>We have to accept this and find an alternative where at least a >significant amount of people can be happy. Tagging with >ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists is pretty common and I also think tagging >with ALBUMARTIST on all albums is pretty common. It depends on the >tagging software but I know I for a long time believe I didn't use >"ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists" but then I start to look at the tag and it >was actually there and had been added automatically by the tagging >software. > I would say it's not all that common to tag a regular album with an album artist. I believe freedb and EAC don't populate it, and I've always stripped the album artist tag out if its not necessary for consistency in my library.
But I don't think this matters, and shouldn't directly influence how the browse queries work. There needs to be a better separation of concern between: 1) scanning the media tags to create the music library database 2) browsing the library database We shouldn't be thinking about how files are tagged when looking at the ways we browse the music library. I think the scanner could populate each album with an album artist (use the tag if it exists, otherwise select one automatically - either the artists that appear on every track, or the various artists name). Then it would be safe to assume for browsing that Browse Album Artists is just a list of album artist role. It's crazy that a list of album artists currently needs logic to take album artists and artists but not if the album is a compilation. >ALBUM ARTISTS >Note that this >means that a compilation album tagged with "ALBUMARTIST=Various >Soundtrack Albums" will be found both under "Album Artists/Various >Soundtrack Albums" and under "Album Artists/Various Artists", but this >is not an issue, it's better that it appear in two places than no where >att all. > I disagree. Browse Compilations should contain a list of albums that are compilations, irrespective of name. Browse Album Artists should contains a list of artists that are associated with albums, irrespective of compilation flag. An album with album artist = "Various Soundtrack Albums" should not appear under "Various Artists". Just because it is a compilation, doesn't mean it should appear under Album Artists > Various Artists, as the user has decided to label it as being by a different artist. >ALL ARTISTS >- Should not contain any "Various Artists" entry, the whole purpose with >this menu is that you want to find music where an artist is involved >independent if the artist released the album or was just featured on a >specific track. I think it should contain "Various Artists". i.e. it should be a list of all artists of any contributor role. If people have tagged some albums with artist = Various Artists, it should appear in the list. Otherwise, the browse mode should be called "Other artists" or "Non-album artists" :-) >My personal feeling is that the "Composer, Conductor, Band" setting >will still be useful for this menu, so I don't think these options >should be hidden. I agree. >I also suspect that automatically setting the album artist during >scanning if it isn't already set in an ALBUMARTIST tag is going to >greatly simplify the browsing logic to accomplish all this, but I'll >leave up to Michael to decide when it's appropriate to look closer at >this. Yes, this would at least contain awkward decision logic to one place in the code, to be easier to maintain. _______________________________________________ beta mailing list beta@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
