getmusicbee.com

Support => Questions => Topic started by: musicmahn on March 27, 2019, 09:57:17 PM

Title: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 27, 2019, 09:57:17 PM
OK so the issue I currently have as a total newb is that I have all of these variations of a given Artist.
I've got Aphex Twin, his 30 aliases......I've got Bela Fleck, Bela and Abigail, Bela and The Flecktones..... and so on!
What I really prefer is to have all of this stuff grouped under one banner for each.

New to all of this, I first set up Plex to run my NAS.  For various reasons I'm trying to get away from it but there is one feature I do like that is a practical solution to what I ask above.  Plex allows me to put Album Artists into a "collection".  So now I have a collection for Aphex Twin and all of his aliases, I have a collection for Bela Fleck.  Since I want this list to include all of my music, I even have "collections" for artists that have never used a different name at all.  Bon Jovi collection is just Bon Jovi.

So far I've figured one way to achieve what I want in MB but it's not quite as ideal as that Plex feature.  What I did was take some albums and update the "sort artist" to what would be a "collection" in my plex setup.  So now I can have a list to the left that have all of my sort artists and clicking into that gives me all the iterations and aliases - everything grouped up like I prefer.  What makes this a lessor method than Plex however is that this one is linked to the albums themselves, and not the album artist like in Plex.  The effect of this is that with Plex once I set up a given Artist or iteration - I'll never need to link to the "collection" i designated again.  All incoming music with that Album Artist name will appear automatically in the bucket I desire.  With MB the way I am currently attempting, I'll forever need to check and likely update the Sort Artist to achieve this same result.  Much more work over the course of time and volume of music I collect :)

I think the main thing I'm asking here other than general solutions to what I present is....is there any way I can tag or designate an album artist in such a way as I can with Plex?  

Thanks for your time!
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on March 27, 2019, 10:18:33 PM
Some screenshots of what you're currently doing would help. There are so many ways to configure MB that it's hard to give advice without seeing what you've got right now.

Off the top of my head, if you use Sort Album Artist instead of Sort Artist (and you have MusicBee's custom sorting enabled), then when you add more tracks with that album artist they should automatically be sorted for you.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Pingaware on March 27, 2019, 11:43:38 PM
As psychoadept says, some screenshots would help a lot.

Outside of that, the way I go about this problem is to use the Album Artist tag as the grouping tag and use the Artist track to denote the name as credited on the album. So for instance for Bruce Springsteen, all tracks have the album artist "Bruce Springsteen". But Born to Run has the artist "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band", Nebraska has just "Bruce Springsteen" and the Seeger Sessions has "Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band".
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 28, 2019, 05:32:42 PM
OK I will try to provide some images tonight.
That said it seems that both ideas being mentioned here tie back to album/track level which would require regular maintenance even if the music was tagged properly by any other standard.  What I'm getting at is the ability to create a tag/delineation of sorts at the Album Artist level.  This way I would be making the rule only once -->  Any time MB sees Album Artist "Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band" it automatically knows to put it in the "Bruce" bucket....or perhaps I would call it the "NJ Jams" bucket.  With this there wouldn't be an ongoing effort of adding a new tag to every release I am adding
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: frankz on March 28, 2019, 05:36:26 PM
OK I will try to provide some images tonight.
That said it seems that both ideas being mentioned here tie back to album/track level which would require regular maintenance even if the music was tagged properly by any other standard.  What I'm getting at is the ability to create a tag/delineation of sorts at the Album Artist level.  This way I would be making the rule only once -->  Any time MB sees Album Artist "Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band" it automatically knows to put it in the "Bruce" bucket....or perhaps I would call it the "NJ Jams" bucket.  With this there wouldn't be an ongoing effort of adding a new tag to every release I am adding
Some screenshots of what you're currently doing would help. There are so many ways to configure MB that it's hard to give advice without seeing what you've got right now.

Off the top of my head, if you use Sort Album Artist instead of Sort Artist (and you have MusicBee's custom sorting enabled), then when you add more tracks with that album artist they should automatically be sorted for you.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 28, 2019, 07:32:15 PM
I did catch that line but it seems that what is being suggested is updating the tags for all incoming music which is what I'm trying to avoid if possible.  Incoming music aside I have about 2 TB of music that would need tag updating just to get the existing collection sorted.  All said the music I'm bringing in is tagged to standard and shouldn't need further work.
Or maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean?
I will post my Plex setup tonight but here is what I did with MB:

(https://i.imgur.com/q7xmCuz.png)

So just to exaggerate my point i made a "collection" as you would call it in Plex by changing the sort album artist for that Doors album and I named it Sting.  I can put Bon Jovi in that Sting bucket, more Doors, Sting albums etc.  Nice of MB to pickup an artist image for me :)  So that shows me I can ultimately do what I want except it's going to require me to add this "sting" sort album artist tag for each and every Doors (Bon Jovi, Sting etc) track I acquire.  And since I'll need an entry for every Artist bucket I'm creating (in order to have it show on the list to the left) this means I'll be having to mind the sort artist tag on 100% of my incoming music.  Considering the volume I manage it's just a good chunk of work for something that Plex is offering as a one-and-done task for every Album Artist.  Once I tell Plex that Album Artist Doors = "Sting" collection - I'll never have to worry about another incoming Doors release along these lines.

