Author Topic: Sorting album tracks by track artist ?  (Read 2103 times)

Skuidius

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Hello dear MusicBee community, this is my first question.

I would like to sort the tracks of 7 albums by artist name. Does anyone knows how to help me?
I tried almost everything I could. My tracks are sorted by alphabetical order, I want an alphabetical order for artist names. It should be for instance : Alborosie's songs in first, Bob Marley's songs in second, CaliP's songs in third, etc.

Thanks in advance to the ones who will try to help, here is a screenshot of my tracks sorted by track names. I hope I explained my problem well enough.  :-X


hiccup

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Welcome to the forum Skuidius

Would it be an acceptable solution if you set 'Artist' as sub-grouping header for the expanded panel?


Skuidius

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First, thank you a lot!

And sadly no, I already tried this but it creates a different group for every artist and I would like to not create these extra groups for one song each. Also the files are still sorted in the alphabetical order for track names.
But we may be on the good way!  :)

Last Edit: July 07, 2020, 08:41:49 PM by Skuidius

hiccup

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I assumed the extended panel always sorts on track numbers, but in your latest screenshot I see no track numbers showing at all?
Did you do something to remove them or not having them displayed?

Skuidius

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Yes, that was the case already in the first screenshot too. I did remove all track numbers for these 7 albums because they are mostly singles so the tracks numbers are all "1". I disabled it to sort by alphabetical order.

hiccup

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I see. It looks like the extended panel will first try to sort by track number, and if it can't it will sort on title.
I don't think there is any clever way to bypass that. (except for changing the titles themselves, but I don't think that's something you would want to do)

You could create a 'wishlist' topic to be able to set the sorting order for the extended panel.
Last Edit: July 07, 2020, 09:12:26 PM by hiccup

Skuidius

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Well thank you again for your time and answers!
I really thought there was a way to simply sort files differently. I really feel like I already seen something like that...

Anyway I will deal with it... Thank you again, and I will keep this updated if I ever find a solution.

hiccup

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If the track numbers are not important to you (I think you said you already removed them or set them all to '1'), why not set them in sequence to match the alphabetical sequence of the artist names on these compilation albums?
Last Edit: July 07, 2020, 09:35:06 PM by hiccup

Skuidius

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Thank you for your suggestion, but I thought there was a simple option to simply sort by artist names automatically, but if we just can't I can live with this!  ;)

Setting a number for each song would mean adding a new number every time I download a song (which I don't really mind). But if the song I add is number 45 on 90 songs, I will have to change the number for each songs after the number 45 so there are no duplicates. If i don't there will be two songs with number 45.
And I often download many songs at the same time.

I don't know if what I say is clear enough, but it will be a pain in the ass to change the numbers every time I download a song.

Thanks again sir for your time and help! Also the quickness of your answers. I appreciate that.

psychoadept

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You could use Album & Tracks view in detailed list mode, which will allow whatever sorting you want.
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Skuidius

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You could use Album & Tracks view in detailed list mode, which will allow whatever sorting you want.

Could you explain that a little more please?
I wanted to sort 7 of my albums into my collection, not creating a playlist for them.

psychoadept

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Switch to Album & Tracks view, then go into Configure Panel and change it to detailed list. Make a custom sort order like Album Artist\Album\Disc-Track#\Artist. (You will have to make sure that all the tracks in these albums have the same album artist.)

https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Panel_Views
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Skuidius

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Sorry for the time before finally answering.

Thank you for your suggestion but it doesn't helps or solve anything. I don't want to use the Album & Tracks view at first, and secondly all the tracks in these albums are different artists. Which is the main reason why I wanted to sort them by artist name...

I can live with it, I thought there was a simple way to sort tracks in an album.
I leave the topic open in case someone wants to add something, but you can close it as you want I guess if needed, to clear space, idk.

hiccup

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I can live with it, I thought there was a simple way to sort tracks in an album.
I leave the topic open in case someone wants to add something, but you can close it as you want I guess if needed, to clear space, idk.

The 'closure' here is that it currently can't be done.
As suggested earlier in this thread, you could create a wishlist topic for it.