Artist Sort issue

[ghosthost]

Dug through a mess of old posts trying to figure this out but I'm starting to go a little mental, so here goes:

Looking to sort my Album Artists and Artists by LastName, FirstName. OK, Asset needs tags called "Album Artist Sort" and "Artist Sort" for that... not what other software uses by default, but hey... go with the flow, no problem. Clean out the old tags and do-over? No problem.

Now, I've run into a brick wall with albums containing multiple artists.

SO: "The Concert for Bangla-Desh" for example. Artists include Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell and mostly George Harrison. I want the whole album to be sorted with the George Harrison albums, so the tracks are all set that way: Harrison, George. Works great. Here's the problem: now, right underneath George Harrison in the list comes Ringo Starr. EVERY Ringo Starr album I own, even though the tags there contain sort fields for Starr, Ringo.

Is this a bug? Expected behavior? Am I doing something wrong (other than trying to rebuild a 50,000 track music collection in the summer)?

HELLLLLLP!!!!

- Steve

[mville]

Re: Artist Sort issue

SO: "The Concert for Bangla-Desh" for example. Artists include Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell and mostly George Harrison. I want the whole album to be sorted with the George Harrison albums, so the tracks are all set that way: Harrison, George. Works great. Here's the problem: now, right underneath George Harrison in the list comes Ringo Starr. EVERY Ringo Starr album I own, even though the tags there contain sort fields for Starr, Ringo.

Is this a bug? Expected behavior? Am I doing something wrong (other than trying to rebuild a 50,000 track music collection in the summer)?

It isn't clear exactly how you have populated the Album Artist, Album Artist Sort, Artist and Artist Sort tags for these albums. Also, it isn't clear how you are browsing your Albums, i.e. by Album Artist or by Artist. These tags need to be consistent, otherwise you will get unpredictable results.

What version of Asset are you using and on what platform/OS is it installed.

[ghosthost]

Re: Artist Sort issue

It isn't clear exactly how you have populated the Album Artist, Album Artist Sort, Artist and Artist Sort tags for these albums. Also, it isn't clear how you are browsing your Albums, i.e. by Album Artist or by Artist. These tags need to be consistent, otherwise you will get unpredictable results.

What version of Asset are you using and on what platform/OS is it installed.

Well, I *did* say I was starting to go a little mental...

Here's what I'm seeing -- and this is using Asset 6.1 on Windows 10.
a) batch of albums by Ringo Starr. All tagged with Artist & Album Artist as Ringo Starr and Artist Sort & Album Artist Sort as Starr, Ringo.
b) album "The Concert for Bangla-Desh" -- effectively a compilation album but not tagged with the compilation flag. Each track is tagged with the proper per-track Artist tag (i.e. George Harrison, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, etc.). When I posted this thread at my wit's end yesterday, I had Album Artist tagged as "George Harrison", both Artist Sort and Album Artist Sort tagged as "Harrison, George". Today, I tested blanking the "Artist Sort" tags for the whole album and hey, presto: sorting issue resolved for Album Artist: all of Ringo Starr's albums now sort under Starr, Ringo. Furthermore, if I look at Artist, I now find Ringo Starr sorted as Starr, Ringo and the list of available albums finds the single track from the "Bangla-Desh" album included (not the whole album, presumably this has occurred because the Compilation tag hasn't been set).

My conclusion (given all of the above) is that Asset is dealing with Artist Sort tags on a more or less global basis... that is to say that if it encounters a single file with information in that tag it will deal with file matching that artist accordingly and if it finds multiple values for the tag across a library's files it will only utilize one of them (one assumes the first alphabetically).

Does that seem more or less a correct reading of expected behavior? If so, I'm not certain whether it's something I personally agree with or not -- I can see it being a great timesaver on one hand and a disaster waiting to happen on the other (given that a single mistagged file can thus be responsible for utter chaos).

- Steve

[mville]

Re: Artist Sort issue

Here's what I'm seeing -- and this is using Asset 6.1 on Windows 10.
a) batch of albums by Ringo Starr. All tagged with Artist & Album Artist as Ringo Starr and Artist Sort & Album Artist Sort as Starr, Ringo.
b) album "The Concert for Bangla-Desh" -- effectively a compilation album but not tagged with the compilation flag. Each track is tagged with the proper per-track Artist tag (i.e. George Harrison, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, etc.). When I posted this thread at my wit's end yesterday, I had Album Artist tagged as "George Harrison", both Artist Sort and Album Artist Sort tagged as "Harrison, George".

