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!