Revisiting the Artist and All Artists Index

[simoncn]

The current situation is exactly the same as it has always been. See below for answers to your specific points and questions.

(20-11-2023 16:47)paultaylor Wrote:  I always find it very confusing that the Artist index
- Primarily contains value from the albumartist field (i.e Album Artist) not the artist field (i.e Track Artist) despite being called Artist index
- Contains track artist at all as I always set an album artist if the album is known and I don't want to mix up track artists and album artists.

If the Artist index produces results that are not suitable for you, you don't need to use it.

Quote:And that you mention an AlbumArtist index above but say it is excluded by default, so does that mean it is created and just used internally or that it is not created unless included ?

By "excluded" I meant that the default configuration settings do not show it as a selection when browsing. The user can show it by adding AlbumArtist to the indexTags property. There is no notion of creating an index for use internally. All indexes are created and shown in response to a user browsing action.

Quote:So I dont want to use the Artist index only the AlbumArtist index. Furthermore with SongKong we always set the album artist to the same value for every song on the album. We also set album_artists field to the same value for every song on the album and this can be have multiple values when the album is credited to multiple artists (e.g Johnny Cash and June Carter)

I couldnt remember it is now okay to use this multi-value field for Album Artists or if it still causes an issue with album grouping/identification, if I just add Album_Artists:Album Artists to indexTags ?

The AlbumArtist index (corresponding to AlbumArtist and/or Album Artist tags in the files) requires a single value that is consistent across all tracks of an album. If you have another field such as album_artists, this limitation does not apply.

Quote:And actually I suppose I should do

aliasTags:Album_Artists:-AlbumArtist
indexTags:AlbumArtist:Album Artists

for those files not tagged by songkong so unlikely to have albumartists field but still likely to have albumartist field ?

Your first setting will replace Album_Artists tags with AlbumArtist tags and run into the limitation that AlbumArtist can only have a single value. There is no problem with your second setting.

Quote:Then I find it confusing that the All Artists index:
- Doesn't contain all artists, it only contains track artists
- Doesn't specify any mapping in the configuration from artist field to All Artists index it just happens,

This index contains all Artist tags from all files. I think its name accurately refects this.

Quote:Again I have a field called artists field for multiple value track artists and I have configuration

aliasTags:Artists:-Artist

to replace Artist index with values from Artists field unless missing then fall back to artist field.

This should be fine.

Quote:but is it okay to just add Artist to index tags to map to this rather than All Artists or will that just add back in the original Artist index that I wanted to exclude ?

For this, you would need to set All Artists:Artist in indexTags (it is MinimServer's 'All Artists' index but the user is seeing it as 'Artist'). An alternative approach (simpler and clearer in my view) would be not to use aliasTags but instead set tagValue to Artists.default={Artist} so that all artists are tagged internally using the Artists tag, then put Artists:Artist in indexTags to show the Artists tag as the Artist index.