Thanks ssri!
A quick test shows that your formula seems to work quite well already.
There are probably some more characters that will need to be remapped for RYM, such as & and -
But I should be able to figure that out now.
You are also correct about the sensitive flood detector of RYM. Yesterday when trying some stuff out, I was 'reprimanded' already after maybe 5 tries. Do you think using the 'search' option instead of the 'direct link' option would make a difference in that aspect?
You're welcome. To add more escaped characters, just do:
http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/$lower(
$replace($replace($replace($replace(<Artist>"/"<Album>," ",_),"'",),",",_)
,"X",Y))
a simpler way of looking at it:
http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/$lower(
$replace(...
,"X",Y))
... = $replace($replace(<Artist>"/"<Album>," ",_),"'",),",",_)
X = punctuation mark or any other characters
Y = (empty space) or underscore, as most of the time punctuation marks are omitted but some like periods or commas are replaced by an underscore.
As for the search function, one can do that but it will take more effort from users to find whichever album they're looking for (scanning the search results). Also, I don't know if RYM implemented any similar flood protection for search queries (again, I seldom if ever use that site). In the end, I would recommend to try both approaches and see which one works out the best for you.