Author Topic: Any way to group Album Artists???  (Read 15556 times)

psychoadept

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Whatever it's grouping by, everything that it finds together based on the sort order it will put under one heading. When the sort order and the group by headings don't match, that's when you get this sort of behavior. The order you said you were using is Genre/Album Artist/Album, so if it's not sorting by Album, then it must be using Genre. That makes sense, since Moving On is the only one which has a genre tag.

Given the various aspects of what you're trying to do, I really thing you're better off clearing out your custom sort artists and using Genre Category for your "buckets".
Last Edit: April 03, 2019, 07:42:36 PM by psychoadept
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musicmahn

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ah was editing my last reply as you were writing yours!

OK I see what you are saying.
Main panel is trying to sort by album artist but at this point thinks they are all one in the same (the sort album artist).
Weird thing though is that it IS showing the TRUE album artist despite what we're saying.
And when I tell it to group by the true album artists it is already acknowledging in this panel, it kinda does and kinda doesn't.  It does in one group but not the other, when i group by Genre/Album Artist/Album the other one groups properly and vice versa.  I wonder if I've reached the end of trying to get this to work.  Not a bug per se, but to me all of these closely related terms are too...closely related.  Album Artist/Sort Artist/Artist should all be separate things that can be selected or not.  If I told the middle panel to sort by sort album artist then i would understand it being confused (as i'm already in that "group").  But I told it album artist, and it did respect that for the most part.  But why it's picking and choosing when to behave idk.


Was it said that your genre category idea would create a permanent "rule" that would filter album artists into buckets as I've fashioned?
Ultimately I can live with no separation in the middle screen as long as I don't find any other bugs along the way.  Seeing them separated by true album artist would be cool but not worth having to manually tag stuff just for that reason.

Would virtualtags make sense in this respect?  I got this recommendation from someone else but that's all kind of confusing to me too
Last Edit: April 03, 2019, 08:50:22 PM by musicmahn

psychoadept

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Weird thing though is that it IS showing the TRUE album artist despite what we're saying.
And when I tell it to group by the true album artists it is already acknowledging in this panel, it kinda does and kinda doesn't.  It does in one group but not the other, when i group by Genre/Album Artist/Album the other one groups properly and vice versa.  I wonder if I've reached the end of trying to get this to work.  Not a bug per se, but to me all of these closely related terms are too...closely related.  Album Artist/Sort Artist/Artist should all be separate things that can be selected or not.  If I told the middle panel to sort by sort album artist then i would understand it being confused (as i'm already in that "group").  But I told it album artist, and it did respect that for the most part.  But why it's picking and choosing when to behave idk.

Was it said that your genre category idea would create a permanent "rule" that would filter album artists into buckets as I've fashioned?
Ultimately I can live with no separation in the middle screen as long as I don't find any other bugs along the way.  Seeing them separated by true album artist would be cool but not worth having to manually tag stuff just for that reason.

Would virtualtags make sense in this respect?  I got this recommendation from someone else but that's all kind of confusing to me too

Nothing happening here is unpredictable based on your settings and tags. The grouping heading uses the given tag (Album Artist) and it groups all the tracks with that tag that are placed together based on the sort order. The sorting order uses the SORT tags. That fact you're using the sort tags in a non-standard way is causing an undesired result - if the sort album artist corresponded with the album artist (like The Doors/Doors, The) then they would all group together.

You also asked it to sort by Genre first (before Album Artist) so the tracks with no genre were sorted before the one with a genre, that's standard in MusicBee - nothing comes before something. That would cause some of them to be split up regardless of the Album Artist/Sort Album Artist tags.

Re, Genre Category, try it and see. I feel like I'm repeating myself at this point. Virtual tags could do it, but would be hard to maintain. Genre Categories will do the same thing with a lot less effort to add and remove categories.

Edit: actually, the absolute easiest thing would be to either create filters for your library, to the effect of "Album Artist is any of ..." for each filter (bucket). Or make autoplaylists that do the same thing, and put them in a Buckets folder. Then you don't have to mess around with genre tags or sort tags.  Your buckets just won't be in the thumbnail or column browser.  Super simple, using MusicBee's features the way they're designed to be used.
Last Edit: April 04, 2019, 08:07:09 PM by psychoadept
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musicmahn

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You know I swore the genre tags were all in line but I've messed with everything so much that's apparently not how I left off.
SO fixing that one genre to be blank instead......well it sure LOOKS like success albeit with this very small amount of music.

Two quickies - Is there a quick way to globally erase all genre tags?  Personally I'll never have any use for them and it seems that keeping them blank is helping my cause.
Which setting can change that horrible baby blue font showing the album artist groups?

This is exciting!

boroda

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to erase genre tag: select all tracks, open tag editor, erase genre tag and save changes.

psychoadept

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To change the font, change the skin.
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musicmahn

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Ugh I need to step away and ahem.... reGROUP my emotions!

Here i thought I was in the promised land....erased all genre tags and whoops a separation happened again:


When I change the actual doors album (i.e. marshmello with dude) back to rock genre - it groups back up nicely - how pretty!




