Multiple Sort Criteria

[MarcBee]

Hi, first of all a big thank you for MusicBee  I really find it wonderful to organise all my music.
I am a newbee and I am trying to achieve the following:
Typically I am sorting my library with the standard "Album Artist/Year/Album" feature, which is perfect.
I do have a few "Album Artists" (Soundtrack, Various Artists, Various Artists Pop, Various Artists Rock, Various Artists Romantic) that I would like to sort differently by  "Album Artist/Album/Year".
Through Virtual Tags I can only change the sorting for one of the "Various Artists" categories.
Is there a good way to permanently change the view so that All Individual Artists are sorted by "Album Artist/Year/Album" and defined "Various Artists" are sorted by "Album Artist/Album/Year" ?
I played around a lot, but unfortunately couldn't get it done.
Thank you for your help and support

[ma_t14]

The way I think to make it work would be to create 2 new virtual tags.

VirtualTag1 will return the album tag if it matches any of the names you have chosen as album artist compilation tags, otherwise it will return the Year tag.
VirtualTag2 will return the Year tag if it matches any of the names you have chosen as album artist compilation tags, otherwise it will return the Album tag.

And then you will create a custom sorting as such:

Album Artist/VirtualTag1/VirtualTag2

Example code for VirtualTag1:
$If($Or(<Album Artist>="Various",<Album Artist>="Soundtrack"),<Album>,<Year>)

Example code for VirtualTag2:
$If($Or(<Album Artist>="Various",<Album Artist>="Soundtrack"),<Year>,<Album>)

You will need to change/add your own <album artist> values inside the $Or(...) method to suit your needs.

For more info regarding available functions check out the wiki

[MarcBee]

Thank you so much    I will try and let you know if it worked

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Personally, I have drastically different "types" of albums in separate tab panels.
It's overall easier to manage albums where you want the grouping or sorting to be different from your typically tagged music, plus it's fun to play around and have different layouts and views depending on the type of music.

In order for the above to work properly, however, you'll need to save both[\b] the Custom Layout and Custom View after opening your new tab, or changes made will affect your previous panel's look.

[MarcBee]

@ma_t14: I tried your solution, It works only for one line, that's what I did:

I added 2 Virtual Tags:
Soundtrack:         $If($Or(<Album Artist>="Soundtrack A",<Album Artist>="Soundtrack B"),<Album>,<Year>)
Various Artists:   $If($Or(<Album Artist>="Various Artists A",<Album Artist>="Various Artists B"),<Album>,<Year>)

Then I added under sorting/grouping the following:
Sorting Set sort by
1 Soundtrack
2 Various Artists

Whichever Value I have as the first one will display correctly, the second one not. Also the "ignore the"- rule is no longer followed, though i ticked the box.
Anything I'm doing wrong here ?


@The Incredible Boom Boom:
I don't understand what you mean by separate tab panels, is there a way to have more than one "main panel" in one library ? like various "libraries" tabbed in one session of MusicBee ? Is there some documentation you can guide me to for this approach ?

Thank you both for your help

[ma_t14]

@ma_t14: I tried your solution, It works only for one line, that's what I did:

That doesn't look like my solution though

[MarcBee]

  yeah, I wasn't sure on the Example code for VirtualTag2, it looked like I had to enter ALL other artists that don't apply to VirtualTag1, which probably wasn't right

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

@The Incredible Boom Boom:
I don't understand what you mean by separate tab panels, is there a way to have more than one "main panel" in one library ? like various "libraries" tabbed in one session of MusicBee ? Is there some documentation you can guide me to for this approach ?

Tabs Bar from The Anatomy of MusicBee

[MarcBee]

@The Incredible Boom Boom: Great, thank you very much. My understanding is that I cannot have separate "libraries" for each tab, but my customs tab can show a filtered version of my master library, is that pretty much correct ?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

@The Incredible Boom Boom: Great, thank you very much. My understanding is that I cannot have separate "libraries" for each tab, but my customs tab can show a filtered version of my master library, is that pretty much correct ?

Yup, that's correct.
A couple regulars here have mentioned they have use-cases that require separate libraries, but I believe my MusicBee setup to be extremely complex and yet I haven't come upon a circumstance where I feel like maintaining another library would be more of a convenience than filtering music on separate panel tabs. But your mileage may vary.

[MarcBee]

@The Incredible Boom Boom:
Thank you for your feedback & experience. I will need to think about what's the best way of organising, separate libraries for different major styles of music (e.g. classics/ modern) or filtering a master library.

[frankz]

IMO if you're looking for two more cents, having two libraries is unduly complicated.  I have one tab for my "regular" music that's filtered "Genre does not include Classical" and one tab for my classical that's filtered "Genre includes Classical" and I don't even have to think about it.  Otherwise, you're opening this library or that depending on what you want to hear or manage at that time.  Not to mention the major snag you hit when you want to hear one and manage the other at the same time.

Also, I can do things like having playlist mixers where 10% of the songs are from my classical "library" that I couldn't do if they were separated.

Like I said, one man's opinion, but I've tried both and maintaining separate libraries is unwieldy.

[MarcBee]

@frankz: thank you for your to more cents  I am still not sure, probably I need to get a grip on the filter functions first, once I am convinced I can manage it in the right way it does sound like the way to go