Various Artists on top of artist list

[kosmonaut_75]

Is there a way to display "Various Artists" as first item in the Artist list view? I have all my compilations tagged with the AlbumArtist tag "Various Artists". I would like it to show up as first item in my otherwise alphabetically sorted artist list view.

[simoncn]

You can use the solution that I described in this post:

1) In tagValue, set AlbumArtist.value.sort={AlbumArtistSort}
2) In itemTags, add AlbumArtistSort
3) In your tagUpdate file, add:

@ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists
+ALBUMARTISTSORT=1Various Artists

Edit: fixed typo in above instructions

[kosmonaut_75]

I had already tried the solution described in your post regarding the genre tags. However, it doesn't work in this case (this time I followed your instructions very carefully...)

As I understand it the difference is that in this case I only want to put "Various Artists" on top of the artist list and not touch the other album artists. With your first approach each genre got a new genresort tag via the tagupdate file. Obviously I do not want to attribute each albumartist a new a albumartistsort tag via the update file, this would be way too tedious.

With your approach I would only have only one albumartist with a albumartistsort tag (=1Various Artists), all the other albumartists wouldn't. As far as I can see, this doesn't lead to the desired result.

Can you help?

[Pepsican]

(13-02-2017 09:54)kosmonaut_75 Wrote:  I had already tried the solution described in your post regarding the genre tags. However, it doesn't work in this case (this time I followed your instructions very carefully...)

As I understand it the difference is that in this case I only want to put "Various Artists" on top of the artist list and not touch the other album artists. With your first approach each genre got a new genresort tag via the tagupdate file. Obviously I do not want to attribute each albumartist a new a albumartistsort tag via the update file, this would be way too tedious.

With your approach I would only have only one albumartist with a albumartistsort tag (=1Various Artists), all the other albumartists wouldn't. As far as I can see, this doesn't lead to the desired result.

Can you help?

If you don't like Simon's approach, you could use MP3Tag. It has a macro functionality to copy over the AlbumArtist tag into the AlbumArtistSort tag.

But you will need at least two tags to get the sorting you want and the display you want. You cannot do what you want with info in just one tag.

[simoncn]

There was a small mistake in the instructions that I posted. The lines in the tagUpdate file should be:

@ALBUMARTIST=Various Artists
+ALBUMARTISTSORT=1Various Artists

If this doesn't work, it might be because your library already contains an ALBUMARTISTSORT tag for Various Artists. Please let me know and I will post some more instructions.

[kosmonaut_75]

This is great!! In fact, I had albumartistsort tags for "Various Artists" in my library. I deleted them and now it is working: "Various Artists" on top of the artist list without populating any other albumartistsort tags.

Thank you so much, Simon. Your support and expertise are really amazing!

[kosmonaut_75]

Well, almost perfect...., this is really bizarre:

I have 9 genres. In 8 genres "Various Artists" appears now on top of the artist list. However, in one genre it doesn't. I restarted, rescanned Minimserver, deleted Bubbleupnp cache and checked it on my mobile and my tablet: In one genre "Various Artists" is still alphabetically sorted. I cannot recognize a logic or a pattern. It is the genre with by far the most "Various Artists" Albums and the artist list in this genre starts with an album artist with a number in the name: "4 Hero". No clue whether this matters, probably not...

[simoncn]

Does the alphabetical sorting of Various Artists happen if you add AlbumArtist to indexTags and look at the AlbumArtist index?

If the AlbumArtist index has Various Artists at the top but the Artist index has it sorted alphabetically, you probably have an Artist tag (not AlbumArtist) with the value Various Artists.

[kosmonaut_75]

Perfect! Actually, there was one "Various Artists" among the Artists. After deleting it really everything is working. Again, a big thank you!