Building tag information from the filename if no tags are present is
planned, also we will add a "tag fixing wizard" at some point which
can do all kinds of tag retreiving/fixing/polishing.

Yeah, hadess told me about the wizard. This would be a nice holdover
until then, but I certainly would't object if you marked this WONTFIX :)

File name can be viewed now through the song information dialog. Shall
I close this bug?

Well, it's still not sortable that way, so it's sort of useless if
you're trying to play something without tags. (xmms lets you sort by
filename, FWIW.)

The filename is used instead of the title if no title tag is present,
this should hopefully be enough. If not, please reopen.

The major problem is missing track number in id3 tag, not the title.
Since track number is missing from most mp3 files I get, Rhythmbox
sorts wrong no matter what column I sort by. And those albums are
ripped by professional mp3 releasers - directory names, file names,
and files within (.nfo for text info about release, .cue for track
info in single-file mix, .jpg for artwork, .sfv for checksums of
files) contain all information you may want to know. And still
Rhythmbox sorts them wrong. Nothing like listening to a mix where
tracks are in wrong order.

The solution is to add "Full Path" column and let sort by that. In
addition, sort by full path as last, silent criteria in all cases. So,
if you sort by Album, you get albums in alphabetical order regardless
of their location on disk, but still get track order correct. At
least, do sort by filename if track numbers are missing in all files
in directory - I can imagine an album where tracks are named
artist-title.mp3 but have track number in id3 tag - although I would
never do that myself.

*** Bug 102185 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Having the ability to show partial paths as an optional, sortable column would
be really great.  I have a lot of mp3's with no id3 tags and with partial paths
like "<artist>/track1.mp3" or "<artist>/<album>/track1.mp3".

It seems kind of onerous to make me edit the id3 tag when I just want to listen
to the song.   Like maybe I just downloaded a whole directory of songs from the
artist's web page and I want to listen to them all.  I don't even know if I 
want to keep them yet so I sure don't want to meticulously label them just so I
can play them and figure it out.

Hi,

I want this feature added NOT because I have bad tags in my files, but because I
use the filesystem to organize my files the way I want.  None of the existing
sort orders are what I want.  If I sort by album name, then the albums by the
same artist get spread out all over the place.  If I sort by artist, then songs
from compilation CDs end up spread out all over the place.  There is no
algorithm that will ever sort the songs the way I want, but providing "Sort by
Pathname" would be a simple fix.  (my sorting algorithm is approximately to sort
albums with one artist by artist and all others by album type (eg. "Sound
Tracks"), then sort by album name, then by track number)

All that's needed is to add a "path name" column to the display, and I'd be
happy, 'cause then I could sort on that column and then shrink it to near zero
width to get it out of the way.

Note that it has to be the complete path, not just the file name, that is used
for the sorting.

Kipp, would an option to somehow "group" compilations so that rhythmbox thinks
they are made by a single "virtual" artist help in your usecase ? itunes does
something like that.

hi Christophe,

i'm a long time iTunes user, and most of my music has valid tags. 
But a few hundred songs are either compilations or dont have tags. In iTunes,
the "virtual artist" or the compilation property keeps all the songs together,
ordered.

It's basically the same problem the guy on comment 9 has. I would love somekind
of compilations in rhythmbox.

(This is Debian bug http://bugs.debian.org/339539.)

If this bug were resolved, it would get me to switch to Rhythmbox. Right now I stick with the crappy interface and poor codec support of beep-media-player, because it at least doesn't try to outsmart me at sorting my music.

If I use Rhythmbox, I'm unable to easily find:
* mix CDs
* classical music (it sorts by performer and album, which are far less meaningful than composer and work)
* stuff that was poorly tagged by FreeDB
* music by foreign artists whose name will be represented in a variety of ways (like Yoko Kanno, who FreeDB is as likely to call Kanno Yoko, and who MusicBrainz calls 菅野よう子)

Yes, these problems can be solved by "virtual artists" and general cleanup of tags, but only after a lot of invested effort. Why not include a directory tree as one way of filtering music, just like you can filter by artist, album, and genre?

*** Bug 131526 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

We now have a fairly ugly 'location' column that allows you to sort by the full path to the file.  Maybe someone who cares about this idea can give some feedback on whether this helps or not.

Dear reporter, could you comment on Jonathans request in comment #15? :)

IMHO, a location column can be useful, if you have a strict (hierarchical) organization of your files. But I can imagine that the need for a *filename* column can't be fulfilled with a location column. It shouldn't be so hard to extract the filename and add another column, is it?

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for.
Thanks!

Hi, I'm having the same issues as the people who reported this bug. I have also a hierarchical file structure for sorting my music. I would like to locate my music and transfer it to my ipod in a hierarchical way, but the location tab isn't enough. It would be great to see the file structure as a browser view, so folder drag and drop to my ipod device is possible. Can this be done?

BTW, i didn't found a way to reopen the bug.

Thanks for your hard work. Rhythmbox is great!