This is related to bug #318579, which is about supporting intelligent handling of compilations, but not does necessarily depend on it.  

We should allow the user to specify a "disc artist" that would override the individual track artist when constructing the initial Artist/Album/Track hierarchy for ripping CDs.

e.g. I could enter "Compilations" when importing a Compilation release say "Homebake 2006" (a.k.a. "Various Artists" release) and it would use that name when generating the hierarchy:

Compilations/Homebake 2006/<Track name>

This would not overwrite the individual track artists, of course.  If the hierarchy did not include the Artist, then it would be ignored.  This prevents files from the same album being spewed across the file system, as is the current case when importing a compilation.

As a second cut implementation, we could have a "Compilation" checkbox that would automatically assign the release to the gconf-controlled Compilation subdirectory and would write a "compilation" flag into rhythmdb.xml and perhaps the file, although that would depend on bug #318579 somewhat.

Let's at least do the first cut (specification of the disc artist) soon to avoid the file system clutter.