"Various Artists" in Artists

[Philip Meyer]

>> A better and potentially low-risk is to change browse menu sql to not
>> filter out compilation artist from list of artists in the normal place.
>> After all, that's what people are really requesting. The special
>> "Various Artists" artist (that only contains compilations) can continue
>> to exist at the top of the list.
>>
>Isn't that what you get already today by selecting "List compilation
>albums under each artist" in the SBS settings ?
>
No, I think you mis-understood what I meant. I wasn't talking about changing the types of artists that appear in the artist list.

The problem is that albums with AlbumArtist="Various Artists" and no compilation tag are hidden, because they are no compilations, and only compilations are shown under "Various Artists".

The suggestion is that all Various Artists albums are turned into compilations such that they are visible under this artist. But that doesn't feel like the right thing to do.

I was suggesting to change the SQL that is used to fetch the list of artists, such that it doesn't ignore albums that are albumartist=Various Artists and compilation is null, such that it lists a Various Artists album under "V" that contains all albums that are by Various Artists (either comps or not comps).

The "special" artist representing all compilations can remain at the front of the artists lists, even being called "Various Artists" - people can still see a list of albums that have been tagged as comps, or have differing track artists without an album artist. Users that have an albumartist on every album would never see any albums within this special artist record (never have comps) - unless they have specifically added a compilation tag.

Even better, would be if the first special artist name was re-labelled something like "[Compilations]" instead of "Various Artists". It would still contain albums that have album artist = Various Artists, or whatever album artist tag value that the user chooses. i.e. the settings param would still be blank representing "Various Artists" for the scanner to assign this value.

Better still would be to pull that out into a Browse Compilations menu, so it doesn't need all of the special handling code to reduce the complexity of the querying, display and alphabar support, etc.

A user today can change the pref setting to "Compilations", but that means the scanner could set AlbumArtist=Compilations, which is not good for some. It's okay if people always use albumartist tags, because they'd never have any compilations (the current suggested work-around that some users choose to do).

[garym]

May just be my usage, but just for some info:

Mixture of FLAC and MP3 files.

0. I set the complications name to be COMPILATIONS in settings rather than Various Artists
1. all my true compilations have a COMPILATIONS=1 tag
2. I use Album Artist= Various Artists for compilations
3. I don't otherwise use Album Artist at all unless I have a non-compilation that has at least one track with differing artists from others on the album (i.e., at least one song maybe has two ARTIST tags (Flac).
4. In SbS settings I select "group compilations together"
5. I rarely browse by album. Almost all browsing is by Artist, then by Album

In my Artist list I see COMPILATIONS (and all the correct albums). I also see the exact same albums listed again under Various Artists.

I also see the compilation tracks listed under the separate Artists along with regular artist albums (this may very well be only for artists where I have at least one other true album).

Other than seeing the compilations listed twice (under Compilations and under Various Artists), this all seems to work ok for me. But that may be because I don't really browse by ALBUM. And I don't have any VARIOUS ARTIST cds that are NOT compilations as well.

[Philip Meyer]

Pretty much the same as me then, except I don't set AA=Various Artists on compilation albums, because this causes the album to contain track artists, and thus browsing to an artist record from a song on a compilation only shows other compilation albums that the artist has been on, not all of the artists albums. Leaving the AA tag off causes it to be set to the default "Various Artists".

I believe this is different now in 7.6.

[erland]

>> A better and potentially low-risk is to change browse menu sql to not
>> filter out compilation artist from list of artists in the normal place.
>> After all, that's what people are really requesting. The special
>> "Various Artists" artist (that only contains compilations) can continue
>> to exist at the top of the list.
>>
>Isn't that what you get already today by selecting "List compilation
>albums under each artist" in the SBS settings ?
>
No, I think you mis-understood what I meant. I wasn't talking about changing the types of artists that appear in the artist list.

The problem is that albums with AlbumArtist="Various Artists" and no compilation tag are hidden, because they are no compilations, and only compilations are shown under "Various Artists".

