Music Explorer: Separate Main Albums from Appears On Albums

[metrodub]

I love utilizing the Music Explorer tab to find albums from Artists I am listening to or discover new acts that are similar to what I am listening to.  Plus, I'm a bit of an organization nut and tend to be a bit meticulous with tags in my collection.

I would love it if MusicBee was able to separate an Artist's main albums from albums that they appear on (either on a compilation or a featured artist on a song).

If you look at the image below, I have 25 albums (5 below the scroll) that Kanye West is on.  8 are main Kanye albums (if you exclude the collaboration with Jay-Z) and 17 are albums that he appears on.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement but if you could add a header for "Main Albums", or another title, then display those albums (where the Artist is identified as Album Artist) and then have an "Appears On" header below the main albums followed by those albums, that would be an awesome addition.

I would also assume that if an artist doesn't have any "Appears On" albums, then that header would not show and vice versa.

[TotamiLegend]

+1!

Multiple sections like Spotify profiles, something that I wanted for so long!


- Albums

- Singles

- Appears on

[Steven]

For v3.4 In the Music Explorer, I have split Albums into a separate "Appears On" section where the criteria is the album artist differs from the current active artist selected in the Music Explorer

[metrodub]

That's awesome!  Thanks Steven.  Looking forward to testing it out.

[metrodub]

Playing around in the 3.4 alpha and the Appears On addition is perfect (as seen in the Kanye screenshot below).




However, if an artist is only on compilations or featured on songs within the library, the "Appears On" header does not show up.  For example, Future is on a number of songs in my library, but I don't have any of his albums where he is the Album Artist.  In the screenshot below, you can see those albums that he appears on, but the "Appears On" header if not visible.



Is it possible to have the header appear if the artist does not have any albums where they are the Album Artist?

Thanks.

[Steven]

That was intentional but thinking about some more what you propose is fine

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rkx9mn38mybdpaa/MusicBee.zip/file

[metrodub]

thank you!

[Goblet]

Is there any option to toggle this? It's a nice addition but I'm not huge on it personally.

I have a lot of collaborations in my library and this shunts a ton of them into the "appears on" section. I had a look around in the sort sections and couldn't figure out any way for album artists to be split similar to the normal artist tag.  

[Zak]

It looks like this is taking into account the extra credit tags like Remixer, GuestArtist etc. which is great.


However, further to the previous post, it doesn't work if the Album Artist tag has multiple artists.

For example, I have "Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross" as Album Artist for "The Social Network" soundtrack, but that album still appears under Appears On for each of those individual artists.

[Goblet]

It looks like this is taking into account the extra credit tags like Remixer, GuestArtist etc. which is great.


However, further to the previous post, it doesn't work if the Album Artist tag has multiple artists.

For example, I have "Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross" as Album Artist for "The Social Network" soundtrack, but that album still appears under Appears On for each of those individual artists.

I did make a separate post about this as there hadn't been any activity here, but this is a pretty big issue for scores where collaborations between composers is relatively common. I'd understand if this were down to faulty tags on the part of the user, but that's how these albums are officially credited. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are a fantastic example as they always collaborate on scores.

94/241 of my Hans Zimmer albums are in the appears on section, with the majority being collaborations. Nearly every single composer I have in my library (Zimmer, Giacchino, Williams, Morricone, Elfman) has some number of collaborations on scores.

[metrodub]

If you change the view from Artist to Album Artist you will essentially remove the Appears On grouping.  However, you then have separate instances for each of the collaborations.

I'm not sure what the happy medium is for this.  Maybe it's a change in the coding logic or maybe it's, as Goblet recommended, an option to toggle this feature.

[Goblet]

Gonna bump this. I think this needs a bit more consideration as it really breaks the flow of the music explorer. I'm fully on board with the idea behind it for features and such, but collaborations are quite common -- especially for composers -- and this is quite disruptive.

[Steven]

does this version work better?
https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee34_Patched.zip

[Goblet]

does this version work better?
https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee34_Patched.zip

Thanks for the reply Steven. I can't see any differences myself

EDIT: I should clarify I'm talking about the most recent posts on this topic regarding collaborations between two artists in the album artist tab causing normal albums by an artist to be put in the appears onn section, not the addition of the appears on section itself

[Steven]

i wont be able to help further with this