Sorry if I'm adding confusion here - I know exactly what I want and even though it seems so basic in my head I obviously struggle to explain it!
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on March 28, 2019, 08:51:10 PM
I did catch that line but it seems that what is being suggested is updating the tags for all incoming music which is what I'm trying to avoid if possible.

We get that. MusicBee's custom sorting algorithm applies the sort value you assign to ALL instances of that Artist/Album Artist/Composer, even new ones. The only issue might be if new files are tagged with sort tags, which could override the values you've set in MusicBee.

However, there is another solution, which is even hackier but might work if you don't care about genres. MusicBee allows you to group genres into genre categories, which you can define in Tags (2). So if you wanted to override those with your artist categories, and copy album artist into genre (which you can do en mass with the Additional Tagging Tools Plugin), then MusicBee will group them in Genre Category for you.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 28, 2019, 09:54:25 PM
Hmmm...so are you saying that what I have already done could work??  Unless sorting tags are already present in the incoming media, that much makes sense.
To be sure I understand - the fact that I edited this "at the album level" will translate into a permanent translation of The Doors Album Artist --> Sting Sort Album Artist?
This is what I currently have:
(https://i.imgur.com/RcQ4mP5.png)

Is this close to correct? 
I only want the album artist to sort however - as there are times a given Artist may appear on a release from a different album artist (so what I mean is I would want it to stick with the album artist routing in all cases).   What is the deal with the checkmarks and why does the "artist sort by" auto populate itself with what I entered as the "album artist sort by"??  I suppose the latter won't matter much if my main method of browsing will be with album artists lumped into sort artist groups?


The 2nd suggestion you speak of I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.  I definitely don't care about genre tags or grouping at all.
Are you saying that using my example I would have a genre category of "Sting" and would edit the Doors album so that it is the "Sting genre" and thus every Album Artist Doors release will point to this genre (and thus genre category) going forward?  Is there any limit to the number of these genres I could create?  I would need 100s that's for sure.


If my understanding of your first suggestion is correct then I guess I'm accomplishing the same feat in both instances?  After some initial work of getting the album artists properly linked - from that point i'll be able to navigate the buckets I wish to see at the left and all new incoming releases will automatically hit the right buckets.....unless it's a new album artist that has never been linked to a defined sort artist in the past.  If they both accomplish the same result I think I would rather stick with "sort album artist" this way in most cases I can get a relevant picture in that list to the left.  I won't be keeping The Doors in a Sting bucket but I would have something like Sting albums sitting in the "The Police" bucket....and then I would have a pretty picture of the band for that line.



Thanks so much for taking the time to help me - I can't say how much all of this affects my emotions and being :)


Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on March 29, 2019, 02:25:24 AM
There's a lot going on in your post and I'm not sure if I've caught so if it, but I think basically yes.

Actually, i realized that using Sort Artist or Sort Album Artist makes no difference. MusicBee sees them the same. And composers, unless you've specified a separate Composer sure value.

Just be aware this could have unintended consequences, because it will affect sorting just about everywhere, such as the column browser. Play with it and see. Because all instances of an artist are affected, it's easy to undo by clearing all your sort tags at once.

You might ultimately be better off with the genre solution, which is more limited in scope. You'd have to set something up with the plug-in to automatically, or at least quickly, copy all your Album Artist values into Genre. But then in the genre categories you could just enter something like Sting: The Doors and the rest happens automatically. Just to be clear, your GENRE would be the same as your album artist. The category is set in preferences.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 29, 2019, 07:47:31 PM
Ok for posterity sake here is what i have in plex:
(https://i.imgur.com/OYXDP0D.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/un13h5c.jpg)
On the top image you can see my FSOL bucket which includes Future Sound of London and a bunch of random remixes they've done.  I would never want to see those artists anywhere else, as the driving factor for owning them is precisely FSOL :)  Humanoid is an alias of FSOL they are in there.  Any time I add another Humanoid release it will automatically go to this bucket.  The 2nd image shows how i can pull up my "collections".  Less than ideal that it's a drop down and even worse the way it's handled on Android.  Just cumbersome and clunky.


So I played around more last night and the Sort Artist route seems like it could work out.  What kind of pitfalls can you fathom?  I'm trying to think as far ahead as possible and why this or the genre route might cause a real problem at some point.

I suppose it would be nice to tweak my 2nd pane in such a way that I can see the actual album artists under a given sort artist category. So like you see in plex under the FSOL heading there are a bunch of album artists - some of which have more than one album.  I can click into Humanoid and see the various releases under that Album Artist.
Here is my Steve Roach bucket with a bunch of stuff mapped weird as a test:
(https://i.imgur.com/nrp5cWb.png)
This is good - I see the true album artist names.  Would be nice though if instead of each album I could see each Album Artist (which could be clicked into to see the albums).  When I change that 2nd field to "Artist"....all I'm getting is Steve Roach and the albums below appear as if he is the true Album Artist (which as we saw in the last screen isn't the case):
(https://i.imgur.com/tLT9qXl.png)
Ok so as I'm creating this post I guess I do see a potential problem.  As you stated earlier it seems that for the most part Album Artist/Artist follow the same sorting rules once set?  Like I don't seem able to make "Album Artist Marshmello = Steve Roach" AND "Artist Marshmello = Marshmello"

Maybe genre is the way to go afterall. How do I go about creating a custom genre in Tags2??  Also is there a limited number of these I can create??  I would need 100s.  And this genre route would essentially say "any time you see incoming album artist Bon Jovi - put this into the "Bon Jovi genre"?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on March 29, 2019, 11:16:35 PM
Maybe genre is the way to go afterall. How do I go about creating a custom genre in Tags2??  Also is there a limited number of these I can create??  I would need 100s.  And this genre route would essentially say "any time you see incoming album artist Bon Jovi - put this into the "Bon Jovi genre"?

