GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 617477
Sort by track number fails for compilation albums with no artist ID3 set
Last modified: 2020-03-17 08:47:47 UTC
Created attachment 160172 [details] Screenshot showing track number sorting not working properly I have an electronica album which is a "compilation" album, with different artists for each track. When I select this album to play in the "Music" tab, and then click the track number heading to sort by track number, nothing happens. When I edit the ID3 tags for the songs and set the "compilation album artist" field to the "Paul van Dyk" for all the tracks, the track sorting instantly works again. If I manually remove the "compilation album artist" field from one of the tracks and click OK, the track is instantly jumps out of order (see attached screenshot...track 5 is the one I manually unselected the compilation artist field).
I'm not sure I follow what the bug is -- why did you unset track 5 as being part of the compilation?
Gabriel, I unset track 5 manually just to show in the screengrab that the track jumps out of order. The problem is simply that the track order sort doesn't work for albums with different artists unless the compilation artist is set. Since many ripped CDs don't properly set the compilation artist field, Banshee refuses to order the album properly if the track artists are different. I think I see the design decision you made, which is to still try to keep the albums clumped together when sorting by track number. However, shouldn't the proper behavior simply be to actually sort every visible track by track number? (all 1s at top, then 2s, etc)? Every other player I've used will truly sort by track number when chosen, and not try to override the sort to clump albums together. Cheers, Julian
(In reply to comment #2) > ... However, shouldn't > the proper behavior simply be to actually sort every visible track by track > number? (all 1s at top, then 2s, etc)? Why? what's the use case for that? Why a user would want that? > Every other player I've used will truly > sort by track number when chosen, and not try to override the sort to clump > albums together. IMO there is no real useful use case to do that, so this is why I think other players don't do TheRightThingTM. (My 2cents)
I don't think we've had any other requests to change the Track# sort to behave like that. I think the way it works now is much more useful and intuitive. Some additional rationale for it is that there can be multiple, different albums of the same title by different artists, and so it would be a mistake to sort them together. In fact, somebody was just trying to convince me to support having multiple albums of the same title by the *same* artist that are different. I think we've struck an OK balance. :)
I understand this is a design decision. I peronsally don't see the usefulness of this logic during the "sort by track number" feature, since the user will almost always click the "sort by album" if they want to sort by album. Most other players I've used will sort by album, then automagically arrange each album by track number to achieve the same effect. However, if the user clicks on "sort by track number", the player will actually sort by track number. This is useful in determining which songs have no track number tags, for example. But, I understand this is a design decision. *However*, it may be useful to try and handle the most common user case while not changing the design decision: If the user has filtered the pane down to a single album, with no "compilation artist" field set, with different track artists, and with every track having a unique track number, Banshee still will not sort by track number. It seems like Banshee should still sort by track number in this case, even if it thinks every track is on a different "album". Since it thinks every track is on a different album, there should be no harm in going ahead and rearranging the tracks by track number as requested. IMHO, this is a scenario which instantly caused me to think "this is a bug", and I'm guessing other users will think the same. The user clicks on the track number sort, and Banshee does absolutely nothing.
I'm changing back to unconfirmed, since I've verified other players that "sort by album" when sorting by track number still show this last case correctly (see comment 5). Here's another way to view the bug: 1) type a search term into the search bar such that your music collection is narrowed down to just a few songs on *different* albums. 2) Click the "track number" heading to sort by track number. --> Banshee does nothing. Rhythmbox, which also uses the same sorting design decision as Banshee (that is, will always try to group by album even when clicking on "sort by track") will correctly sort the songs by track number, since they are all on different albums and there is obviously no grouping to do.
Banshee is not under active development anymore and had its last code changes more than three years ago. Its codebase has been archived. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (or rather transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is being shut down) if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again. See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/issues/264 for more info.