Bugzilla – Bug 6189
ALBUMARTIST tag causes ARTISTSORT to be ignored
Last modified: 2011-05-20 16:38:00 UTC
This bug is almost identical to bug 4582 except that : 1. I am having the problem with MP3 files. 2. I am just using the regular scheme of 1 track = 1 MP3 file. I could easily reproduce the problem with a few MP3 files, playing around with MP3Tag to set the following tags: * ARTIST * ARTISTSORT * ALBUMARTIST * ALBUMARTISTSORT I experimented with 3 tracks only to quickly be able to have SS rescan the library. Whenever ALBUMARTIST is present (and equal to ARTIST), that tag is used as sort key, regardless of the values of ARTIST and ARTISTSORT. When I remove ALBUMARTIST, then the ARTISTSORT is used. I have MP3Tag set to be writing out ID3v2.3 UTF16.
Created attachment 2423 [details] 3 test MP3s showing the issue I've attached a zipfile with 3 dummy MP3 files showing the issue.
See bug 4584.
I think bug 4584 is still different. In fact, from the description there, it confirms that what I described here is really a bug. If there's a name in one of the ALBUMARTIST tags that is also present in an ARTIST tag for which there's an ARTISTSORT, then that sort tag should be taken (according bug 4584). However, this is not happening at all, not even if in the same track ALBUMARTIST = ARTIST.
From what I understand this only applies if there is another song in the library that has the same ARTIST tag and an ARTISTSORT tag but not an ALBUMARTIST tag. Is that the behavior you get? I will take another look myself when I get a chance.
No, the behavior I get is: * if all MP3s are tagged with ALBUMARTIST and ARTIST + ARTISTSORT, the ARTISTSORT is never taken into account. The Artists list just shows the list of ALBUMARTISTs without any custom sorting. * can be easily reproduced (see attachment). I made 3 dummy MP3s with ALBUMARTIST=ARTIST in 'First Last' format and they all have a ARTISTSORT in 'Last, First' format. Yet, in the Artists list, they show up in 'First Last' order. In a way, one could consider this as expected behaviour, simply due to the fact that SlimServer does not read an ALBUMARTISTSORT tag. If an ALBUMARTIST tag is present, it uses that one as the artist for the album and it's that one that is shown in the Artists list (so in a sense that list is really an Album Artists list). However, from what I read on the forums and from what is written in bug 4584, it looks like SS is supposed to also use an Artist's ARTISTSORT sort key where that Artist is used as ALBUMARTIST, e.g. in tracks where ALBUMARTIST = ARTIST. That's why I wrote this bug here. Possible solutions: 1. Short term: fix the ALBUMARTIST sorting. In the current situation, SS only takes ARTISTSORT into account for sorting artists. If SS would behave as described in bug 4585, this would be a valid workaround. Note though that it would still not be perfect: if you have an album by an artist who does not appear anywhere as artist in any of the tracks and doesn't appear anywhere else in your library either, you would still not be able to properly sort that ALBUMARTIST. This is however a very marginal case. 2. Long term: modify the current SS model. Album Artists should never be sorted based on ARTISTSORT and Artists should never be sorted based on ALBUMARTISTSORT. As a result, the proper fix would be to implement ALBUMARTISTSORT as described in that same bug 4584. In the same large effort, it would be very handy to have this distinction between Artist and Album Artist more clear in the GUI (web and SB). Currently everything is called 'Artist' while sometimes it is the Album Artist (e.g. Artists list, artists listed with albums) and sometimes it is Artist (e.g. artists listed with tracks). Anyway, let's stick to solution 1 for this bug here, since this looks like a bug, while 2 is more of a feature request
if i understand this bug correctly, i think it should be closed. ALBUMARTIST tags should always take precendence over artist tags, of any type. a user could then just use ALBUMARTISTSORT which i believe SBS now supports? (if not it should, and a bug could be entered for that) (one day, hopefully SBS will be smart enough to switch on the fly between artists/albumartists, but thats not an issue for this bug)
see: bug 5177 bug 11159
AndyG, i agree with closing this bug, but then you should also close bug 4582 for the same reason.
Closing due to comments