Look at the group genres settings in preferences to see how it works. There's no limit to how many you can have. Just clear out what's there and make your own.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on March 30, 2019, 04:43:01 PM
took a look there and saw were i could delete/create all new genres.  i don't see how there would be a permanent link between album artist and genre though?
I created a genre "ok then" and linked one of the marshmello releases to it - yet the other marshmello release didn't move with it and i didn't see a chance to click "update" to get it to move per the new rule i set.
(https://i.imgur.com/9QCB6Mi.png)


that said maybe it's not a problem for me where artists are mapped, as long as the album artists are.  still trying to coax the sort album artist to my liking i have something close (and better) to what plex was doing:

(https://i.imgur.com/C68r7mq.png)
Now when I go into each bucket (steve roach and sting) I can see the included albums broken out by their true album artists. 
Question is how does this play out when I add another 800 gigs :)

side questions as i continue to dig -
-Where can I change the font for the album artists in the middle panel?  that bright bold blue has to go!
-That said I would like to explore other skins/themes etc. - to keep the panels set as i have them I can only use other variations of dark fine tuned eh?
-Would I be able to transfer settings info easily from PC to Tablet in the future?  Like I would much prefer to do the maintenance work at my desk with full screen etc but ultimately i need to see all those results on the tablet where I'll actually be enjoying all of this.  Are there certain files I could copy/paste over?  Does having the "portable" version solve this in that I could just copy this whole folder over to the tablet and that's that?  Perhaps another copy/paste/overwrite any time I wanted to update the tablet from the PC setup?
-I believe all the messing around I've been doing is only affecting the MB database correct?  Is there more than one checkbox I need to worry about in terms of MB editing the actual tags in the files?


Thanks for keeping with me I extend to you a digital hug!
Really means so much to me all of this - playing with my music collection is like playing with my emotions  :)



Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on March 30, 2019, 05:51:13 PM
It's hard to tell everything that' going on from your screenshots, but I don't see that you have Genre CATEGORY displayed anywhere. That will be your "buckets", not genre. For this to work, you have to copy your album artist to genre. Changing the genre will certainly affect your files, but the genre category will not.

Can you post your genre category window so we can see if you're linking them correctly?


Regarding skins, changing skins will not change your layout.

Regarding transferring settings, see the Library Backup function, and the Backup & Restore page on the wiki.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 01, 2019, 03:29:47 PM
Genre category i need to look at closer - what I did last week was only messing with the genres.  Hard to understand what the difference between the two is really.

So I added a little more music to see how MB would react and I'm scratching my head as to why these Steve Roach albums are not being grouped together.
Middle panel is album art > grouped by Album Artist.  Both the one at the bottom and the two at the top both show Steve Roach Album Artist and Artist.
Any clue as to why this is happening??


(https://i.imgur.com/6LHzJHe.png)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: deraudrl on April 01, 2019, 03:43:11 PM
So I added a little more music to see how MB would react and I'm scratching my head as to why these Steve Roach albums are not being grouped together.
Middle panel is album art > grouped by Album Artist.  Both the one at the bottom and the two at the top both show Steve Roach Album Artist and Artist.
Any clue as to why this is happening??
It looks like it may be doing what you wanted, i.e. all the "Steve Roach-ish" artists grouped together. The question then becomes, how does it sort that group? IIRC it defaults to album title...I use year to get them in what I think is the "correct" order, don't recall offhand what the other options are. With some artists, you may get some odd sequences, especially for people (e.g. Phil Collins) who alternate solo and group albums.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 01, 2019, 04:20:00 PM
The middle panel has the contents and layout I'm going for but why i would see the same exact Album Artist twice and not see those albums grouped together?

Here are each:
(https://i.imgur.com/nC5GDLm.png)

and

(https://i.imgur.com/rLM7pCm.png)




......uh could it be format?  The two on top are WAV files.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: deraudrl on April 01, 2019, 05:05:01 PM
If my eyes aren't deceiving me, there are four albums there, titled:

2.11.18 Solar Culture
The Best of The Doors
Happier
Soul Tunes

Looks like they're sorted by album title...
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 01, 2019, 05:27:58 PM
Oh you're a sharp cookie!  :)

So the question then is - how do I get these all grouped by Album Artist?  The grouping setting I thought would have done the trick.
ABC order after that is great, or chronological

Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 01, 2019, 07:10:02 PM
Make sure that your sort by, your group by, AND your header fields in layout settings match.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: deraudrl on April 01, 2019, 07:17:48 PM
So the question then is - how do I get these all grouped by Album Artist?
Ok, I've lost the bubble here: I thought the whole point of the exercise was to map everything Steve-Roach-related into "Steve Roach", and it looks like it's doing that.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 01, 2019, 08:12:31 PM
Yes I have that much accomplished I think.  Now I'm getting cosmetic and picky ;)

So, sure enough they are appearing in ABC order - I changed "Happier" to "Zappier" and it got moved to the bottom:
(https://i.imgur.com/slQOZQ0.png)




