"First letter of Artist name" field for device media storage

[RavenWorks]

For devices with slow scrolling, it would be handy to be able to assign the music file storage path to be something like

Code

Music\<Album Artist Initial>\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Disc-Track#> - (...etc)

so that the Music folder would contain one folder for each letter of the alphabet, and the B folder would hold The Beatles, The BeeGees, etc

[Zak]

You could do that with a virtual tag like this:

$Group(<Album Artist>,1)

Then use that tag in your naming template.

-edit-
Actually, that's over complicating it. You could also just use that formula in your template:

Music\$Group(<Album Artist>,1)\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Disc-Track#> - (...etc)

[RavenWorks]

Fantastic, thank you!

[RavenWorks]

Actually, where can I learn more about this feature? Are there others like it? (I'm tempted to make a different request about paths now, but I feel like I should fully understand how this feature works first...)

[RavenWorks]

Never mind, I found them! https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Functions

[frankz]

I'm confused on this. Is $Group the correct function or is $Left the correct function or with both work equally well?

[Zak]

If you only want the first letter, $Group(<Artist>,1) and $Left(<Artist>,1) will do the same thing.

Where Group is a little more flexible is that the second parameter is how many characters will appear in each group.
So you can tweak it depending on the how many groups you want to end up with.

1 = A, B, C, D, E, F ...
2 = AB, CD, EF ...
3 = ABC, DEF ...

Numbers are always grouped as "0-9".

If it still isn't clear:
* Select a few different files from different artists
* Right-click
* Select Send To > Folder (Copy) > Copy Files to Organised Folder
* Add the $Group function to the naming template and adjust the second parameter to see how it affects the new file name in the preview list.

[Simpuhl]

If you only want the first letter, $Group(<Artist>,1) and $Left(<Artist>,1) will do the same thing.

Where Group is a little more flexible is that the second parameter is how many characters will appear in each group.
So you can tweak it depending on the how many groups you want to end up with.

1 = A, B, C, D, E, F ...
2 = AB, CD, EF ...
3 = ABC, DEF ...

Numbers are always grouped as "0-9".

If it still isn't clear:
* Select a few different files from different artists
* Right-click
* Select Send To > Folder (Copy) > Copy Files to Organised Folder
* Add the $Group function to the naming template and adjust the second parameter to see how it affects the new file name in the preview list.

How do I make numbers NOT group by 1-9

[Zak]

What do you want them to appear as?

Try wrapping the whole naming template in a Replace function to swap the '0-9' with your preference.