Author Topic: compilation grouping  (Read 14539 times)

boroda

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I need to group compilation albums to one pseudo-artist <Compilations> and to hide all artists in compilations from artists list. This is like in iTunes.

beakerman53

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Agreed.

If you have a large number of complilation albums, the artist list starts to become very cluttered and unmanageable!!

Steven

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one of the uses for "album artist" is to achieve just this - for compilations set "album artist" to "Various Artists", "Compilation", etc
If you leave it blank it will show the "artist" field

IMGrant

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I'm new to MusicBee, can this be achieved using the Compilation (=1) tag? I currently leave the Album Artist tag blank for compilations, as that works best with Squeezebox and other music players I use. (Hence a VA compilation is something with Compilation=1 and no Album Artist)

Steven

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right click on the column header bar in the main panel/Sort By/Define Custom Sorting
in that panel tick 'detect iTunes compilations' which will automatically group any files with the iTunes flag ticked.

To edit the iTunes compilation flag, you need to define a custom tag in Preferences/Tags(1) - in one of the custom tag fields select 'iTunes compilation'. You can then edit that field in the tag editor

IMGrant

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Thanks for the reply, but it doesn't seem to work. Firstly, they don't have a tag called iTunes Compilation, they're FLACs and they just have a tag called Compilation (=1). However, even if I set the iTunes Compilation flag, it still doesn't seem to work - the album appears under Various Artists, sorted under V, but in the main view panel, which is sorted by album artist, I have a cover for every song in the album.

IMGrant

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Uh.. I got an email this morning saying a reply had been left by Steven, but the last message I see is my own...   ???

Steven

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iTunesCompilation already maps to COMPILATION for FLAC files

to enable iTunes Compilation handling, right click on the column header bar in the main panel/Sort By/Define Custom Sorting
in that panel tick 'detect iTunes compilations' which will automatically group any files with the iTunes flag ticked.

so when a file has the compilation flag ticked, and the Album Artist is blank, then MB will treat the Album Artist as "Various Artists" for sorting and display purposes

IMGrant

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Ah, okay, good to know re iTunesCompilation = COMPILATION for FLACs. I will try it again tonight when I get home from work, but I think that I have done what you suggest, but it still doesn't work.
I defined the tag and enabled 'detect iTunes compilations', and now in the artwork view pane, the album artist does indeed show Various Artists, but I still have the cover image repeated for each song - i.e. it has set the album artist to VA (where previously there was none so it took the track artist I guess), but it is not grouping the tracks together. I have one cover image for each 'normal' album, but one per track for all VA albums.

liebezeit

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This doesn't seem to work with respect to the various file move/copy routines---tracks in a compilation aren't treated as such, the album artist is treated as "Various Artists", and <Album Artist> in file naming templates appears to resolve back to the track artist.

greenday1987

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I just right-click an album and hit edit. Then I fill in the 'album artist' as 'Various Artists'. Then I go to the last tab in this panel named 'settings.' in here I tick the box called iTunes compilation. This is purely because I own an iPod that I sync with MB and iPods are pretty unintelligent and this seems the only way to group them properly on that.
Then I have the main panel sorted by 'Album Artist/ Album.'
This achieves me a single artist 'Various Artists' in which all compilation albums appear.
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