilations" instead.
>
Doesn't sound right to me, and they do appear under Various Artists in 7.5.5.

>I guess this is what I should expect if I've selected the "Group
>compilation albums together" option. And if I've selected the "List
>compilation albums under each artist" the "Compilations" menu would be
>hidden and I can instead reach them from the "Artists" menu.
>
"Group compilation albums together" option is very badly worded - there's been a suggested name change registered on a bug report for many years.

It means "don't display artists that only appear on compilations", and thus reduces the clutter of the artist list. You can also think of it as "only display album artists", only it can still include Band/Orchestra, Composers and Conductors.

Whatever option is chosen, I'd expect to see Various Artists in the list, and would see all albums for which Various Artists is the album artist.

>A side effect would be that I can't reach these albums through the
>"Genres" menu if I've selected the "Group compilation albums together"
>option. That could possibly be a reason to keep "Compilations" inside
>"Artists" menu.

Perhpas you could look in the DB to see what has been stored for one of your example albums? What is in albums.contributor, contributor_albums and contributor_tracks for the album?

[erland]

>It means that you can't reach these from the "Artists" menu if we move
>"Compilations" menu to a top level menu, you would have to reach them
>trough "Compilations" instead.
>
Doesn't sound right to me, and they do appear under Various Artists in 7.5.5.

I'll get back tomorrow when I've looked in the DB but 7.5 behaves different than 7.6. It is an album with COMPILATION=1 but without any ALBUMARTIST tag. I probably don't need the COMPILATION=1 tag on this album, it might possibly behave differently if I remove it.

In 7.5 I do see the album under the second "Various Artists" entry but not in 7.6. As far as I can see, I can only reach the album through the top "Various Artists" entry in 7.6, so moving that to a top level "Compilations" menu means this album can't be reached through the "Artists" menu in 7.6.

[erland]

Perhpas you could look in the DB to see what has been stored for one of your example albums? What is in albums.contributor, contributor_albums and contributor_tracks for the album?

Ok, the albums I'm able to test with looks like this, I'm not sure Album5 is properly tagged but I included it just because it actually exists in my library. I think I tagged it that way because I didn't know who performed on it but it would probably be more correct to set ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" on it. All albums have ARTIST tags, I'm only listing the ALBUMARTIST and COMPILATION tags below.

And the result in the database, both in 7.5 and 7.6 is:

Album1: ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists"
- albums.compilation => null
- albums.contributor => "Various Artists"
- contributor_album => "Various Artists"(album artist(5)) and individual artists (track artist(6))

Album2: ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists", COMPILATION=1
- albums.compilation => 1
- albums.contributor => "Various Artists"
- contributor_album => "Various Artists"(album artist(5)) and individual artists (artist(1))

Album3: COMPILATION=1
- albums.compilation => 1
- albums.contributor => "Various Artists"
- contributor_album => individual artists (artist(1))

Album4: Nether COMPILATION nor ALBUMARTIST, just multiple individual ARTIST tags
- albums.compilation => 1
- albums.contributor => "Various Artists"
- contributor_album => individual artists (artist(1))

Album5: ARTIST="Various Artists", COMPILATION=1
- albums.compilation => 1
- albums.contributor => "Various Artists"
- contributor_album => "Various Artists"(artist(1))

The contributor_track contains same information as contributor_album, its just shown per track instead of per album.

It seems like contributor_album only is filled based on real tags and not by the "Various Artists" entries generated by SBS due to compilation auto detect logic.

To me the following feels a bit strange from a consistency perspective:
- Feels like "track artists" are produced based on existence of ALBUMARTIST tag but only as long as the album hasn't a COMPILATION tag. This feels strange to me. Either all albums with albums.compilation=1 should follow the same principles or all albums with an ALBUMARTIST tag should follow the same principles. The current situation where track artists is a special case for only Album2 just feels very strange to me.
- To me it feels like Album3, Album4 and possibly even Album5 also should have a "Various Artists" entry in the contributor_album table. That would make it consistent with the contents of albums.contributor.

However, regarding the visibility in the Artists menu, I have to look into it a bit more because I just noticed that the 7.6 installation on my development machine behaves differently than the 7.6 on the production machine. So I suspect there might be some setting and not 7.5 vs 7.6 that causes the problem.

