setting ignore.sort in the All Artists tag?

[pete_w]

Hi

I'm a newbie, so please be gentle. The context of my question is that of a predominantly rock/pop/blues/jazz music library (as opposed to classical).

According to the User Guide, when the tags are correctly set up, AlbumArtist gives me the obvious "name on the front cover", or "Various" for compilations. But Artist gives me *only* the name in the Artist field when AlbumArtist isn't set. If that's correct, then I'm sure it made sense to the author but doesn't to me, and it seems that what I want, to give me a list of all artists in my collection, either with their name on the front or just on one track, is the composite All Artists tag. That's fine.

But, how do I set up the ignore.sort property for the All Artists tag? Otherwise I'll have The Beatles turning up under B when viewed in the Artist or AlbumArtist lists, but under T in the All Artist list. I tried the obvious, that is All Artists.ignore.sort={The}, but that barfed with MinimServer: incorrect tag name 'All Artists' in property 'tagOptions'

So I was assuming that it might not be liking the space in All Artists, but it seems to have correctly parsed the tag name but then decided it can't have tag options.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Pete

[simoncn]

As you have discovered, the All Artists index shows all Artist tags in your library. To change the sort order for these Artist tags, you need to set Artist.ignore.sort={The}. This also changes the sort order for Artist tags shown in the Artist index. For AbumArtist tags that are shown in the Artist index or the AlbumArtist index, the equivalent setting is AlbumArtist.ignore.sort={The}.

The Artist index works as it does because many users want to see an index of "main artists." For large classical or jazz libraries, many tracks could have multiple Artist tags for "supporting artists" and putting all these artist names in the Artist index would create a very large list of minor artists that would make the index harder to navigate. Tagging an album like this with an AlbumArtist tag for the main artist excludes supporting artists for that album from the Artist index. To include supporting artists for the album in the Artist index, the AlbumArtist tag can be omitted.

[pete_w]

(23-01-2023 17:48)simoncn Wrote:  As you have discovered, the All Artists index shows all Artist tags in your library. To change the sort order for these Artist tags, you need to set Artist.ignore.sort={The}. This also changes the sort order for Artist tags shown in the Artist index. For AbumArtist tags that are shown in the Artist index or the AlbumArtist index, the equivalent setting is AlbumArtist.ignore.sort={The}.

The Artist index works as it does because many users want to see an index of "main artists." For large classical or jazz libraries, many tracks could have multiple Artist tags for "supporting artists" and putting all these artist names in the Artist index would create a very large list of minor artists that would make the index harder to navigate. Tagging an album like this with an AlbumArtist tag for the main artist excludes supporting artists for that album from the Artist index. To include supporting artists for the album in the Artist index, the AlbumArtist tag can be omitted.

Thanks, Simon. So if I re-order the Artist and AlbumArtist tag lists to ignore the The, then that automagically ripples through to the All Artists list without further interventon. Cool. Thank you.

And thanks for explaining the use case for the AlbumArtists being subtracted from the Artists. Makes sense when you explain it like that. For me, I'm not (yet, perhaps!) a sufficient jazz geek to have that problem. My problem is the simpler one of having 30 years worth of compilation albums ("Now....", Chilled Ibiza, the usual things that one picks up from charity shops for the one good track for a party) and I don't want those hundreds of one-off artists to clutter up my main list, but I do want them to be there to be found if ever I really want to. And by sticking "Various Artists" in the AlbumArtists field of those albums, I have unintentionally removed them all from the Artists list, which is where I was expecting to find all the artists.

BTW, how do I stick (and index) multiple Artists on one track if I want to? Apologies for naivety but a lot of this tagging is new to me, I'm newly arrived from the world of directory hierarchies....

[simoncn]

(23-01-2023 18:44)pete_w Wrote:  BTW, how do I stick (and index) multiple Artists on one track if I want to? Apologies for naivety but a lot of this tagging is new to me, I'm newly arrived from the world of directory hierarchies....

This depends on your tagging program. Which tagging program do you use?

[pete_w]

(23-01-2023 18:57)simoncn Wrote:  

(23-01-2023 18:44)pete_w Wrote:  BTW, how do I stick (and index) multiple Artists on one track if I want to? Apologies for naivety but a lot of this tagging is new to me, I'm newly arrived from the world of directory hierarchies....

