GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 678706
[PATCH] Add support for album artist in the browser view
Last modified: 2018-05-24 17:32:53 UTC
Created attachment 217113 [details] [review] Git patch that adds support for album artist in the browser view It is often not desired to show all artists that are present in the library, because of mix and compilation albums. These albums have one single album artist, but can have a different artist for every track. This way, the library gets 'cluttered' with artists that have one single album with one single track. Additionally, the mix/compilation albums get 'spread out' over multiple artists, and it becomes hard to find the entrie album. The solution to this problem, is to browse album artists instead of artists. This way, albums remain grouped together. The attached patch adds an option to use the album artist instead of the track artist in the album view. Screenshots can be found at https://imgur.com/a/CJajq. As you can see, the album artist browser is much cleaner. Related bugs that might be solved by this patch: 318579, 632841
Comment on attachment 217113 [details] [review] Git patch that adds support for album artist in the browser view [Patch => setting "patch" flag and correct mimetype]
Any chance this can get looked at by a maintainer? This would be a great feature.
Dear Rhythmbox maintainers, this patch is over a year old now. Several new versions of Rhythmbox have been released, yet without support for browsing by album artist. The new Music application in Gnome 3.10 got it right the first time (it lists album artists in the artist view), but it is far more basic than Rhythmbox, and currently it does not handle large collections of music well. The patch is really not that big; with a few minor modifications, this adds a feature that many people have been asking for, for over eight years. In my opinion, the ability to browse by album artist, is far more important for a music player, than having menus moved to the application menu, or buttons embedded in the title bar. It would be nice if a maintainer could look into this. Thank you.
Created attachment 268128 [details] [review] Updated patch that applies cleanly to v3.0.1 The patch was so old now, that it did not apply cleanly any more. I have updated the patch, so it applies cleanly to v3.0.1, and at the moment of writing, to master as well.
*** Bug 725173 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Ruud - having a tick-box to choose album-artist vs artist is perhaps not as intuitive as it can be. This is where I have similar concerns as Jonathan. For my plugin coverart-browser I handle album-artist automatically via this sort of sort algorithm (https://github.com/fossfreedom/coverart-browser/blob/release-2.0/coverart_album.py): @property def album_artist_sort(self): sort = self.entry.get_string( RB.RhythmDBPropType.ALBUM_ARTIST_SORTNAME_FOLDED) or \ self.entry.get_string(RB.RhythmDBPropType.ALBUM_ARTIST_FOLDED) or \ self.entry.get_string(RB.RhythmDBPropType.ARTIST_FOLDED) return NaturalString(sort) This though has its own downsides - most compilation albums I've come across dont have album-artist field filled - thus rhythmbox displays albums on a per artist basis. The way I personally overcome this is to manually tag my compilation albums with "Various Artists" for the album-artist field. I'm personally open to suggestions on a better way to "detect" compilation albums. Maybe think this should be the focus on how to improve the brower views rather than - as jonathan mentioned here (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725173) - 'bolt something on'
An other option would be to use album artist if it is present, and fall back to artist if it is not set. It would not change anything for music that does not have album artist tags, and it does support it if present. It does not require an extra checkbox, and instead of changing the browser view code, we would change the tag reading code. Trying to detect compilation albums when there is no album artist tag is something that can always be added afterwards. Browsing by album artist would be required either way. For now, I think just respecting the tags is already a large improvement. Note that this is not just about compilation albums. Many albums have one or more tracks with a feat. artist. If these are treated as separate artists, the album becomes fragmented across different artists.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/rhythmbox/issues/1193.