Bugzilla – Bug 4725
Don't list all artists for compilation albums
Last modified: 2011-08-17 22:08:13 UTC
This seems to me like it must be a bug, although I couldn't raise much of an opinion in the forums (see link). When the preference "List compilation albums under each artist" is set, every artist in a compilation is enumerated in album listings. From a usability and aesthetic standpoint, this doesn't work particularly well. The albums should still display "Various Artists" (or the alternative name set in the preferences) for the artist, as they do when this preference is set to "Group compilation albums together". The extreme example of this, as pointed out in the forum thread, is the VA album "No Album", which can easily have hundreds of artists, all of which will be listed for the album. Note that this is only evident when artists are shown for albums via the formatting pref "Show artist with albums".
Created attachment 1802 [details] Screenshot in browse Albums, gallery view
Created attachment 1803 [details] Screenshot in browse Albums, gallery view
Not only that, but if you have any singles (with no album tag), you end up with an album called "No Album" by every single artist for whom you've got a single. And that can be huge. I doubt I'm alone in preferring not to tag my singles with an album tag. I don't like to confuse guests who are browsing albums into thinking I have an entire album when I actually just have the one track from that album.
In Schema.pm, mergeVariousArtistsAlbums: my $cursor = $self->search('Album', { 'me.compilation' => undef, 'me.title' => { '!=' => string('NO_ALBUM') }, })->distinct; this bypasses the "No Album" albums, causing the long list. no idea why it was done this way, I didn't get an answer.
Is this really as small, safe, and sane a fix as it looks? Or should I set this aside to be reviewed as part of documenting the whole VA/compilations/greatest hits/multiple disc UI?
Looks safe, I've been using it locally for a long time. However, I did mention it to Dan and was told it was intentional a as result of another bug report. Unfortunately, exact number was not recalled at the time and I was unable to guess which one.
Would this address the more general case of all compilations, or only the 'No Album' album?
the patch is just for the "no album" case, which is the worst by far.
Created attachment 2025 [details] port from trunk The general case is already done in 7.0, while the 'no album' case is bug 4193
ported over to 6.5.3 at change 12088 compilation albums now show "various artists" instead of the list of artist links just like we have in trunk (7.0)
Has this behavior reverted in SqueezeCenter 7? http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45037 I keep 'Group compilation albums together' set, so hadn't noticed that if you change the setting to 'List compilation albums under each artist' all artists are listed in album listings.
Ping KDF. Did I misunderstand what you were saying in comments 9 & 10 about how this should currently work in SC7?
If it's reverted, it's not something I want to dig up again. I don't have time for at least a while. That's why I took myself off it already.
I see now that in the web interface at 7.5.2 we now truncate the artist list and append an ellipsis (...). In the browse album view VA albums are still sorted under 'Various Artists'. Why not display 'Various Artists' then??? There's no practical use for the (truncated) artist list.
This is fixed in onebrowser. I'll close the bug when it's known for certain that onebrowser will be a part of 7.6.