This depends on your tagging program. Which tagging program do you use?

iTunes (or later) EAC when I ripped some of them years ago, mp3tag at the moment to try and sort them out. It was free :-)

[simoncn]

In Mp3tag the separator for multiple artists is \\. To tag a file with three artists, you would set the Artist tag to Artist 1\\Artist 2\\Artist 3. This creates three separate Artist tags in the file.

[pete_w]

(23-01-2023 21:33)simoncn Wrote:  In Mp3tag the separator for multiple artists is \\. To tag a file with three artists, you would set the Artist tag to Artist 1\\Artist 2\\Artist 3. This creates three separate Artist tags in the file.

Thanks, Simon. One day I hope to be able to ask an *intelligent* question :-)

I was thinking about your Jazz use case above. I don't, and probably will never, have my tracks tagged to that level of detail, but if I did then I'm still not quite sure that the given approach is optimal. It may be all that's feasible, of course....

So if I sit down and think "I feel like a bit of Oscar Peterson", then my understanding is that the options available to me are that if I go in through the Album Artist interface, then I will see only those albums where OP has his name on the cover. If I go through the Artist interface, then I will see nothing extra, because the tracks where he's backing, say, Ella Fitzgerald won't be shown because the AlbumArtist field is filled in with her name. If I go through All Artists, then I'll find him, but I'll be presented with a choice screen saying (for example, I'm making this up) 10 Albums and 160 items. Where many of those 160 items are the items that make up the albums.

What I'd actually like is for it to offer me a list of 10 Albums to browse and 60 *other* items that aren't included in that list of 10 albums.

Does that make any sense? As I say, it's not a live use case for me personally because I don't have that level of tagging set up....

[simoncn]

You are correct that if all albums are tagged with AlbumArtist and all music is part of an album, the AlbumArtist and Artist indexes will be the same. In this case, there is no need to show the AlbumArtist index. You might have noticed that the AlbumArtist index is not shown by default, just the Artist and All Artists indexes.

You are also correct that "n albums" and "n items" show the same contents. The need to have both of these arises when you are browsing a richly tagged library and your selection (for example, tracks backed by Oscar Peterson) contains tracks from albums rather than complete albums. In this case, you might want to see a list of the tracks or you might want to see a list of the albums containing the tracks.

[pete_w]

I think we're in violent agreement about the way that it works at the moment :-)

Let's use this example above. (But as I say, this is somewhat hypothetical, I'm not richly tagged). Let's say I have 10 Peterson albums of 10 tracks each, plus 60 tracks where he's backing other other people (in other words where he's an Artist but not the AlbumArtist. So when I look for music by Oscar, you offer me 10 Albums and 160 Items.

So if I fancy listening to a bit of OP accompanying someone else, 'cos I happen to like his work as a sideman, then I have to wade through 160 items, yes?

That's not an easy ask. The Naim control app puts 8 items on the screen at once, but the DCS one only puts 4 - just 4 - items on the screen at once. Trying to get through 160 items, 4 at a time, trying to work out which are OP album tracks and which are other people's, could get somewhat, err, tedious.

So is there scope for another auto-generated composite tag, analogous to "All Artists", which is generated once you go down one of the artist branches, which is "list of items with this Artist as an Artist when their name doesn't match the AlbumArtist field". One might need a snappier name :-).

[simoncn]

(24-01-2023 14:34)pete_w Wrote:  Let's say I have 10 Peterson albums of 10 tracks each, plus 60 tracks where he's backing other other people (in other words where he's an Artist but not the AlbumArtist. So when I look for music by Oscar, you offer me 10 Albums and 160 Items.

You would get more than 10 albums. The partial albums where he is backing would also appear in the [n albums] list.

Quote:So if I fancy listening to a bit of OP accompanying someone else, 'cos I happen to like his work as a sideman, then I have to wade through 160 items, yes?

For this, it would be better not to use the [n albums] or [n items] lists. Instead, select Artist or AlbumArtist as the next step. This immediately shows you which are the backing albums.