What I'm looking to do is group by album artist in the middle pane.
So that I only see one instance of Steve Roach and "Marshmello with dude" in that god awful blue (where do i change this font??)
Under each album artist I would like the albums tied to that name.  So under Steve Roach would be the two 2.2018 live dates and Soul Tones.  Under the "Marshmello with dude" would be that Doors album and what is now "Zappier" lol

Played around for like 30 min last night and couldn't get anywhere with this :-/  Very bizarre to behave this way it's being told to group by Album Artist but the only grouping that will truly happen is if there are consecutive albums in ABC order that happen to have the same Album Artist?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 03:10:55 PM
Oh man ok I changed the sorting of the middle panel to "Genre/Album Artist/Album"

and look!
(https://i.imgur.com/4n5iUu5.png)

Nearly exact to what I'm looking for (though why is the Steve Roach group showing before the Marshmello?)

but oh.....spoke to soon.  For whatever reason in the next sort artist group, Marshmello is NOT grouping together.
Album Artist and genres are identical - why is MB doing this??
(https://i.imgur.com/HPCwVGm.png)


At least i have another slight clue but I'm really baffled here.  On this 2nd screen shot the albums are also now out of ABC order.  What rules are MB following here?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 04:28:50 PM
This is all dependent on your Group By settings, your Sort By settings, and what's in your tags. You're going to have to fiddle with those things until you're happy with the results. Right now, it looks like whatever tag you're grouping by is the issue. What is your Group By setting?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 05:00:11 PM
Group by is just Album Artist

Would be happy to screenshot my settings if you can tell me which you want to look at. 
Can also upload my MB generated "settings snapshot" if that helps?


Ugh so close......I fell asleep with the laptop laying on me last night trying to figure this out lol

Thanks again - SO much for the guidance!
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 05:35:21 PM
If you can show us the tag editor for tracks/albums that have the Marshmello heading, that would help at this point.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 05:55:22 PM
Sweet - Please let me know if I'm showing you the wrong windows and I will edit this post to what's needed:

(https://i.imgur.com/pUqRWHQ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/5MbHNVe.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/J4SOl31.png)


Hmmm why is it that some fields are greyed out on one but not the other?
(https://i.imgur.com/w7Qv4pe.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/8MRcXfB.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/GjLMavM.png)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 05:57:15 PM
Yep, it's doing exactly what you're asking it to do. It's grouping by Album Artist (not Sort Album Artist). So if you want to change it, either you have to change what you're grouping by or what the Album Artist is.

Usually if a Sort field is gray, it means the value is automatically generated by MusicBee's custom sorting algorithm.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 06:19:45 PM
It appears that way in the first screenshot I made here but not in the 2nd.
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28267.msg157068#msg157068
With the tag inspectors I sent it would appear that grouping by Album Artist would be fine - but we see that Marshmello is being split up?
And how is MB going about sorting these album artists? - obviously not in ABC order
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 06:34:19 PM
And how is MB going about sorting these album artists? - obviously not in ABC order

But isn't your SORT Album Artist (and therefore Sort Artist) for all of them the same? I'm not sure what MusicBee uses when it can't distinguish those. Album name?

This is the kind of thing I meant when I said using the custom sorting algorithm to create your "buckets" could have unintended consequences.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 06:42:29 PM
---edited in my next post---
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 07:39:01 PM
Whatever it's grouping by, everything that it finds together based on the sort order it will put under one heading. When the sort order and the group by headings don't match, that's when you get this sort of behavior. The order you said you were using is Genre/Album Artist/Album, so if it's not sorting by Album, then it must be using Genre. That makes sense, since Moving On is the only one which has a genre tag.

Given the various aspects of what you're trying to do, I really thing you're better off clearing out your custom sort artists and using Genre Category for your "buckets".
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 03, 2019, 08:28:52 PM
ah was editing my last reply as you were writing yours!

OK I see what you are saying.
Main panel is trying to sort by album artist but at this point thinks they are all one in the same (the sort album artist).
Weird thing though is that it IS showing the TRUE album artist despite what we're saying.
And when I tell it to group by the true album artists it is already acknowledging in this panel, it kinda does and kinda doesn't.  It does in one group but not the other, when i group by Genre/Album Artist/Album the other one groups properly and vice versa.  I wonder if I've reached the end of trying to get this to work.  Not a bug per se, but to me all of these closely related terms are too...closely related.  Album Artist/Sort Artist/Artist should all be separate things that can be selected or not.  If I told the middle panel to sort by sort album artist then i would understand it being confused (as i'm already in that "group").  But I told it album artist, and it did respect that for the most part.  But why it's picking and choosing when to behave idk.


Was it said that your genre category idea would create a permanent "rule" that would filter album artists into buckets as I've fashioned?
Ultimately I can live with no separation in the middle screen as long as I don't find any other bugs along the way.  Seeing them separated by true album artist would be cool but not worth having to manually tag stuff just for that reason.

Would virtualtags make sense in this respect?  I got this recommendation from someone else but that's all kind of confusing to me too
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 03, 2019, 10:25:48 PM
Weird thing though is that it IS showing the TRUE album artist despite what we're saying.
And when I tell it to group by the true album artists it is already acknowledging in this panel, it kinda does and kinda doesn't.  It does in one group but not the other, when i group by Genre/Album Artist/Album the other one groups properly and vice versa.  I wonder if I've reached the end of trying to get this to work.  Not a bug per se, but to me all of these closely related terms are too...closely related.  Album Artist/Sort Artist/Artist should all be separate things that can be selected or not.  If I told the middle panel to sort by sort album artist then i would understand it being confused (as i'm already in that "group").  But I told it album artist, and it did respect that for the most part.  But why it's picking and choosing when to behave idk.

