Any way to group Album Artists???

[musicmahn]

The middle panel has the contents and layout I'm going for but why i would see the same exact Album Artist twice and not see those albums grouped together?

Here are each:


and






......uh could it be format?  The two on top are WAV files.

[deraudrl]

If my eyes aren't deceiving me, there are four albums there, titled:

2.11.18 Solar Culture
The Best of The Doors
Happier
Soul Tunes

Looks like they're sorted by album title...

[musicmahn]

Oh you're a sharp cookie! 

So the question then is - how do I get these all grouped by Album Artist?  The grouping setting I thought would have done the trick.
ABC order after that is great, or chronological

[psychoadept]

Make sure that your sort by, your group by, AND your header fields in layout settings match.

[deraudrl]

So the question then is - how do I get these all grouped by Album Artist?

Ok, I've lost the bubble here: I thought the whole point of the exercise was to map everything Steve-Roach-related into "Steve Roach", and it looks like it's doing that.

[musicmahn]

Yes I have that much accomplished I think.  Now I'm getting cosmetic and picky

So, sure enough they are appearing in ABC order - I changed "Happier" to "Zappier" and it got moved to the bottom:





What I'm looking to do is group by album artist in the middle pane.
So that I only see one instance of Steve Roach and "Marshmello with dude" in that god awful blue (where do i change this font??)
Under each album artist I would like the albums tied to that name.  So under Steve Roach would be the two 2.2018 live dates and Soul Tones.  Under the "Marshmello with dude" would be that Doors album and what is now "Zappier" lol

Played around for like 30 min last night and couldn't get anywhere with this :-/  Very bizarre to behave this way it's being told to group by Album Artist but the only grouping that will truly happen is if there are consecutive albums in ABC order that happen to have the same Album Artist?

[musicmahn]

Oh man ok I changed the sorting of the middle panel to "Genre/Album Artist/Album"

and look!


Nearly exact to what I'm looking for (though why is the Steve Roach group showing before the Marshmello?)

but oh.....spoke to soon.  For whatever reason in the next sort artist group, Marshmello is NOT grouping together.
Album Artist and genres are identical - why is MB doing this??



At least i have another slight clue but I'm really baffled here.  On this 2nd screen shot the albums are also now out of ABC order.  What rules are MB following here?

[psychoadept]

This is all dependent on your Group By settings, your Sort By settings, and what's in your tags. You're going to have to fiddle with those things until you're happy with the results. Right now, it looks like whatever tag you're grouping by is the issue. What is your Group By setting?

[musicmahn]

Group by is just Album Artist

Would be happy to screenshot my settings if you can tell me which you want to look at. 
Can also upload my MB generated "settings snapshot" if that helps?


Ugh so close......I fell asleep with the laptop laying on me last night trying to figure this out lol

Thanks again - SO much for the guidance!

[psychoadept]

If you can show us the tag editor for tracks/albums that have the Marshmello heading, that would help at this point.

[musicmahn]

Sweet - Please let me know if I'm showing you the wrong windows and I will edit this post to what's needed:






Hmmm why is it that some fields are greyed out on one but not the other?

[psychoadept]

Yep, it's doing exactly what you're asking it to do. It's grouping by Album Artist (not Sort Album Artist). So if you want to change it, either you have to change what you're grouping by or what the Album Artist is.

Usually if a Sort field is gray, it means the value is automatically generated by MusicBee's custom sorting algorithm.

[musicmahn]

It appears that way in the first screenshot I made here but not in the 2nd.
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28267.msg157068#msg157068
With the tag inspectors I sent it would appear that grouping by Album Artist would be fine - but we see that Marshmello is being split up?
And how is MB going about sorting these album artists? - obviously not in ABC order

[psychoadept]

And how is MB going about sorting these album artists? - obviously not in ABC order

But isn't your SORT Album Artist (and therefore Sort Artist) for all of them the same? I'm not sure what MusicBee uses when it can't distinguish those. Album name?

This is the kind of thing I meant when I said using the custom sorting algorithm to create your "buckets" could have unintended consequences.

[musicmahn]

---edited in my next post---