So this goes back to the same as I was seeing when choosing sort by Album Artist/Albums (since genre is no longer a factor).
Feels like something is missing here.  Just can't wrap my head around where it's coming up with this order of things.  I'm telling it to sort by Genre/Album Artist/Album......and yet the genres aren't sorted first.  One would expect to see the two doors discs listed at the bottom since every other genre is blank.  Here are my tracks:





Shoot me please  :)
Last Edit: April 04, 2019, 10:07:36 PM by musicmahn

psychoadept

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I really suggest you get rid of the Sort tags that are causing this trouble. Same as genres, select all, clear the field, save. And use the sort order you actually want, album artist/album or whatever.

Make that part work with *correct* tags. Then you can worry about making your buckets some other way. I don't know why i didn't think of a filter or auto-playlist sooner, this is what they do well.
Last Edit: April 04, 2019, 10:34:04 PM by psychoadept
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musicmahn

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I surely may end up taking that route psychoadept
I probably just need to exhaust my effort a bit more before i give up heheh

*Not looking at this at all today!

redwing

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Which setting can change that horrible baby blue font showing the album artist groups?

Is that Mahogany skin? Open the skin xml file with a text editor, and change the RGB value for "opposite".
Or if you just want to change the header's color, then put a desired RGB value for "Content[Artwork].GroupingHeader" element.

redwing

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OK so the issue I currently have as a total newb is that I have all of these variations of a given Artist.
I've got Aphex Twin, his 30 aliases......I've got Bela Fleck, Bela and Abigail, Bela and The Flecktones..... and so on!
What I really prefer is to have all of this stuff grouped under one banner for each.

New to all of this, I first set up Plex to run my NAS.  For various reasons I'm trying to get away from it but there is one feature I do like that is a practical solution to what I ask above.  Plex allows me to put Album Artists into a "collection".  So now I have a collection for Aphex Twin and all of his aliases, I have a collection for Bela Fleck.  Since I want this list to include all of my music, I even have "collections" for artists that have never used a different name at all.  Bon Jovi collection is just Bon Jovi.

So far I've figured one way to achieve what I want in MB but it's not quite as ideal as that Plex feature.  What I did was take some albums and update the "sort artist" to what would be a "collection" in my plex setup.  So now I can have a list to the left that have all of my sort artists and clicking into that gives me all the iterations and aliases - everything grouped up like I prefer.  What makes this a lessor method than Plex however is that this one is linked to the albums themselves, and not the album artist like in Plex.  The effect of this is that with Plex once I set up a given Artist or iteration - I'll never need to link to the "collection" i designated again.  All incoming music with that Album Artist name will appear automatically in the bucket I desire.  With MB the way I am currently attempting, I'll forever need to check and likely update the Sort Artist to achieve this same result.  Much more work over the course of time and volume of music I collect :)

I think the main thing I'm asking here other than general solutions to what I present is....is there any way I can tag or designate an album artist in such a way as I can with Plex?  

That sounds a pretty useful feature. Feel free to add that "Collection" feature to the wishlist sub-forum, I'll give you my vote.

musicmahn

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It's pretty nice for my needs, if only the interface was a bit more able to be tweaked.  It's just not ideal to navigate and I don't think it would take much for them to fix it.

Another nice feature is that I can add multiple collection tags to a given AlbumArtist.
So all "Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell" albums can be found in both my Namlook and Laswell collections (as I have many solo albums/side project of each artist)
Last Edit: April 07, 2019, 09:17:53 PM by musicmahn

psychoadept

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Another nice feature is that I can add multiple collection tags to a given release.
So a "Pete Namlook and Bill Laswell" album can be found in both my Namlook and Laswell collections (as I have many solo albums/side project of each artist)

I'm not sure if you're referring to MusicBee or Plex, but you can definitely have multiple collections with MusicBee if you use auto-playlists or filters.
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musicmahn

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sorry was talking about plex there.
perhaps it's just a filter as you say it and i have a ton of them saved as "collections".
either way having to use a drop down on PC or checkbox on android just doesn't flow nice for me.  i'm striving for the best so that i can settle and just worry about maintenance and enjoying my music again ;)

MB has me kind of angry at the moment i'm just not finding the logic in what it's doing.  I can better accept defeat when I understand why and in this case I'm not sure I ever will.
I get that I'm forcing it to do things in ways not intended but at the same time there is a thought process to it that makes sense even within the UI settings provided.  In many ways it's doing all that but then there are these outliers that aren't following the rest, for whatever reason :)

psychoadept

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I get that I'm forcing it to do things in ways not intended but at the same time there is a thought process to it that makes sense even within the UI settings provided.  In many ways it's doing all that but then there are these outliers that aren't following the rest, for whatever reason :)

Well, I partly take the blame for sending you down a path that made things more difficult. I think it's just because you have to come at it from the opposite direction with MusicBee - instead of adding a collection to an artist, you'll add an artist to a collection (i.e. filter). But once that's done, it's just as permanent. If your filter says "Album Artist is any of..." then once you add an artist to the filter, all tracks by that artist will always be included. And this is using the built in features, you don't have to beat your head on a wall trying to kludge it.
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