Sort Artist

[kiequoo]

Now I finally have my iPod syncing with Musicbee, I have one other little problem, which is all the artists appear on my ipod using the Artist tag, not the sort artist.  I have checked the option "Replace artist tag with sort-artist" in the device settings but it seems to make no difference.  What tag is it that needs to be set in my MP3s?  Most of mine seem to have "ARTIST SORT-ORDER" and "ALBUM ARTIST SORT-ORDER" and they show up fine with this on the ipod when synced with itunes.  Cheers

[Steven]

the 'replace artist with sort-artist' option currently only does the replacement if there is a value explicitly entered in the sort-artist tag.

MB doesnt have a standard edit field for sort-artist and album like iTunes does (if enough people ask i will add it)
- what you can do is assign sort-artist, album to a custom tag (Preferences/ Tags/ Custom Tags and select Artist-Sort Order etc)
- MB will then scan the files in your library for the appropriate file tags and populate the field

Then it should work when synching.
But does iTunes use sort-artist by default or is it a setting? I never use sort artist myself so never noticed.

[kiequoo]

Cheers, i'm a little lost though!  I have changed custom1 so the display name is sort-artist and "save to music file as tag" is set to Artist-Sort Order.  This made musicbee rescan all my music and I can then see the tag in music bee and it contains the correct information.  After syncing though it doesn't seem to have made any difference as all the "The" bands are listed together.  Have I done everything right?

Itunes I think uses the sort-artist by default if it is set.

[Steven]

i expect its not resynching the files and thats because MB only uses the last-updated time on the file to detect changes ie. the source file hasnt actually changed so not re-copied to the iPod.
I suggest you delete a couple on the ipod, re-synch and hopefully they will work (also make sure 'replace artist...' is still ticked)

edit:
i think what i will do for a future update to MB is always scan in sort-artist, sort-album when initially loading a file into MusicBee. The way it is now is not very obvious

[kiequoo]

Just tried that and it copied back the music I deleted, but the sort order is still wrong.  Any other ideas?

[Steven]

i'll check it out on the weekend - if the file has a value in the artist-sort order custom tag as seen in the tag editor and you have 'replace artist with sort-artist' ticked it should be working.
edit:
one thing i wonder - are you searching by album-artist on your ipod? You might need to also add a custom tag for sort- album artist as well
i will make this easier for others going forward!

[kiequoo]

I added the custom tag for sort - album artist too, but it made no difference.  On my iPod I am just going to music / artists and going through the list there, when I sync with itunes they are in sort artist order i.e. "The Strokes" is under S, but when I sync with musicbee all the "the" artists are together.  Cheers.

[Steven]

i have had a quick look at the code and on appearance it looks like it should be working. So if you deleted the 2 tracks again (they wont have resynched again for the same reason as before) then i will need to do a full test on the weekend

[Steven]

i've done a full test on my iphone and its working fine for me - i see the songs listed under the sort artist.
I have made a change so it will apply default sort-artist logic where it removes prefixes set in the Tag Preferences panel (by default just 'The') ie. it doesnt depend on you entering a sort-artist into the sort-artist tag field. But it will still require you to delete the files you want to synch as the files wont be re-copied unless the file timestamp has changed.
its in the next forum release.