Author Topic: Allow field in thumbnail browser to populate different field in main view  (Read 1341 times)

mogpt

  • Newbie
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  • Posts: 5
Hello. This is a bit hard to explain but I'll try my best.

My current primary browsing method is setup like this:

Thumbnail Browser populated by the Album Artist field
Main Panel showing Album Covers view





This works, but (using this screenshot as an example) it doesn't show albums with tracks that have the value "Jim O'Rourke" in the Artist field such as compilations or collaborative albums tagged with the Split Artist feature. That's what I'm looking asking a solution for.  

I can achieve this if I populate the thumbnail browser with the Artist field. However, If I do this the thumbnail browser becomes filled with many unwanted artist names from compilations which only have one or two tracks in my library. I tag all compilations with "Various Artists" in the Album Artist field to keep them organized.

One simple solution I've imagined would be to allow the displayed fields in the thumbnail browser to load a different field in the main panel. For example, have the thumbnail browser list populated by the "Album Artist" field, but have its selection populate the main panel via the "Artist" field.

This would allow (reusing my example from above) selecting the value "Jim O'Rourke" from the Album Artist listing in the thumbnail browser to not load files with the value "Jim O'Rourke" in the Album Artist field, but with the value "Jim O'Rourke" in the Artist field. Therefore, also loading compilations this artist is included on and collaborative albums tagged with the split artist feature as well, while keeping the thumbnail browser clean from many unwanted artist names from compilations.

Maybe something clever can be done to custom / virtual tags to allow this without much disturbance? A custom tag to load another field?

Sorry for the long post. I hope this makes sense. Please let me know If there's any questions or clarification needed. I really love using MusicBee, this is probably the only missing feature I can think of. Thank you for this great software!

redwing

  • Guest
One simple solution I've imagined would be to allow the displayed fields in the thumbnail browser to load a different field in the main panel. For example, have the thumbnail browser list populated by the "Album Artist" field, but have its selection populate the main panel via the "Artist" field.

One way to achieve that is select artist field grouped by album artist in thumbnail browser. Then each album artist group will show artists under it. You could select either album artist or artist under it to display their albums in the main panel.
If you want to customize it more using other tags, have a look at this thread: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=24698.0

redwing

  • Guest
Another option would be select album artist for thumbnail browser, and use album view or artist view grouped by artist in the main panel (click on view button in the top left corner> group by). Then the main panel will display albums grouped by artist for the selected album artist in thumbnail browser.

mogpt

  • Newbie
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  • Posts: 5
Hi redwing,

Thanks for your reply!

I tried out your first suggestion, but this still has the issue of creating a cluttered listing in the thumbnail browser. Many duplicates are shown since Album Artist and Artist are often the same. It also does not include compilations in my case since those are still grouped under the the value of "Various Artists" from the Album Artist field. It seems only slightly more organized than listing by Artist alone, and not as comprehensive.

Your accompanying suggestions in the linked thread are interesting. However, the nature of these extra artists listed from the compilations being numerous and unfamiliar makes it difficult to add them manually. Filtering them by track count also has some issues as some are included many times, or other solo-artist albums sometimes only have a single track (long single compositions).

I've also tried your second suggestion, but this doesn't seem to be right either. It only groups these albums under a header of the chosen Album Artist value, not show works where that value is also listed in the Artist field.

I've tried a few other configurations with grouping and virtual tag creation, but I haven't had any success with the current system.

This is probably an esoteric issue but it would be really great to have a better solution for organizing compilations and collaborative works in an overall view of an artist's discography.

boroda

  • Sr. Member
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  • Posts: 4595
create 'Real Artist' custom tag, use it instead of 'artist' tag, populate 'artist' tag with artists only if you want to and make thumbnail browser to show 'artist' tag.