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Bug 624311 - Setting an album as a compilation can be confusing
Setting an album as a compilation can be confusing
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: banshee
Classification: Other
Component: User Interface
1.6.1
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: 1.x
Assigned To: Banshee Maintainers
Banshee Maintainers
gnome[unmaintained]
: 626668 629568 633384 647953 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2010-07-14 08:35 UTC by Alex Bennée
Modified: 2020-03-17 09:30 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Alex Bennée 2010-07-14 08:35:44 UTC
The current Banshee Album view doesn't handle compilation albums well. If all the artists on the album are tagged Various Artists then the display of albums works as expected. However if the track artists are correctly tagged you end up with <n> albums of 1 track each. This makes navigating the album view less then useful.
Comment 1 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-07-14 13:08:35 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> The current Banshee Album view doesn't handle compilation albums well. If all
> the artists on the album are tagged Various Artists then the display of albums
> works as expected. However if the track artists are correctly tagged you end up
> with <n> albums of 1 track each. This makes navigating the album view less then
> useful.

This is what the "Album Artist" field is for once you've checked the "Compilation" box (under "Edit Track Information; sorry if the wording is different, I don't have Banshee in front of me).  This way, you can set the album artist to "Various Artists" so that the album will be grouped together, but you don't have to enter incorrect Artist metadata.  See http://banshee.fm/support/guide/track-list/ (bottom of the page) for more details.

I'm closing this as invalid, but if this solution doesn't solve the problem, or if you think there's a better way to do things, feel free to re-open this report.
Comment 2 Alex Bennée 2010-07-14 13:54:32 UTC
Ahh I see, yes that works fine. I'd been using EasyTag to clean up my colelction which doesn't support Album Artist (although does include Original Artist and Composer fields).

Apologies for not spotting the solution in the docs.
Comment 3 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-07-14 14:32:46 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> Ahh I see, yes that works fine. I'd been using EasyTag to clean up my
> colelction which doesn't support Album Artist (although does include Original
> Artist and Composer fields).
> 
> Apologies for not spotting the solution in the docs.

No worries, you're definitely not the first person to have this question.  In fact there have been enough bug reports and mailing list posts like this that it might be worth reopening this so that there can be some discussion about ways to make this more intuitive/discoverable.

Maybe when the "compilation" box is checked, the Album Artist could automatically be set to the localized version of "Various Artists".  Or if all songs in an album have the "compilation" flag set, then changing the "Album Artist" for one song would also change the "Album Artist" for all other songs of that album...?  Are there cases in which someone would want to have a compilation album without having the album artist match for all tracks on the album?  If Banshee were to start making logical guesses, could this just end up being more confusing in some situations?  Is this worth more discussion?

Thoughts from Banshee maintainers would probably be helpful, but I'm reopening this, at least for now.
Comment 4 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-08-11 20:09:49 UTC
*** Bug 626668 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Jonathan Lumb 2010-08-11 21:05:33 UTC
I think this needs to be made more intuitive as suggested - so that users don't have to manually go through and edit their (often massive) music collection. It's not a problem for power users who are familiar with MP3 tagging - but for new users or people who just want things to "work", I think the current solution is a little longwinded.  Automatically setting the Album Artist tag to "Various Artists" for albums which appear to be compilations would be a good option in my opinion.

As far as I know I can't think of any exceptions which wouldn't work well with this resolution...

I recently persuaded my sister to put Ubuntu on her system and she was overall very pleased, although slightly grudging about giving up her iTunes for Banshee. Not being a power user in the slightest, I don't think she would be pleased if she has to go through her entire collection and manually apply the "Various Artists" tag to all her compilations just so she can list all her albums correctly... just a thought.

Thanks
Comment 6 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-09-13 19:47:42 UTC
*** Bug 629568 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-09-13 19:50:45 UTC
Suggestions from Bug 629568:

"This is a bigger problem in several locales in Asia, since single artist albums
are very rare. 
This needs to be done manually every time we add a new album!

It would be better if banshee auto-detects such various-artist albums and
automatically checked the "Compilation Album Artist" checkbox in Track Info,
for all the songs in such albums. 
[Maybe also checking if the album names are a match? and then auto-set the
flag?]"
Comment 8 Alex Bennée 2010-09-14 13:32:37 UTC
A slightly better heuristic might be to look for a sequence of differing artists names with tack numbers and the same album name. Otherwise you risk confusing things like "Greatest Hits" albums from the same artist.
Comment 9 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-10-28 18:22:27 UTC
*** Bug 633384 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Laurens Hoek 2010-10-28 18:29:07 UTC
Having to explicitly set a compilation or album artist tag doesn't seem like a very viable solution to me.

