>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 _______________________________________________ beta mailing list beta@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/beta