Was it said that your genre category idea would create a permanent "rule" that would filter album artists into buckets as I've fashioned?
Ultimately I can live with no separation in the middle screen as long as I don't find any other bugs along the way.  Seeing them separated by true album artist would be cool but not worth having to manually tag stuff just for that reason.

Would virtualtags make sense in this respect?  I got this recommendation from someone else but that's all kind of confusing to me too

Nothing happening here is unpredictable based on your settings and tags. The grouping heading uses the given tag (Album Artist) and it groups all the tracks with that tag that are placed together based on the sort order. The sorting order uses the SORT tags. That fact you're using the sort tags in a non-standard way is causing an undesired result - if the sort album artist corresponded with the album artist (like The Doors/Doors, The) then they would all group together.

You also asked it to sort by Genre first (before Album Artist) so the tracks with no genre were sorted before the one with a genre, that's standard in MusicBee - nothing comes before something. That would cause some of them to be split up regardless of the Album Artist/Sort Album Artist tags.

Re, Genre Category, try it and see. I feel like I'm repeating myself at this point. Virtual tags could do it, but would be hard to maintain. Genre Categories will do the same thing with a lot less effort to add and remove categories.

Edit: actually, the absolute easiest thing would be to either create filters for your library, to the effect of "Album Artist is any of ..." for each filter (bucket). Or make autoplaylists that do the same thing, and put them in a Buckets folder. Then you don't have to mess around with genre tags or sort tags.  Your buckets just won't be in the thumbnail or column browser.  Super simple, using MusicBee's features the way they're designed to be used.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 04, 2019, 07:36:59 PM
You know I swore the genre tags were all in line but I've messed with everything so much that's apparently not how I left off.
SO fixing that one genre to be blank instead......well it sure LOOKS like success albeit with this very small amount of music.

Two quickies - Is there a quick way to globally erase all genre tags?  Personally I'll never have any use for them and it seems that keeping them blank is helping my cause.
Which setting can change that horrible baby blue font showing the album artist groups?

This is exciting!
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: boroda on April 04, 2019, 07:50:21 PM
to erase genre tag: select all tracks, open tag editor, erase genre tag and save changes.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 04, 2019, 08:05:40 PM
To change the font, change the skin.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 04, 2019, 09:17:07 PM
Ugh I need to step away and ahem.... reGROUP my emotions!

Here i thought I was in the promised land....erased all genre tags and whoops a separation happened again:
(https://i.imgur.com/FOCs67p.png)

When I change the actual doors album (i.e. marshmello with dude) back to rock genre - it groups back up nicely - how pretty!
(https://i.imgur.com/uTBoVSM.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/jvX59XL.png)


So this goes back to the same as I was seeing when choosing sort by Album Artist/Albums (since genre is no longer a factor).
Feels like something is missing here.  Just can't wrap my head around where it's coming up with this order of things.  I'm telling it to sort by Genre/Album Artist/Album......and yet the genres aren't sorted first.  One would expect to see the two doors discs listed at the bottom since every other genre is blank.  Here are my tracks:


(https://i.imgur.com/Js2xafx.png)


Shoot me please  :)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 04, 2019, 10:24:54 PM
I really suggest you get rid of the Sort tags that are causing this trouble. Same as genres, select all, clear the field, save. And use the sort order you actually want, album artist/album or whatever.

Make that part work with *correct* tags. Then you can worry about making your buckets some other way. I don't know why i didn't think of a filter or auto-playlist sooner, this is what they do well.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 05, 2019, 08:16:29 AM
I surely may end up taking that route psychoadept
I probably just need to exhaust my effort a bit more before i give up heheh

*Not looking at this at all today!
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: redwing on April 06, 2019, 01:48:22 AM
Which setting can change that horrible baby blue font showing the album artist groups?

Is that Mahogany skin? Open the skin xml file with a text editor, and change the RGB value for "opposite".
Or if you just want to change the header's color, then put a desired RGB value for "Content[Artwork].GroupingHeader" element.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: redwing on April 06, 2019, 01:53:21 AM
OK so the issue I currently have as a total newb is that I have all of these variations of a given Artist.
I've got Aphex Twin, his 30 aliases......I've got Bela Fleck, Bela and Abigail, Bela and The Flecktones..... and so on!
What I really prefer is to have all of this stuff grouped under one banner for each.

New to all of this, I first set up Plex to run my NAS.  For various reasons I'm trying to get away from it but there is one feature I do like that is a practical solution to what I ask above.  Plex allows me to put Album Artists into a "collection".  So now I have a collection for Aphex Twin and all of his aliases, I have a collection for Bela Fleck.  Since I want this list to include all of my music, I even have "collections" for artists that have never used a different name at all.  Bon Jovi collection is just Bon Jovi.

