Bugzilla – Bug 1950
New Various Artists feature does not correctly work with the "Mutiple Items in Tags" option
Last modified: 2009-09-08 09:22:02 UTC
It seems that the Various Albums feature must be improved to correctly recognize the "Multiple Items in Tags" feature. I have multiple artists separated by "&" and accordingly defined "&" as separator for multiple artists. When a Various Artists album exists including a track from a multiple artist (like "Artist 1 & Artists 2") then the "Artist 1" is correctly not shown in browse artists but "Artist 2" is incorrectly shown. At the same time in the song info Album Artist is set to "Various Artists", Artist is set to "Artist 1" and Track Artist is set to "Artist 2". It seems to me that Artist should be replaced by Track Artist and should be set to "Artist 1 Artist 2".
Ever since the new VA behavior has been in place, I've noticed that all of my multiply-tagged albums no longer work properly. Specifically, my separator is ";" and for ALL albums whose artists use this separator, the albums are all under a seemingly random artist stuck at the top of the browse artist list (completely out of sort order with the rest of the artists). This artist is always one of the artists split out using the separator. Right now it's "Crazy Horse" as in "Neil Young;Crazy Horse" but it seems to change each time I rescan. This is not specific to the VA code because none of these albums are VA albums. Separate bug? Dieter, you seeing anything like this?
Ben, I use "&" as separator and have not seen your described problem (at least I did not recognize it). I will check my multiple-tagged albums tonight when I am at home.
OK if it turns out this is unique to me I will file a separate bug for it. BTW I'm testing with latest svn always and I'm not exactly sure when this behavior started.
I checked my multiple-artist albums and they are shown correctly under each of the artists separately on my system. Thereby each artist is correctly sorted at the right place within the artist list when browsing artists.
I've decided to abandon my use of separator tags. The number of artists that this shaves off the artist list is miniscule compared to the number removed by the use of the new VA code. If I change my mind I'll file a different bug to address my problems.
The logic on this is really difficult - and not everyone will want it the same way. I suggest setting the COMPILATION flag, which will do what you want.
By compilation flag, what exactly do you mean? Within iTunes I guess there's an extension for this but outside of iTunes would that mean setting the TPE2 (id3v2) or ALBUMARTIST (APEv2, Vorbis) to "Various Artists" explicitly? rather than relying on auto-detection logic to lump these things together automatically?
Oh hang on - I think I understand and can reproduce the issue now.
Ok - fixed in subversion change 4047
With change 4047 for each artist there is now a separate link shown in the song info page. That's great. But there are still two bugs. 1. On the squeezebox there is still only one of the artists shown when pressing RIGHT on the track and than pressing DOWN until the artist is shown. How should two artists correctly be shown on the squeezebox (two artist in one line, one after the other, or two separate ARTIST lines)? 2. When you click on the artist name links shown in the song info of the web interface there is only an empty page shown if you have set the option "Don't include compilation artists in artist list". Also on the squeezebox there is shown "Empty" when you press RIGHT on an artist shown in the song info. Is this so closely related to this bug that it should be reopened or should a new bug report be filed?