The suggestion is that all Various Artists albums are turned into compilations such that they are visible under this artist. But that doesn't feel like the right thing to do.

Can you give me one realistic example were a user don't want to treat these albums as compilations ?
- If someone has set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists, it's pretty obvious that is has to be a compilation or it is incorrectly tagged and should have a different artist.
- I'd argue that the same also applies if someone has set ALBUMARTIST=Compilations, especially if this someone also has changed SBS Settings to name the special various artist "Compilations".

I think marking these as compilation is a good addition to the auto detect logic we already have, especially as tagging software like Musicbrainz Picard does set ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" and does NOT set COMPILATION=1. It does set a MUSICBRAINZ_VARIOUSARTISTS=1 tag but that's not used by SBS.

Would be interesting to know how ripping software set it when importing data from freedb and similar sources, I suspect they also set ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" and doesn't set any compilation tag.

I was suggesting to change the SQL that is used to fetch the list of artists, such that it doesn't ignore albums that are albumartist=Various Artists and compilation is null, such that it lists a Various Artists album under "V" that contains all albums that are by Various Artists (either comps or not comps).

Ok, that might work but it doesn't make sense to me. It's also going to add even more complexity to the browsing logic then we already have today, so I think it's the wrong way to go, at least until someone can give me a real world sample where an album with ALBUMARTIST="Various Artists" isn't a compilation.

The "special" artist representing all compilations can remain at the front of the artists lists, even being called "Various Artists" - people can still see a list of albums that have been tagged as comps, or have differing track artists without an album artist. Users that have an albumartist on every album would never see any albums within this special artist record (never have comps) - unless they have specifically added a compilation tag.

Having two entries will just make it more confusing, so I don't like this.

Even better, would be if the first special artist name was re-labelled something like "[Compilations]" instead of "Various Artists". It would still contain albums that have album artist = Various Artists, or whatever album artist tag value that the user chooses. i.e. the settings param would still be blank representing "Various Artists" for the scanner to assign this value.

Better still would be to pull that out into a Browse Compilations menu, so it doesn't need all of the special handling code to reduce the complexity of the querying, display and alphabar support, etc.

I'd prefer the separate "Browse Compilations" menu, only changing "Various Artists" to "Compilations" is going to create confusion among existing user base.

However, it's important to decide how to handle the "Genres" menu which also contains a list of artists. I could imagine that there are some people that don't want the "Genres/Pop" menu to be messed up with a lot of artists which only are available on compilation albums.

We could go with one level deeper menu structures like this, but it doesn't feel good to me:

Artists
   <artist>
       <normal album>
Compilations
   <compilation album>
Genres
   <genre>
      Artists
         <artist>
             <normal album>
      Compilations
         <compilation album>

An alternative would be to list all artists under "Genres" and ignore consistency and the fact that it produce a lot of unwanted artists in the "Genres" menu for some people.

Based on this I think I'd prefer a solution with an "All Artists" and "Album artists" menu, like:

Album Artists
   <album artist>
       <album>
All Artists
   <album artist or artist>
       <album>
Genres
   <genre>
      <album artist>
          <album>

Where the "Genres" menu if "List compilation albums under each artist" was selected would be changed to:

Genres
   <genre>
      <album artist or artist>
          <album>

A user today can change the pref setting to "Compilations", but that means the scanner could set AlbumArtist=Compilations, which is not good for some. It's okay if people always use albumartist tags, because they'd never have any compilations (the current suggested work-around that some users choose to do).

Could you give a real world example where it wouldn't be good if the scanner set AlbumArtist=Compilations ?

[erland]

3. I don't otherwise use Album Artist at all unless I have a non-compilation that has at least one track with differing artists from others on the album (i.e., at least one song maybe has two ARTIST tags (Flac).

Just out of interest, which tagging software do you use ?
Do you import data from freedb, musicbrainz or other similar services or do you enter it manually ?
If you import data, doesn't that produce an ALBUMARTIST tag ? Have you just removed this manually before saving the imported data ?