So far I've figured one way to achieve what I want in MB but it's not quite as ideal as that Plex feature.  What I did was take some albums and update the "sort artist" to what would be a "collection" in my plex setup.  So now I can have a list to the left that have all of my sort artists and clicking into that gives me all the iterations and aliases - everything grouped up like I prefer.  What makes this a lessor method than Plex however is that this one is linked to the albums themselves, and not the album artist like in Plex.  The effect of this is that with Plex once I set up a given Artist or iteration - I'll never need to link to the "collection" i designated again.  All incoming music with that Album Artist name will appear automatically in the bucket I desire.  With MB the way I am currently attempting, I'll forever need to check and likely update the Sort Artist to achieve this same result.  Much more work over the course of time and volume of music I collect :)

I think the main thing I'm asking here other than general solutions to what I present is....is there any way I can tag or designate an album artist in such a way as I can with Plex?  

That sounds a pretty useful feature. Feel free to add that "Collection" feature to the wishlist sub-forum, I'll give you my vote.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 07, 2019, 07:54:16 PM
It's pretty nice for my needs, if only the interface was a bit more able to be tweaked.  It's just not ideal to navigate and I don't think it would take much for them to fix it.

Another nice feature is that I can add multiple collection tags to a given AlbumArtist.
So all "Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell" albums can be found in both my Namlook and Laswell collections (as I have many solo albums/side project of each artist)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 07, 2019, 08:49:44 PM
Another nice feature is that I can add multiple collection tags to a given release.
So a "Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell" album can be found in both my Namlook and Laswell collections (as I have many solo albums/side project of each artist)

I'm not sure if you're referring to MusicBee or Plex, but you can definitely have multiple collections with MusicBee if you use auto-playlists or filters.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 07, 2019, 09:27:15 PM
sorry was talking about plex there.
perhaps it's just a filter as you say it and i have a ton of them saved as "collections".
either way having to use a drop down on PC or checkbox on android just doesn't flow nice for me.  i'm striving for the best so that i can settle and just worry about maintenance and enjoying my music again ;)

MB has me kind of angry at the moment i'm just not finding the logic in what it's doing.  I can better accept defeat when I understand why and in this case I'm not sure I ever will.
I get that I'm forcing it to do things in ways not intended but at the same time there is a thought process to it that makes sense even within the UI settings provided.  In many ways it's doing all that but then there are these outliers that aren't following the rest, for whatever reason :)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 07, 2019, 10:12:36 PM
I get that I'm forcing it to do things in ways not intended but at the same time there is a thought process to it that makes sense even within the UI settings provided.  In many ways it's doing all that but then there are these outliers that aren't following the rest, for whatever reason :)

Well, I partly take the blame for sending you down a path that made things more difficult. I think it's just because you have to come at it from the opposite direction with MusicBee - instead of adding a collection to an artist, you'll add an artist to a collection (i.e. filter). But once that's done, it's just as permanent. If your filter says "Album Artist is any of..." then once you add an artist to the filter, all tracks by that artist will always be included. And this is using the built in features, you don't have to beat your head on a wall trying to kludge it.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 08, 2019, 08:46:26 AM
Ah - It's not like the path I've brought here and trying to explain it has been all that efficient either lol.  I know a lot more about MB because of your care in helping :)

Not sure yet filter is the way to go for me as the navigation feels similar to plex which is what brought me here in the first place.  now if my left panel would contain a list of all created filters then i might be in business but i'm not yet seeing that option.  right now it's appearing somewhat as a drop down in that i have to click that music tab up top which brings up a list to the left showing any of the filters i've created.

Well at least something new to investigate more but I'm so damn close with what i did already with sort artists.  I think i'm even there enough in that i could have the middle panel just be album covers and not worry about grouping them by album artist.  But like i said I'm in this for the long haul.  I like to get stuck in my ways i just need them to be a way that works to that level heheh
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 08, 2019, 02:16:22 PM
now if my left panel would contain a list of all created filters then i might be in business but i'm not yet seeing that option.  right now it's appearing somewhat as a drop down in that i have to click that music tab up top which brings up a list to the left showing any of the filters i've created.

There should be a show filters toggle if you right click on music that will display them permanently. Or you can use auto playlists, which have the same basic functionality as filters but with more bells and whistles.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 08, 2019, 03:19:35 PM
i did see the toggle but they still aren't layed out down that left panel like a normal list of artists etc would.
it's like that filter list is hidden until i click the music tab up top?

Here is just the one i've added "da doors fiter"
lol sorry for all the silly names and categories i just want things to stick out for me while i play around

(https://i.imgur.com/fOr1wMx.png)

any way to get that list of filters to reside in the left panel as i currently have the sort album artists?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 08, 2019, 03:36:14 PM
If you click by the Music node to display filters, it should show them until you click it again. This is what mine looks like all the time:

(https://i.imgur.com/Jjd4L7H.png)


But as mentioned, you can also use autoplaylists. Then you could use the playlist directory to show them separately in a sidebar, more like the column browser.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 08, 2019, 04:05:41 PM
I clicked the pin next to music is that what i was supposed to do?
So now that filter list is showing at the left.  Not bad though not as pretty as having the sort artist list there.  Surely a good avenue for me to look deeper into!
Anyway how do I unpin what I just did there lol
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 08, 2019, 05:00:10 PM
Oh, I see. You had the sidebar in auto-hide mode. You can change that in the arrange panels window, which you find next to the search bar.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 08, 2019, 05:14:28 PM
Got it.  Well this is promising!
A little less visually appealing as the Sort Artist option so I'm not giving up on that one yet but this seems a solid solution otherwise.
Will report back as I continue to play - hectic week at work is going to keep me out of the game until the weekend though.


