Possible to do multiple sort categories per artist?

[aububuh]

Hi, I just switched from iTunes and have gotten most of my sorting taken care of, except for the anomaly in my library of 154 Frank Zappa albums (I know).  Back in iTunes I could use multiple sort as categories per artist to split those albums into consecutive categories of the canon albums, then tribute albums, then all the live bootleg albums at the end.  MusicBee does not seem to support this however, telling me if I try to put a sort as tag on one Zappa album that's different from the tag on another, that "this value is not consistent with the custom sort value used by MusicBee for sorting the artist".  So I take it that each artist is only allowed one sort as tag.  Is there a different option to accomplish what I'm trying to do?  Searching around has not given me what I'm looking for so far.  Thanks.

[MotleyG]

Back in iTunes I could use multiple sort as categories per artist to split those albums into consecutive categories of the canon albums, then tribute albums, then all the live bootleg albums at the end.  MusicBee does not seem to support this however, telling me if I try to put a sort as tag on one Zappa album that's different from the tag on another, that "this value is not consistent with the custom sort value used by MusicBee for sorting the artist".

What field in iTunes were you using for this? There are no options in iTunes that allow any field to be multi value. But if you have different fields like composer, grouping, comments, etc. then you can use a similar combination in MusicBee to create a custom sort.

[purplebee]

I don't understand what you mean by multiple sort but MB has by far better sorting capabilities than iTunes, so I doubt what you want to do is not possible. Could you share a screenshot of your current MB setup and another of iTunes showing what you're trying to accomplish?

[aububuh]

Sorry if I was a little unclear.  Basically what I'm doing in iTunes is tagging different albums by Frank Zappa with different sort as labels based on how I would like them to be sorted; all the studio and live albums issued by Zappa at the beginning, and other miscellanea such as live bootleg tapes at the end.  The canon albums are simply tagged sort as "Zappa, Frank"; the other categories being "Zappa, Frank (b)" "Zappa, Frank (c)", etc.
https://imgur.com/SoTJg5r
https://imgur.com/2J427Bz
https://imgur.com/Pze37ZC
This keeps the "real" albums together, with the other stuff not mixed in and cluttering things up.  MusicBee seems to get mad though when I try and do this.  If one album by Frank Zappa has a different sort as tag as another, MusicBee either treats this as anomalous or updates the sort tag on all Frank Zappa albums with the new value.  If there's a different but equally elegant way to do what I'm going for, please let me know.
https://imgur.com/I2sqRgA
https://imgur.com/IvyJCrn

[Steven]

MB only supports a single sort artist value. If you are trying to keep album tracks together populate the album artist tag and sort/ filter by album artist. The album artist will default to the artist name so you dont have to tag every file

[karbock]

@aububuh

Just to rephrase your first post, you would like to group your Frank Zappa albums by album type:
1. Canon albums
2. Tribute albums
3. Bootleg albums

A simple way to achieve this is to store the album grouping category in an unused tag, for all tracks of your albums by Frank Zappa.
You could use for instance tag 'Grouping' (standard tag) if it is not used in your collection,
or create a custom tag, say 'AlbumType'.

Steps:

• Create the custom tag if needed.
• Populate the album grouping tag with '1. Canon', '2. Tribute', or '3. Bootleg'.
• When browsing your collection with the 'Albums' view,
  right click on the 'Albums' header, and within 'Group By' select the album grouping tag.
  The sorting order can remain unchanged: by Album, Year/Album, etc.

With this method, special sorting values based on the artist name are useless.