I haven't manually set ALBUMARTIST on any of my albums, but the Musicbrainz Picard tagger has added it on all of them through a MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST tag which is treated by SBS the same way as ALBUMARTIST.

The only tags I set manually are:
- COMPILATION=1 tag (which is just needed to make compilation albums appear since Picard has set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists)
- GENRE tag (which often isn't good enough when importing from freedb or similar sources)

[erland]

Anyone willing to test the scanner patch I posted here ?
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...650#post638650

I'd imagine that the window for non critical bug fixes like this in 7.6 is about to close, so if those that feel this is an important correction aren't able to spend some time fixing this fairly soon I don't think we can expect it to be included in 7.6.

As I previously mentioned, it seems to work in my own library but I'm not using OSX, Windows, MusicIP scanning and iTunes scanning in my setup and I only have a single album in my collection which is affected by the patch.

I'll post it in the bug report but I'd imaging that Logitech don't want to risk it unless someone is prepared to run some more tests on it.

[garym]

Just out of interest, which tagging software do you use ?
Do you import data from freedb, musicbrainz or other similar services or do you enter it manually ?
If you import data, doesn't that produce an ALBUMARTIST tag ? Have you just removed this manually before saving the imported data ?

I haven't manually set ALBUMARTIST on any of my albums, but the Musicbrainz Picard tagger has added it on all of them through a MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTIST tag which is treated by SBS the same way as ALBUMARTIST.

The only tags I set manually are:
- COMPILATION=1 tag (which is just needed to make compilation albums appear since Picard has set ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists)
- GENRE tag (which often isn't good enough when importing from freedb or similar sources)

I use dbpoweramp for ripping to FLAC (and later conversion to an MP3 mirror for my ipods). I also use mp3tag for other tag cleanup work. I typically don't change the tags from the ones automatically suggested from dbpa sources (which looks at 4 or 5 sources and takes the best/most consistent).

It will often (not always) fill in a AA tag. I delete this before ripping except for compilation albums (which do get a COMPILATION=1) or albums where at least one track artist is different (two artists, etc.). (I also use AA for artists that have various incarnations, Doug Sahm as album artist even though The Sir Douglas Quintet as track artist on all tracks on the album).

I also delete the Disc number on any 1 disk album (most albums). I only want disc tag when there are more than 1 disc to an album. And agree, I almost always change the GENRE to something I prefer.

I've gone back and forth as to whether I should have AA on everything, but at the moment I'm still NOT using AA where there is only a single track artist except for special cases noted above.

[garym]

Anyone willing to test the scanner patch I posted here ?
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...650#post638650

I'd imagine that the window for non critical bug fixes like this in 7.6 is about to close, so if those that feel this is an important correction aren't able to spend some time fixing this fairly soon I don't think we can expect it to be included in 7.6.

As I previously mentioned, it seems to work in my own library but I'm not using OSX, Windows, MusicIP scanning and iTunes scanning in my setup and I only have a single album in my collection which is affected by the patch.

I'll post it in the bug report but I'd imaging that Logitech don't want to risk it unless someone is prepared to run some more tests on it.

I'm running SbS 7.6 at work feeding SqueezePlay and have 100s of compilation albums. I'll try the patch, but never having done a patch, please give me the steps of installing the patch. I assume it is just copying a file to the right location on my win7 machine....

[erland]

I'm running SbS 7.6 at work feeding SqueezePlay and have 100s of compilation albums. I'll try the patch, but never having done a patch, please give me the steps of installing the patch. I assume it is just copying a file to the right location on my win7 machine....

You need to run the svn version of SBS with ActiveState perl, is this what you are using or are you using a nightly build ?

Nightly builds can't easily be patched as they are compiled into binaries.

[garym]

You need to run the svn version of SBS with ActiveState perl, is this what you are using or are you using a nightly build ?

Nightly builds can't easily be patched as they are compiled into binaries.

oh my. I'm using a nightly build. Sounds like running patches is beyond my capabilities unless I learn some new things....