In the interim, if anyone can crack the nut of why grouping by album artist is wonky here it would be amazing!
**************************************************************************************************************

(https://i.imgur.com/FOCs67p.png)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Pingaware on April 08, 2019, 11:32:38 PM
If you use filters, you can set an auto-playlist to only take from that filter with no other rules required. Then you could set custom pictures for the auto-playlist to get a similar appearance to your Sort Artist option (I think - I don't use the thumbnail browser at all).
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 15, 2019, 09:37:40 PM
So wow maybe this will work as it will group appropriately when not having to sweat the albums right away??

(https://i.imgur.com/qm1jG3B.png)

The grouping i was looking for in the middle... only to the left....almost nicer?!?

Something isn't right with the way MB wants to sort in the middle.  I guess more than anything it is trying to sort BEFORE grouping which makes no sense really.  I wish someone could take a deeper look at what is happening here for the purpose of improving the options.

Anyway is there a way I can get with my screenshot above an A-Z jump bar that relates to the left panel?  ideally by sort artist heheh  ;)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Bee-liever on April 16, 2019, 02:47:03 AM
I guess more than anything it is trying to sort BEFORE grouping which makes no sense really.
MB does apply the Sort By: settings first and then applies the Group By: settings to that sorted list. there is also sub-grouping options.

(https://i.imgur.com/Yv0taW2.jpg)

Anyway is there a way I can get with my screenshot above an A-Z jump bar that relates to the left panel?  ideally by sort artist heheh  ;)

No A-Z bar, but if you click the window and start typing, MB goes to matching entry.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 16, 2019, 03:21:43 PM
Haha yes I'll live without the A-Z bar if I need to. 

Thinking more I guess it shouldn't matter whether grouped or sorted first - as long as it's still grouping as it should.  Common sense says that if you are grouping a lot by iterations A, B, and C....you shouldn't see any of those groups repeated for any reason.   

Using your formatting to convey my problem it would be like seeing two singles above the studio albums because their titles come alphabetically before "A Flock of Seagulls" (the album).  MB doesn't want to group true Album Artists  properly in that middle panel for me and it will be interesting to see if the same request sent to the left panel will be handled fine.  So far so go but I'll have a buttload more to add if I decide to give this the big push.  I'll probably add a few more albums just to test the waters further yet with this new avenue i'm going down


Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Bee-liever on April 17, 2019, 07:40:37 AM
Group by is just Album Artist
Are you still using this as your Group By setting?

And what are you using in Sort By?

Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: musicmahn on April 17, 2019, 03:12:55 PM
Yes group by Album Artist

Sort by - I've tried pretty much every option.  Album Artist/Album is what most of my screenshots are in this thread.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: psychoadept on April 17, 2019, 04:00:50 PM
Thought I'd mention that this whole discussion has led me to looking at ways of doing something similar with my own library. For instance, I created an auto-playlist of "local artists" using the "Album Artist is any of" rule. But that always leaves me kind of nervous that if the playlist is messed up somehow, I'll have to do all the work of remembering which artists should be in it again, which may also be a concern in your case.

But I've had a custom tag for a long time called "Playlist Filters" (actually, I had multiple custom tags for different types of playlists but I was running out of room so I folded them all into one), and I think I'll just expand the scope of that.  So instead of a rule of "Album Artist is any of..." I'll tag them with a playlist filter of "local" and make the rule "Playlist Filter is local".

Just something for you to think about, because it would make it easier to reconstruct the filters and playlists if necessary.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Bee-liever on April 18, 2019, 02:19:50 AM
try setting up a custom sort as:
Album Artist/ Sort Album Artist/ Album

keep your group by as Album Artist

you also might need to turn on sub grouping and use Sort Album Artist
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: The Incredible Boom Boom on August 06, 2019, 04:45:47 AM
Since the original poster seems to have gotten his layout and structure how he wanted, I'm going to jump into this thread with a couple of my own desires with regards to getting some little artist sorting issues resolved. I don't really like making new threads on forums if I can help it, and the discussion in this topic is close enough to what I'm trying to do that a brand new thread is unnecessary.

To begin, the structure of every track in my library is that the <Sort Artist> value is usually filled with the same value as the <Album Artist> tag. For example...
Nate Dogg <Album Artist>
Nate Dogg <Sort Artist>
G-Funk Classics, Volume 1 <Album>

For the entire album, the <Artist> tag is also entirely filled by Nate Dogg, so this is a perfect case scenario. I do not use the <Sort Artist> tag for "Last name, First name" information. (Yet - I haven't begun to move my entire classical library into MusicBee, so this might change.) Waaaay back in the day, when I first started seriously tagging my music collection, I put the soundtrack or score title in <Artist>, then moved them to <Album Artist> a little less back in the day, but still long ago. I moved the titles to <Sort Artist> and opened up <Album Artist> for me to associate my tags better with Last.fm for the future scrobbles.

Anyway, other than using <Sort Artist> "incorrectly," for what I'm doing, the tag works great except in one case - multiple artists. For example, my artist tags for the album "Together" from Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells are...
Marvin Gaye <Artist>
Mary Wells <Artist>
Marvin Gaye & Mary Wells <Album Artist>
Marvin Gaye <Sort Artist>
Mary Wells <Sort Artist>

The way this works for the most part is great, 'cause when I click "Mary Wells" on the main panel, I can see all her albums... plus the one she shares with Gaye, and this also works vice versa. However, this also has the unfortunate little side effect of each track in the album "Together" displaying twice whenever the entire library or "M" artists are displayed on the main panel (which, by the way is sorted by "Sort Artist.") When just "Mary Wells" or "Marvin Gaye" alone are selected, however, the number of tracks in all albums displays just fine. I've played around with different settings for about a week now to remedy this and so far... nothing.

