Author Topic: Sort *specific* Artist by Album Name>Year in main album view?  (Read 1737 times)

edcase

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So my regular Album Cover's view is sorted by Album Artist > Year > Album, which is great BUT for any soundtrack stuff.
I separate any OST things since I rename their album artist to "Soundtrack" so they all live together.
Now this probably isn't possible but I'd like to 'conditionally sort' or something akin, so for any album artist which matches "Soundtrack" it would sort by Album Artist > Album > Year without disturbing everything else. Would be helpful for anything under the umbrella of 'Various' too. Am I just crazy or is this achievable?

metrodub

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You can do a custom sort and do the Sort that you want.

Go to the Layout Drop Down, choose Sort By and then Define Custom Sort...

edcase

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Thanks for the reply, but either I wasn't clear enough or I'm missing something =]

So I want to keep all my music sorted by "Album Artist > Year > Album" except one artist, let's define as 'X'.
For X's album's I want to order them by "Album Artist > Album > Year".
X's music exists with all my other music from artists 'A' to 'Z', only their (X) albums are organised alphanumerically before chronologically.

I'm not sure there is a clean automated way to do this. The "enable custom sort values for individual artists...' looks like band A = B for grouping purposes.

Visual:

A --- 1976 - Fruit
A --- 1982 - Bread

B --- 1979 - Berries
B --- 1980 - Nuts

X --- 2001 - Jam
X --- 1999 - Marshmallows
X --- 2018 - Strawberries

Y --- 1954 - Oats
Y --- 1981 - Carrots

Z --- 2015 - Potato
Z --- 2018 - Apple
Last Edit: August 29, 2021, 12:20:35 AM by edcase

The Incredible Boom Boom

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Now this probably isn't possible but I'd like to 'conditionally sort' or something akin, so for any album artist which matches "Soundtrack" it would sort by Album Artist > Album > Year without disturbing everything else. Would be helpful for anything under the umbrella of 'Various' too. Am I just crazy or is this achievable?

Filtering soundtrack albums from your conventional ones would be an easy way to achieve your desired result.
If you would like to keep all your music on one panel, you'll need to make a Virtual Tag and build a custom function matching your conditions.

edcase

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Yah, I figured it wouldn't be a thing, thanks for the suggestions tho. So I had a quick poke around with some Virtual / Custom Tags, Not quite sure how to apply the result...



So I renamed Custom1 tag to "SortYear" and made a Virtual tag titled AlbumYearSort..
So I tried both $If($Contains(<Album Artist>,"Soundtrack")="T",<SortYear>=<Album>,<SortYear>=<Year>)
and <SortYear> = $If($Contains(<Album Artist>,"Soundtrack")="T",<Album>,<Year>)

Both preview the same, yet don't actually write anything to the custom tag <SortYear>, is this just doing a comparison function, how do I write data to the custom tag? Is it the replace function? I'll probably remove the false action and leave it null when it works.

Corliss Rain

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Custom tags must have data manually filled -- virtual tags don't write to custom tags. Do you have the Year tag filled in? If so, try this as a virtual tag:

$If($Contains(<Album Artist>,Soundtrack),$Sort(<Album>,<Year>),)

Otherwise, you would need to fill in data in your SortYear tag and then use this as a virtual tag:

$If($Contains(<Album Artist>,Soundtrack),$Sort(<Album>,<SortYear>),)

Then create a Custom Sort Definition to get everything sorted out the way you want. For example, I have a virtual tag called "Sort Various", which puts my VA albums in alphabetical order. My custom sort definition is Album Artist, Sort Various, Year, Album. This sorts my single artist albums by Album Artist, Year, Album, but keeps my VA albums alphabetically.

Hope this helps.

edcase

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Godsend! Thankyou, didn't realise you couldn't automagically write to custom tags.
<SortYear> tag was made as I was experimenting, but my standard <Year> tag's are in order.
Had the Custom sort defined like yours, just using the custom tag which wasn't being effected.

Only added the false condition to make sure I wasn't missing some syntax.
Your solution is much neater and is exactly what I wanted to achieve, will do a variation of this with VA also, thanks again!

edcase

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[UPDATE] For some reason custom sort values for artists repopulated and put "Soundtrack" as "Murphy, John" for the "28 Days Later"... anyway, that makes sense now, removed that and it's working as expected. =]

So went ahead and tried your virtual tag and it worked a treat... except it places all the "Soundtrack" albums under MU, just after Muddy Waters and before Muse, added an additional <Album Artist> to the sort and it has no effect either. Not a big deal but just a bit confused at the logic ^^ Otherwise works perfectly.

Last Edit: August 29, 2021, 10:27:43 PM by edcase

edcase

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Anyway to mark this thread as solved? For those interested my Virtual Tag ended up:

$If($Or(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Album Artist>="Soundtrack"),$Sort(<Sort Album>","<Year>),)

Custom Sort by Album Artist > Virtual Tag Name > Year > Album.
Hit F5 to refresh library after changes, done.

Much thanks to all =]
Last Edit: August 30, 2021, 09:00:56 PM by edcase