GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 517671
Group Multi-Artist Albums in Album View
Last modified: 2008-08-26 19:16:29 UTC
Currently, in album view the same album is shown multiple times if the artist is unique. It would be handy to be able to intelligently recognize or somehow mark that an album has multiple artists and to group them accordingly. This would provide a cleaner album list to scroll through.
The de-facto standard way to solve this issue is to support the "albumartist" tag. This is used to put albums containing various artists together while keeping distinct albums with the same name apart.
As I stated in the email list conversation, I think "albumartist" is a hack and there should be a better solution, but I'm also in favor of standards so I'll take it however it gets solved. :-)
Please note there is already a lot of music tagged with the albumartist tag. There is no other way to guarantee that two albums with the same title did not get released in the same year (grouping by date tag where only year instead of a full release date is a valid format). Changing artist to a common value is also not an option as that's the tag that gets displayed in all music players (even where performer tag might be more appropriate).
MusicBrainz Picard also makes use of the albumartist tag. Removing the target milestone since 0.13.x won't be getting any more love. Also, this seems more like a "Metadata" bug than a "User Interface" one, since that's where the mishandling is.
Actually, as far as MusicBrainz Picard... while it does fill the "albumartist" tag with "Various Artists" (as well as the "albumartistsortorder" with the same), I believe the tag that it uses in final determination of a multi-artist album is "compilation" (with a value of 1). I ran into a problem with this before, when using Picard to organize an album which wasn't available in the MusicBrainz database. Until I found and added the compilation tag, it was treating it as individual albums by each artist. Again, this tag seems like a hack, as much as albumartist does, but it is at least a somewhat more sensible hack. (On a small bit of searching, it appears that iTunes uses the same behavior)
Compilation is explicitly supported by devices such as iPods, and should be used whether in conjunction with AlbumArtist or not.
Since ripping a CD with Banshee uses MusicBrainz metadata, it would make sense to group things using the MusicBrainz Release ID, which is foolproof and not dependent on any other tags. Barring the existence of MusicBrainz metadata, albumartist and compilation tags would make sane fallbacks.
MusicBrainz Release ID sounds like a very good option; I like it. :-) Thanks Dave.
Essentially a dupe, but I'll leave this open since it's has a lot of discussion.
*** Bug 525889 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 527895 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
As an example of how severe/annoying this bug can be, I present to you Short Music for Short People, a collection of ~30 second punk songs by 101 different bands. (In case anyone's curious the last track is three songs combined.) http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g294/GreySim/multipleartistsseriousouchies.png
I agree. It's an annoying bug. As I listen too many Soundtrack albuns, the interface split themall.
*** Bug 530173 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bumping priority.
*** Bug 531312 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 536059 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 538231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
At long last, fixed in r4160.
*** Bug 537110 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 432040 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 541334 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
It does not seem to work with Banshee 1.2 in openSuse 11.0
(In reply to comment #23) > It does not seem to work with Banshee 1.2 in openSuse 11.0 Can you provide more specifics? What artists/albums are you referring to? What's the metadata for the tracks? And how is it listed in Banshee's browser?
Created attachment 115537 [details] banshee MultiArtist
Created attachment 115538 [details] banshee MultiArtist Track tags
Comment on attachment 115537 [details] banshee MultiArtist Screenshot with the Album
(In reply to comment #26) > Created an attachment (id=115538) [edit] > banshee MultiArtist Track tags The Album Artist is Chris Cornell. This needs to be something like "Various Artists" to affect the browser. Banshee will pull together and group in the browser all tracks that have the same Album Artist and Album.
I have the same problem in Fedora, with SVN updated version. This is my example: 1. I have a tribute album to an artist, Joan Manuel Serrat, whose tracks are interpreted by other artists. 2. I select all the tracks of this album and set the Album Artist tag to Joan Manuel Serrat. The Track Artist tag contains the interpret of each song. One of this interprets, Manolo García, only has one track in my library, the one of this album. 3. After that, the browser is supposed to show in the Artist block the Album Artist Joan Manuel Serrat, but it doesn't. Also, it is supposed not to show the artist Manolo García, because its track "belongs" to the last artist. Pfff, it is difficult to explain. I will try to attach a screenshot if needed.
(In reply to comment #29) > Pfff, it is difficult to explain. I will try to attach a screenshot if needed. Sure, please do. Can you be sure to show the track you mention as well as at least one more from that album?
Created attachment 115563 [details] Album with different artists 1. I have some tracks of an album with different artists, so in the album browser there appears one album for artist and in the artist browser there appear every artist.
Created attachment 115564 [details] 3. Multiartist album 3. After editing the Album Artist tag of the tracks, the album becomes multiartist, so just one album is showed in the browser. That's right. But all the track artists, that have no own album, appear in the artist browser, and if I click in the the album artist, the multiartist album doesn't appear. Is this the right behaviour? By the way, I think all 'Unknown album' should not appear, because if I have a lot of tracks of different artists where I don't know the album I will have a lot of 'Unknown album'.
(In reply to comment #32) > Created an attachment (id=115564) [edit] > But all the track artists, that have no own album, appear in the artist > browser This is intended behavior. > and if I click in the the album artist, the multiartist album doesn't > appear. Is this the right behaviour? That doesn't sound right. Can you post a screenshot of what it looks like in that case?
Created attachment 115571 [details] Album artist has no albums After setting the Album Artist tag with 'Joan Manuel Serrat' in the tracks of that album, if I click in that artist, the album doesn't appear.
Created attachment 115572 [details] Album artist not in the browser If an Album Artist is not the Track Artist in any track, it will not appear in the artist browser, although the multiartist album does appear in the album browser.
(In reply to comment #35) > If an Album Artist is not the Track Artist in any track, it will not appear in > the artist browser, although the multiartist album does appear in the album > browser. Again, intended behavior. You may be able to change this soon (see Gabriel's work: http://banshee-project.org/~gburt/filter_menu_mockups/). (I'd like to see the Album Artist used by default for the browser, for example.) Since being fixed, there have been a lot of comments about it, but no more bug-related information (i.e. it doesn't need to be reopened). So can I request that anyone with any trouble with this behavior post to the mailing list or chat in IRC before posting here?
*** Bug 535974 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hi, I do have a music library on my computer, and when I'm import it (from local directory), the albums with multiple artists are shown as different albums. Since this bug should be fixed (I'm using 1.2.1) this shouldn't happen. (Or is this bug fixed only if you import directly from the CD?) Greetings, Nathan
nathan, it should work for you. however, your files may have some incorrect tags. check the albumartist tags using the metadata dialog in banshee and see if there's anything wrong.
The album artist is the same as the track artist. I guess album artis must be the same for all tracks in the album before they are grouped? Since the songs were imported by another application (or by an older version of banshee) this can be the problem. So indeed, when I set the album artists to Various artists (or something) it works.
Yeah... this is to be expected :) Nice that it works for you now
Reposting my previous request: > Since being fixed, there have been a lot of comments about it, but no more > bug-related information (i.e. it doesn't need to be reopened). So can I request > that anyone with any trouble with this behavior post to the mailing list or > chat in IRC before posting here?