In the development setup 7.5 behaves as 7.6 which means that:
- Album1: Not visible through "Artists" menu
- Album2: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries
- Album3: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries
- Album4: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries
- Album5: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries

Yesterday when I looked in the 7.6 production setup I'm pretty sure the visibility was:
- Album1: Only visible through "Various Artists" under "V"
- Album2: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries
- Album3: Only visible through the top "Various Artists" entry
- Album4: Only visible through the top "Various Artists" entry
- Album5: Visible through both "Various Artists" entries

I'll get back when I've found out why the setups differs. My patch isn't applied on any of the setups so it shouldn't cause the difference.

[vagskal]

On 7.5.4 an album with ALBUMARTIST=Nils Ferlin [The name of a composer/poet who is not album artist or artist on any album] and COMPILATION=1 will not generate a Nils Ferlin entry in the artist list (when composers are not set to appear in that list).

[erland]

I'll get back when I've found out why the setups differs. My patch isn't applied on any of the setups so it shouldn't cause the difference.

Ok, I found the reason and I'm now going to repeat something that has been said partly before.

It's caused by a collision between the special "Various Artists" artist and the one in the ALBUMARTIST tag. The behavior in 7.5 and 7.6 is exactly the same as far as I can see.

If both tag and setting is "Various Artists", you will only get one "Various Artists" entry at the top, both in 7.5 and 7.6. And that entry will only list albums where albums.compilation=1 and due to this it won't include Album1 in my previous post.

If they tag and setting differs, for example "Compilations" in SBS Settings and "Various Artists" in the ALBUMARTIST tag, you will get two entries, one for "Compilations" at the top and one for "Various Artists" sorted under "V".

It's easy to miss this behavior because you need to do a full rescan after changing the SBS Settings to see the difference. This is what tricked me because in the 7.6 setup I had Swedish as language which means that the setting will default to "Blandade artister" instead of "Various Artists" and due to this it didn't collide with the tag value. I changed to "English" but I didn't do a full rescan so the result was that I actually had two "Various Artists" entries but after doing a full rescan, the one under "V" disappears. SBS doesn't trigger a rescan when you change the language but it does affect the scanning result as described above, so you will end up with a different library and menu content next time you rescan.

If the "Various Artists" entry under "V" exists and you have performed a rescan, that entry will work as any other artist and retrieve its data through the contributor_album table. Due to this it will never contain Album3 and Album4 listed in my previous post as they don't have any contributor_album entries connected to "Various Artists".

So based on all this, my suggestion would be to:
- Rename top "Various Artists" entry to "Compilations" and move it to a top level menu.
- Change the scanning logic so it produces the necessary contributor_album entries also for Album3 and Album4 so they can be reached through "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V".
- Change the album lists query so it always look at contributor_album/contributor_track and never at albums.compilation. The only exception is the new "Compilations" menu which still should only look at albums.compilation and not contributor_album/contributor_track.

The result would be:
- Album1: Visible under "Artists/Various Artists" sorted under "V"
- Album2: Visible under "Artists/Various Artists" sorted under "V" and in "Compilations" menu
- Album3: Visible under "Artists/Various Artists" sorted under "V" and in "Compilations" menu
- Album4: Visible under "Artists/Various Artists" sorted under "V" and in "Compilations" menu
- Album5: Visible under "Artists/Various Artists" sorted under "V" and in "Compilations" menu

If we want a small quick fix for 7.6, it would be possible to just change the default name used in the setting from "Various Artists" to "Compilations" and that should minimize the risk for collisions, and we can later in 7.6++ do the bigger change.

Of course, even easier would be to just ask the users that have problem to change the setting to "Compilations" and instead focus on the real solution in 7.6++. I suspect this is what we will end up with for 7.6 as there are other a lot more serious problems with higher priority which needs to be solved before this.

Just for reference, the album queries for the top "Various Artists" entry currently look like this:

SELECT album.* FROM albums 
	JOIN contributors ON contributors.id = albums.contributor 
WHERE 
	albums.compilation = 1 
GROUP BY albums.id 
ORDER BY albums.titlesort

And the one for the "Various Artists" entry sorted under "V" looks like this: (this entry only exists as long as there isn't a collision)

SELECT album.* FROM albums 
	JOIN contributor_album ON contributor_album.album = albums.id 
	JOIN contributors ON contributors.id = albums.contributor 
WHERE 
	contributor_album.contributor = 7 AND 
	contributor_album.role IN (1,6,5) 
GROUP BY albums.id 
ORDER BY albums.titlesort

Assuming everyone agrees, what's the next step ?
I'm guessing no one from Logitech monitors this thread ?