Bugzilla – Bug 18107
Various Artists not include among Album Artists when separate Album Artists and Artists lists are enabled
Last modified: 2014-08-07 15:35:14 UTC
The problem is a little more complex that the (rather long) summary describes. 1. When 'Various Artists' is _not_ explicitly tagged using ALBUMARTIST on compilation albums, it it missing from both the Artists and the Album Artists browse list. 2. When 'Various Artists' _is_ explicitly tagged using ALBLUMARIST tags on compilations, it shown in Artists, but is missing from Album Artists. With #1, it requires the new Alternative Browse Modes plugin to easily get to a list of compilation albums. (But you can get to in a round-about way, by finding a link to 'Various Artists' and clicking it.) IMO, it doesn't seem right to require an optional plugin to to easily get to these albums. Also, it's a change from past LMS behavior, where Various Artists was seen as an artist in the artist browse list. With #2, although it requires a different tagging method from previous versions of the server, it appears that album artists from compilation albums are being explicitly excluded from the Album Artists list. In the past, it's usually been best to leave out 'Various Artists' as an ALBUMARTIST, but I think the new tagging requirement would actually be better, because so many people do add it in their tags. The real bug, however, is that it's not just the VA that is excluded from the Album Artists list. If I tag an album with: ALBUMARTIST=John Smith ARTIST=<various> COMPILATION=1 then if 'John Smith' is not an ALBUMARTIST on any other albums, he does not appear in the Album Artists browse list.
Commit 6998839ce1a4ae740226f0ea16412382ea55fbe3 When not showing the VA object of a menu, do include the VA item in the regular artists list
Yes, this is fixed, but looking at it again... When 'single list' is set (aka, the old behavior) does the setting labeled - List compilation albums under each artist - Group compilation albums together do anything other than enable/disable the inclusion of the VA object in the Artists list? If that's all it does, then why not use this option setting for both single and dual artist lists and either show or hide the VA in all of them? There's still the sticky issue of real versus pseudo-VA, but this would be more consistent and it would let users to hide the VA in their artist lists if they prefer to use the Browse Compilations of the ABM plugin.
> When 'single list' is set (aka, the old behavior) does the setting labeled > - List compilation albums under each artist > - Group compilation albums together > > do anything other than enable/disable the inclusion of the VA object in the > Artists list? The first option has nothing to do with showing the VA object. It's there to allow you to see the VA album's track artist in the list. Let's close this issue and discuss other options in the forums. Thanks!