Bugzilla – Bug 6635
Various artists - but which track is by the artist you've selected?
Last modified: 2008-05-15 12:27:10 UTC
If an artist has a track on a Various Artists album it can be impossible to figure out which track it is unless you know the name of it. For instance: Use Music Library > Artists menu and select an artist. The artist has a track on various Artists (compilation) album. Select the VA album.... and you're presented with a list of all the tracks on the album. But unless you know the name of the track by your chosen artist it's impossible to figure out which it is. On the web gui just the track by the chosen artist seems to be displayed, not every track on the album.. However I'd really like see a combination of the two. I.e, all the tracks from the Various Artists album are listed but the track by the chosen artist is highlighted/selected (such that if you hit play then just that track plays). I think the current "Play All" item at the top of the track list should stay. This would be a better implemenation that the web gui currently has.... in my humble opinion.
We ran into this today. My wife selected an "artist" that was a pair of artists listed jointly on one song of a compilation record. She saw the album art for the record and pressed play. Since their song wasn't the first on the album, the SB3 started playing a song by someone else. Confusing, and, IMO, not good. I think we should be able to press play or add when looking at the artist name or the album cover and only get songs by that artist -- which is also how the IR/VFD menu UI works. (Is anybody working on compiling a list of how the Controller/Jive UI differs from the IR/VFD UI?) Here's what I would like for the Controller/Jive browse artists interface: Artist (only Go active) .-> Go -> ....Menu item with one artist .....(Add & Play act all on tracks with this exact artist) .....-> Go -> ........Album with at least one song by selected artist .........(Add & Play act on all tracks on this exact album with this exact artist) .........-> Go -> ............List songs by selected artist on this album .............(Add, Play, and Do (Do==Play) act on all selected tracks) ............Menu item like "All songs" .............(Add and Play act on all tracks on this exact album) .............-> Go -> ................Menu item like "Play all songs" .................(Add, Play, and Do (Do==Play) act on all tracks on this exact album) ................List all tracks on album .................(Add, Play, and Do (Do==Play) act on all selected tracks)
I frequently run into this problem and it's so obviously an oversite/ommission/mistake that I'm surprised it's being left until 7.01 to sort out.
removing priorities from all 7.0.1 target bugs for re-prioritizing
I spent some time with this today, and IMO this bug can be broken up into one reported issue (that I'm not seeing), and two related enhancement requests. 1. reported issue: descending into Music Library->Artists->Artist-that-appears-on-compilation-album SqueezeCenter has a server setting for how to handle compilation albums SqueezeCenter settings->Behavior->Compilations >You can choose to have compilation albums appear together under "Various Artists" or have them appear under each artist in the compilation. a. List compilation albums under each artist b. Group compilation albums together under a., what I see on SBC is that if I go into Music Library->Artists->Artist-that-appears-on-compilation-album, only the track(s) from that artist on that album are listed. This is contrary to what was originally reported and (I believe) is working as designed and the same as the Player UI/Web UI. under b., the album is listed under Music Library->Artists->Various Artists->Some-compilation-album. Again, I think this is working as designed and the same as the Player UI/Web UI. 2. enhancement request (from Simon in opening comment): When following the behavior of 1a. above, list all tracks in the compilation album but automatically select the first track from that artist on the album. 3. enhancement request (from Peter in comment #1): add new menu items for "All songs" which would allow for listing all the tracks for the compilation album that is first listed with only the tracks for the selected artist. My opinion on the three: 1. should be fixed for 7.0.1 if this issue still exists, but I've yet to reproduce it. 2. is a reasonable enhancement request but I think could be fairly tricky to implement. It'd be a candidate for 7.1 3. also a reasonable enhancement request, but I'd like to point out that this is fairly simple in the UI to go from an only-tracks-from-this-artist-on-this-album window to an all-the-tracks-on-this-album window: Music Library->Artists->Some Artist->Compilation Album->Track by that Artist->Select the album from the track details->All tracks on the compilation album actually, this is what I think is one of the big strengths of the SBC UI, the ability to descend into track details for any track, see an album/artist/genre that you want to get a full listing for, and it's as easy as just selecting that list item.
Created attachment 3185 [details] window flow of listing tracks in compilation albums this is a visual display of what I was explaining in item 3. of my last comment, how to get from a compilation album track listing of only that artist to same album, all artists.
Ben, your commentary makes complete sense to me. I do have a further suggestion in relation to 1b, which relates to https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4629. This suggestion relates to a compilation which has an ALBUMARTIST tag (say ArtistX). In that case, I think that rather than having the album appear under Music Library->Artists->Various Artists->Some-compilation-album it should appear under Music Library->Artists->ArtistX->Some-compilation-album At present this only happens if there are other (non-compilation) albums by ArtistX. At the moment the only workaround to get the album into Music Library->Artists->ArtistX->Some-compilation-album is to set COMPILATION=0, but this defeats the purpose of setting "Group compilation albums together" as all of the track artists will now appear under Music Library->Artists Perhaps this is a further enhancement request rather than a bug, but the fact that it works properly when there are other albums by ArtistX. There is some discussion of this issue here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=42188
smc-- I'm pretty sure a fix for bug 4629 would feed directly into SBC without any other intervention, so I think we've got that issue covered there. I opened bug#7693 and bug#7694 to cover the enhancement requests. I'm closing this one in regards to the original issue reported, as I do not see it. If you can reproduce that issue, feel free to reopen this bug.
(In reply to comment #7) > smc-- I'm pretty sure a fix for bug 4629 would feed directly into SBC without > any other intervention, so I think we've got that issue covered there. > > I opened bug#7693 and bug#7694 to cover the enhancement requests. > > I'm closing this one in regards to the original issue reported, as I do not see > it. If you can reproduce that issue, feel free to reopen this bug. > I am unable to reproduce the original issue either, marking this bug as Verified
This bug has recently been fixed in the latest release of SqueezeCenter 7.0.1 Please try that version, if you still see the error, then reopen this bug. To download this version, please navigate to: http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html