Why not just add support for implicit detection and let the user decide? This seems fair enough, as many PMP's and other audio players handle this differently. iPods, for instance, won't let you browse by individual artist if you set these properties.
Comment 11 Michael Martin-Smucker 2010-10-28 18:32:20 UTC
-Setting an album as a compilation can be confusing to new users
+Setting an album as a compilation can be confusing

I regret adding the "to new users" part to the title, so I'm removing it.  "To new users" sounds a little condescending, and let's be honest, setting an album as a compilation in Banshee seems to be confusing to pretty much everyone. ;)
Comment 12 Laurens Hoek 2010-10-28 18:37:41 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> I regret adding the "to new users" part to the title, so I'm removing it.  "To
> new users" sounds a little condescending, and let's be honest, setting an album
> as a compilation in Banshee seems to be confusing to pretty much everyone. ;)

I don't think that it's confusing, I just reckon that it's undesirable..
Comment 13 aerianis 2010-11-21 15:11:44 UTC
Can you please make it work like other media players? i.e. use 'ALBUM ARTIST' when listing albums and NOT ARTIST. This way no editing is required and Banshee will work as other media players do. I just want to point out that most other media players that I've used (or tested) takes the ALBUM ARTIST field whenever sorting by albums while displaying the artists; Apple/iPad/iTunes/Rythmbox use ALBUM ARTIST. Windows/WinAmp et al use ALBUM ARTIST. My N900 media player use ALBUM ARTIST when sorting by albums. I'm using Meego where Banshee is integrated and find this to be quite annoying since I have to use Rythmbox - especially since it's integrated. 
Just an FYI - whenever sorting tracks by Artist, that's when the ARTIST field should be used (and not the ALBUM ARTIST). The rule of thumb: (album paired with album artist) and (artist paired with track). Looking for a fix soon!!
Cheers.
Comment 14 aerianis 2010-11-21 15:29:08 UTC
One thing I forgot to add - when 'Update file and folder names' is checked, albums become fragmented across directories based on Track Artists. In other words, one album will be spread across N directories because the track artist is being used. I'm still using Rythmbox while waiting for a fix :)
Comment 15 Cornwall 2010-12-14 14:58:33 UTC
I'd like to point out (hopefully helpfully) that iTunes uses a system in which it will look first for the album artist field and will sort that - however, if there is no tag in the album artist field then it will sort by just plain album.

I don't know how much benefit that brings as I don't bother with the album artist tag
Comment 16 Gabriel Burt 2010-12-14 18:14:12 UTC
I assume you mean it falls back to Artists?

Banshee falls back from Sort Album Artist -> Album Artist -> Sort Artist -> Artist.
Comment 17 Cornwall 2010-12-14 18:39:21 UTC
No, I did indeed mean Album Artist -> Album (I've had to help my non-savvy brother with the program on quite a few occasions).

It's also extremely messy when dealing with certain people's libraries - I listen mostly to classical music, so as far as artists go, I can have Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Phil, Berlin Phil, Vienna Phil, Los Angeles Phil, and so on. Album Artists just don't work often for me as much of the time there are changes in performers, conductors, and players on the same CD. That said, I do understand that my choice of music is a minority.

iTunes represents albums as albums if there are no fields for album artist. Just like a CD. Rhythmbox just sorts via albums. 

Naturally, what these programs choose does not necessarily mean that it's best for banshee but relying on album artist seems to indeed pose a problem regarding confusion.
Comment 18 Cornwall 2010-12-14 18:41:53 UTC
Excuse the poor writing; the second paragraph refers to Banshee as it stands with my current library.
Comment 19 Michael Martin-Smucker 2011-04-16 17:36:02 UTC
*** Bug 647953 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 20 Jack 2011-07-02 07:35:45 UTC
Overall I'm quite satisfied with the way Banshee handles the Album Artist tag. 

One major exception, which is almost a deal breaker for me, is that the artist browser shows a list of all artists, which makes it basically useless when you have lots of compilations. I have like 3000 artists listed there, when really I'd only like to see about 200. 

I long for an option, as there is in iTunes, to place compilations under one list item such as "Various Artists" or "Compilations" (I prefer "Compilations"). Preferably that list item is at the top, just after "All Artists", for convenience. When this option is enabled, artists that are only in a compilation album do NOT show up in the artist browser list.
Comment 21 Michael Martin-Smucker 2011-07-21 18:40:27 UTC
@Jack, I think most of what you want would be possible if Banshee would let you remove the Artist column from the browser and show a column for Album Artist instead.  Some work on this is being done in Bug 540873.
Comment 22 Jack Senechal 2011-08-10 22:34:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #21)
> @Jack, I think most of what you want would be possible if Banshee would let you
> remove the Artist column from the browser and show a column for Album Artist
> instead.  Some work on this is being done in Bug 540873.

I can currently do what you say, but that doesn't change the way it's displayed in the Artists browser at all. The features available for sorting by album artist in the song browser work fairly well, but it's not what I'm looking for here. The feature I'd like to see would group "compilation" albums under a "Compilations" heading in the artist browser, saving me from artist overload...
Comment 23 André Klapper 2020-03-17 09:01:57 UTC
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.
Comment 24 André Klapper 2020-03-17 09:30:37 UTC
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.