Bugzilla – Bug 15604
Provide a Browse Compilations browse mode
Last modified: 2016-02-13 20:14:01 UTC
At the moment, compilation albums are displayed under an artist called "Various Artists" (configurable name). It would be nice if there was a Browse Compilations menu (player UI and WebUI). This could either be instead of or in addition to "Browse Artists > Various Artists >". This is how other applications treat compilation albums (eg. iTunes and iPod), and may be more familiar for new users.
Removing the special "Various Artists" from the top of the artists list would remove any special handling of compilation albums in this view, which may simplify the query used to bring back the artist lists and aid performance. Then as a bonus, if a library collection was tagged such that an album artist of "Various Artists" exists without a compilation tag, it could be treated as a regular artist within the Browse Artists list (currently not displayed because Various Artists contains only compilation albums).
vote for this bug if you'd like to see it implemented!
hmmm, kinda reminds me of this bug: https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9523
I'm not of a fan of this idea. This saves just one click or button press vs. the current organization and adds a needless item to the My Music menu. Comment #2 describes a scenario that would do away with the VA artist altogether. That I definitely would not like. Where would VA albums _without_ an ALBUMARTIST tag be sorted in the browse albums list when albums are sorted by artist? Where, other than in the track artists' albums, would they be found when browsing artists? Bug 9523, where an album may not be placed under Various Artists is real, but there are better solutions.
i suggested some other solutions in bug 9523 but happy to hear yours. i still think the easiest thing to do would be to just change the SBS "special category name" to something like "-Various Artists-" and let the people who that would bother, like Phil, who know of this issue use the already existing option in SBS to change it back to "Various Artists" if they wish. that would solve 9523 for people who should not be expected to be aware of it or expected to discover it or expected to research to find out how to fix it; and yet it still gives an avenue back for Phil and others like him, and it would be very easy to implement, just change the current default VA name to another one.
> I'm not of a fan of this idea. This saves just one click or button press vs. > the current organization and adds a needless item to the My Music menu. > The intention wasn't necessarily to save clicks, but to organise the library better. This would also remove special case logic from Browse Artists, which would simplify the query and help performance. It's also more standardised (in line with how other apps handle compilations). > Comment #2 describes a scenario that would do away with the VA artist > altogether. No it doesn't. This has nothing to do with Album Artists; I was proposing that the special "Various Artists", which can be labelled differently through Music Library Settings, would be removed from Browse Artists (as it's not really an artist anyway), and appear instead as an alternative browse method. All artists (normal album artists + manually tagged album artists + Squeeze Center Scanner assigned "Various Artists") would still appear in Browse Artists. "Various Artists" would still remain in Browse Artists if there are albums with Album Artist="Various Artists" (either tagged that way or automatically given to albums), but under "V", not at the top of each page, as it would be treated like a normal artist name. i.e. Browse Artists would list all artists in artist name order, irrespective of whether they are compilations or not. A compilation album with Album Artist=Soundtrack would be found under "S". Browse Compilations would be an additional browse mode that would list only albums that are compilations, irrespective of their Album Artist name. >Where would VA albums _without_ an ALBUMARTIST tag be sorted in the browse >albums list when albums are sorted by artist? > There would be no change to Browse Albums, only Browse Artists (which I consider disfunctional anyway, as it doesn't handle albums with multiple artists, multiple genres, etc). >Where, other than in the track >artists' albums, would they be found when browsing artists? > Every album has an album artist (either specified by AA tag, or automatically assigned Various Artists), so whatever that artist name is would be where the album would be found within Browse Artists.
this bug should add the Keyword: Compilations
This would be really useful.
21 votes! i just wanted to add this link for when this is done: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=652151&postcount=113
Available in LMS 7.9
this bug shouldn't be closed. it doesn't resolve bug 9523 and it doesn't clean up queries properly. http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?103494-Compilation-Tag-causing-Artist-Album-Artist-problems