Is there a way to define an album level sort order tag?

[Syco54645]

So I am currently fixing my music collection and moving from Plex to LMS. I am curious if there is a way to define albums to sort based on more than just the title, Plex had a sort title tag that would be used if filled out. I have a large collection of live music. The bootlegs are handled fine but a title like DMBLive: China Club, New York, NY 2004-01-09 does not sort based on the shows date. Putting the date at the front of the album name would work but could be messy. Ideally I would like to sort these by the date. Does anything exist that I can pull off this type of sorting?

Thank you

[slartibartfast]

So I am currently fixing my music collection and moving from Plex to LMS. I am curious if there is a way to define albums to sort based on more than just the title, Plex had a sort title tag that would be used if filled out. I have a large collection of live music. The bootlegs are handled fine but a title like DMBLive: China Club, New York, NY 2004-01-09 does not sort based on the shows date. Putting the date at the front of the album name would work but could be messy. Ideally I would like to sort these by the date. Does anything exist that I can pull off this type of sorting?

Thank you

The ALBUMSORT tag should do it.

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[Syco54645]

The ALBUMSORT tag should do it.

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Thanks so much. I will more than likely write a script to add this automatically if I cannot find a way to do it otherwise. I am sure beets can do it but :shudder:

[garym]

Thanks so much. I will more than likely write a script to add this automatically if I cannot find a way to do it otherwise. I am sure beets can do it but :shudder:

mp3tag can do this easily if you have the date or year field completed. Just use "Tag to Tag" command and create ALBUMSORT tag contents from date/year and ALBUM tag. That said, in LMS, if you use the MATERIAL webGUI (which you should!), one of the album display options is to sort by YEAR underneath ARTIST, so all the albums of an artist are sorted by year rather than alphabetical. That is, choose "Year, Album" in the album sort options in MY MUSIC.

[Syco54645]

mp3tag can do this easily if you have the date or year field completed. Just use "Tag to Tag" command and create ALBUMSORT tag contents from date/year and ALBUM tag. That said, in LMS, if you use the MATERIAL webGUI (which you should!), one of the album display options is to sort by YEAR underneath ARTIST, so all the albums of an artist are sorted by year rather than alphabetical. That is, choose "Year, Album" in the album sort options in MY MUSIC.

Thank you for pointing that out but unfortunately my year tags are a mess. Also the official album release years do not coincide with the recordings (there is a new Grateful Dead boxset just came out of shows from the early 80s). My DMB flacs purchased from their store are tagged amazingly bad, like made me mad they are so bad. I tried to fix it with Picard but made a bigger mess of things and reverted to a backup.

For bootlegs this would work but I do not tag them by date, I certainly could though. I wrote an application called TagBot (https://github.com/Syco54645/TagBot) to help automate this process for me, but it is only for concert recordings. I could add a date tag and populate that. I intend to add the ALBUMSORT tag as soon as I have some free time to work on it again. I may just write a quick script to churn through the existing stuff and add it.

Which speaking of, out of the scope of the original question but can I list only music contained in a certain folder? I keep my official and bootleg releases separate to make it easier to browse. I thought maybe the Additional Browse Modes plugin could do it but I do not think it has access to that sort of information.

[garym]

Thank you for pointing that out but unfortunately my year tags are a mess. Also the official album release years do not coincide with the recordings (there is a new Grateful Dead boxset just came out of shows from the early 80s). My DMB flacs purchased from their store are tagged amazingly bad, like made me mad they are so bad. I tried to fix it with Picard but made a bigger mess of things and reverted to a backup.

For bootlegs this would work but I do not tag them by date, I certainly could though. I wrote an application called TagBot (https://github.com/Syco54645/TagBot) to help automate this process for me, but it is only for concert recordings. I could add a date tag and populate that. I intend to add the ALBUMSORT tag as soon as I have some free time to work on it again. I may just write a quick script to churn through the existing stuff and add it.

Which speaking of, out of the scope of the original question but can I list only music contained in a certain folder? I keep my official and bootleg releases separate to make it easier to browse. I thought maybe the Additional Browse Modes plugin could do it but I do not think it has access to that sort of information.

yep, can be a mess. I retag my Grateful Dead shows by year of performance and then put year of release in comment tag. In LMS, my music, you can select folder browsing. That might work better for all your concert shows.

[Syco54645]

yep, can be a mess. I retag my Grateful Dead shows by year of performance and then put year of release in comment tag. In LMS, my music, you can select folder browsing. That might work better for all your concert shows.

That may be what I end up doing. I could also abuse the additional browse modes plugin somehow, or perhaps create my own suited to my needs.

Thanks for the help and ideas. It is greatly appreciated.

[Syco54645]

yep, can be a mess. I retag my Grateful Dead shows by year of performance and then put year of release in comment tag. In LMS, my music, you can select folder browsing. That might work better for all your concert shows.

I found a way to do it. I am using the plugin Sqlite Virtual Libraries with the following virtual library definition. My bootlegs are stored in a directory named 00-Bootlegs. I could tighten it up some but it works fine for what I need.

-- VirtualLibraryName: Bootlegs
insert or ignore into library_track (library, track)
select '%s', tracks.id
from tracks
    where 
      tracks.url like '%%00-Bootleg%%'
      and tracks.audio = 1
group by tracks.id