The second little issue I'm trying to work around is on my "Soundtracks" panel, which I currently have sorted by Virtual Tag $Sort("("<Year>)) <Album> and grouped by "Sort Artist." What this displays is the following...
Marvel Cinematic Universe
(2008) Iron Man
(2008) The Incredible Hulk
(2010) Iron Man 2
...
...

What I want it to look like is this...
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
...
...

Any thoughts or suggestions on achieving this? (EDIT: I'm trying to get this look in the Thumbnail Browser, where I don't have the option to use a Custom sorting method.)
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: boroda on August 06, 2019, 05:34:36 AM
maybe you could use some invisible unicode characters (eg invisible multiplication, number of this char will define sorting) at the beginning of virtual tag instead of year?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Zak on August 06, 2019, 07:38:56 AM
The second little issue I'm trying to work around is on my "Soundtracks" panel, which I currently have sorted by Virtual Tag $Sort("("<Year>)) <Album> and grouped by "Sort Artist." What this displays is the following...
Not sure I follow, but you don't have to display the tag you're sorting by. So you could sort by the virtual tag, but just show the normal <Album> value.

I've created a custom soundtrack view that does just this - with separate groups for Marvel, Star Wars, James Bond etc.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: The Incredible Boom Boom on August 06, 2019, 07:20:49 PM
maybe you could use some invisible unicode characters (eg invisible multiplication, number of this char will define sorting) at the beginning of virtual tag instead of year?

🤔 This is something that could work. I've been reading a little bit about multiplying within regex and it doesn't appear feasible with MusicBee's flavor. It may be possible to implement this idea using mp3tag, however. Ideally, I could multiply the year by a zero-width unicode character and then $RxReplace the year with the result, but for now, what I'm thinking is (in MusicBee) $RxReplace "19" from 19xx with one zero-width character and "20" from 20xx with two zero-width characters. That's the easy part.

Next, I'd like to "multiply" the zero-width character by the first and second digits of the leftover number. So, for '98, I'd get nine zero-width characters attached to eight zero-width characters, for a total of eighteen zero-width characters if the century were the 1900s (19 == one zero-width char, 9 == ten zero-width chars, 8 = nine zero-width chars) which would likely sort out exactly how I envision.

If multiplication won't work in either MusicBee or mp3tag, I'll just have to manually add ten (the number zero in the tens place of the shortened year would need one zero-width char) conditional statements.

Quote
Not sure I follow, but you don't have to display the tag you're sorting by. So you could sort by the virtual tag, but just show the normal <Album> value.

Correct, however, that method is alphabetical and the release years of many albums contained within a group wouldn't follow the release year pattern. For example...
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
..
..
The Avengers (2012)
..

Those are the first three choices under the normal <Album> value.

Is there a way that you have yours sorted by album release year, or do you not mind them alphabetical?
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: boroda on August 06, 2019, 08:29:10 PM
you can group tracks by album ('album and tracks' view) and sort tracks within album by *any* tag (eg. 'year').
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: Zak on August 07, 2019, 09:24:15 AM
Is there a way that you have yours sorted by album release year, or do you not mind them alphabetical?
I've ended up using a custom tag because I want my grouped soundtracks (e.g. MCU, James Bond) to be chronological, but everything else to be alphabetical. So it sorts on that tag first, then album title. Found custom tag easier than virtual because you can put any value in it you like to get complete control over the ordering. (I use the same custom tag to sort classical music by opus/work number)

My reply was a suggestion for still sorting by year, but without displaying it in the title.
Title: Re: Any way to group Album Artists???
Post by: The Incredible Boom Boom on August 11, 2019, 07:35:34 PM
you can group tracks by album ('album and tracks' view) and sort tracks within album by *any* tag (eg. 'year').

I worked out a formula for months and years and added zero-width spaces to the front of the album title and it worked! I didn't play any tracks from them, however, until yesterday, when I discovered an album that had those spaces added wasn't scrobbling at all. I chalked it up to a bug and then tried again to play the same album today and then a different one from the same group, only to realize what was happening - the spaces are interfering with both MusicBee's ability to add them to the "Recently Played" playlist, as well as Last.fm's ability to read them.

I'm aware of the grouping options for the different main panel views, however, none of these apply to the Thumbnail Browser, which is where I'm trying to sort albums chronologically. In the Thumbnail Browser, I can list tracks by <Album>, but I'm only given one option between "Sort By" or "Group By," rather than the ability to use both.

Anyway, because the zero-width space blocks scrobbles...

Quote from: Zak
I've ended up using a custom tag because I want my grouped soundtracks (e.g. MCU, James Bond) to be chronological, but everything else to be alphabetical. So it sorts on that tag first, then album title.

Again, as above, sorting in the Thumbnail Browser is either "Sort By" "Count"/"Name"/"Year" or "Group By" all available tags. I can't figure out a way to apply both, if it is possible. If your custom tag doesn't display year or the sort method in front of the title, would you mind sharing the pattern?