[purplebee]

Sorry if I was a little unclear.  Basically what I'm doing in iTunes is tagging different albums by Frank Zappa with different sort as labels based on how I would like them to be sorted; all the studio and live albums issued by Zappa at the beginning, and other miscellanea such as live bootleg tapes at the end.  The canon albums are simply tagged sort as "Zappa, Frank"; the other categories being "Zappa, Frank (b)" "Zappa, Frank (c)", etc.
https://imgur.com/SoTJg5r
https://imgur.com/2J427Bz
https://imgur.com/Pze37ZC
This keeps the "real" albums together, with the other stuff not mixed in and cluttering things up.  MusicBee seems to get mad though when I try and do this.  If one album by Frank Zappa has a different sort as tag as another, MusicBee either treats this as anomalous or updates the sort tag on all Frank Zappa albums with the new value.  If there's a different but equally elegant way to do what I'm going for, please let me know.
https://imgur.com/I2sqRgA
https://imgur.com/IvyJCrn

Ohh, as Steven said doing that isn't possible because custom sort tags are global in Musicbee. However there's better ways to do what you're looking for. Karbock explained it pretty well, but here I made a video showing how it could be done. I don't have any Zappa bootlegs (yet) so I used Albums, Compilations and Singles for this example. Also I used the grouping tag for this, but you can use any available custom tag too. Hope it helps: https://streamable.com/9ymncp

Also take into consideration your grouping tag gets sorted alphabetically, you could use "Canon Albums"/"Official Albums", "Tribute" and "Unofficial" to get the order you want. You can also bypass this by using numbers or even blank characters at the start of the grouping tag.

[aububuh]

Ohh, as Steven said doing that isn't possible because custom sort tags are global in Musicbee. However there's better ways to do what you're looking for. Karbock explained it pretty well, but here I made a video showing how it could be done. I don't have any Zappa bootlegs (yet) so I used Albums, Compilations and Singles for this example. Also I used the grouping tag for this, but you can use any available custom tag too. Hope it helps: https://streamable.com/9ymncp

Also take into consideration your grouping tag gets sorted alphabetically, you could use "Canon Albums"/"Official Albums", "Tribute" and "Unofficial" to get the order you want. You can also bypass this by using numbers or even blank characters at the start of the grouping tag.

Aha, that worked perfectly!  Thank you so much for the helpful video.  

While we're here, I just noticed another issue; all but one volume of the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series seem to have synchronized artwork.  If I go in to add art manually to each one, as soon as I refresh MusicBee they all switch to having whichever cover I last updated.  Except for some reason Volume 3, which is somehow exempt from this and retains its proper cover.  I would include a screenshot but Imgur is down at the moment.  Why are they tied to each other, and how can I stop it?

[purplebee]

Ohh, as Steven said doing that isn't possible because custom sort tags are global in Musicbee. However there's better ways to do what you're looking for. Karbock explained it pretty well, but here I made a video showing how it could be done. I don't have any Zappa bootlegs (yet) so I used Albums, Compilations and Singles for this example. Also I used the grouping tag for this, but you can use any available custom tag too. Hope it helps: https://streamable.com/9ymncp

Also take into consideration your grouping tag gets sorted alphabetically, you could use "Canon Albums"/"Official Albums", "Tribute" and "Unofficial" to get the order you want. You can also bypass this by using numbers or even blank characters at the start of the grouping tag.

Aha, that worked perfectly!  Thank you so much for the helpful video. 

While we're here, I just noticed another issue; all but one volume of the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series seem to have synchronized artwork.  If I go in to add art manually to each one, as soon as I refresh MusicBee they all switch to having whichever cover I last updated.  Except for some reason Volume 3, which is somehow exempt from this and retains its proper cover.  I would include a screenshot but Imgur is down at the moment.  Why are they tied to each other, and how can I stop it?

Might be because all those files are in the same folder and are using the same cover.jpg file. Check this thread: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=39082.0

[phred]

While we're here, I just noticed another issue...

In the future please create a new thread for questions/issues not related to the subject of the existing thread. This makes it easier for people who have the same question to search for answers.

[aububuh]

Might be because all those files are in the same folder and are using the same cover.jpg file. Check this thread: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=39082.0

Well that was indeed it, but I have absolutely no clue how they all got in one folder because I certainly didn't do that myself.  And by the time I fixed it, volume 3 had joined the others in that same folder.  Very strange.

In the future please create a new thread for questions/issues not related to the subject of the existing thread. This makes it easier for people who have the same question to search for answers.

Apologies.  I guess I was shy about being the newbie starting a bunch of new topics and asking silly questions, but you have an excellent point.