OK, that does explain why you were having issues. Album Artist and Artist are the tag values that player/server software will display, but the corresponding Sort tags are how the player/server software will sort these tags. So, if you have:
Artist = Ringo Starr
Artist Sort = Harrison, George
you will get the behaviour you described earlier.

Personally, I always treat Album Artist and Album Artist Sort as per the album and Artist and Artist Sort as per the track, so my Album Artist = George Harrison (or Various Artists), Album Artist Sort = Harrison, George (or Various Artists) and the Artist and Artist Sort would be:
Artist = George Harrison
Artist Sort = Harrison, George
Artist = Leon Russell
Artist Sort = Russell, Leon
Artist = Ravi Shankar
Artist Sort = Shankar, Ravi
Artist = Ringo Starr
Artist Sort = Starr, Ringo
etc.

Today, I tested blanking the "Artist Sort" tags for the whole album and hey, presto: sorting issue resolved for Album Artist: all of Ringo Starr's albums now sort under Starr, Ringo. Furthermore, if I look at Artist, I now find Ringo Starr sorted as Starr, Ringo and the list of available albums finds the single track from the "Bangla-Desh" album included (not the whole album, presumably this has occurred because the Compilation tag hasn't been set).

My conclusion (given all of the above) is that Asset is dealing with Artist Sort tags on a more or less global basis... that is to say that if it encounters a single file with information in that tag it will deal with file matching that artist accordingly and if it finds multiple values for the tag across a library's files it will only utilize one of them (one assumes the first alphabetically).

Does that seem more or less a correct reading of expected behavior? If so, I'm not certain whether it's something I personally agree with or not -- I can see it being a great timesaver on one hand and a disaster waiting to happen on the other (given that a single mistagged file can thus be responsible for utter chaos).

OK, but I would keep my tags consistent, by populating ALL Album Artist, Album Artist Sort, Artist and Artist Sort tags and yes, inconsistent tag data can cause havoc. So, before ripping I am meticulous and make sure all tags are correct, before clicking the rip button.

[ghosthost]

Re: Artist Sort issue

OK, that does explain why you were having issues. Album Artist and Artist are the tag values that player/server software will display, but the corresponding Sort tags are how the player/server software will sort these tags. So, if you have:
Artist = Ringo Starr
Artist Sort = Harrison, George
you will get the behaviour you described earlier.

Which is certainly expected; what threw me is that I expected that the lone Ringo Starr track tagged that way would be affected as such, not the ones that were tagged "properly".

The difficulty here is partially that I'm migrating a huge collection over from the not-so-wonderful-world of iTunes where I had to inject all sorts of oddness into the tagging to get that demented software to display anything reasonably close to my tastes... and that not all of the collection was ripped personally to begin with. Thus, the process is going to be long, drawn-out and horrific and is why I'm doing my testing on a VERY small subset of items first.

Where things get ridiculous (and thus my concern re: a single file) will be when dealing with the massive self-assembled compilations of year-by-year Billboard Hot 100 chart hits, all originally sourced from various CDs, files, etc.

That's why I need to fully understand how Asset behaves now; I'm skating towards a very ill-defined patch of thin ice...

Thanks for your assist!

Steve

[ghosthost]

Re: Artist Sort issue

OK, now, waitaminnit...

I've had a night to sleep on this and this part still doesn't make sense:

Why would an entry in the Artist Sort field affect ANYTHING having to do with the Album Artist listings?

[garym]

Re: Artist Sort issue

OK, now, waitaminnit...

I've had a night to sleep on this and this part still doesn't make sense:

Why would an entry in the Artist Sort field affect ANYTHING having to do with the Album Artist listings?

Because in some systems (including mine: Logitech Media Server (LMS)), the sort tag tells the music library database where to LIST your artist in any listing. So If I have an ArtistSort or AlbumArtistSort tag with "Dylan, Bob", but ALBUMARTIST of "Bob Dylan", when listing artists, I'll see Dylan under the "Ds" and not the "Bs". In fact, something that catches users unaware sometimes in LMS is that if *any* track has an artistsort or albumartistsort for an album filled in, all other tracks by that artist will use that sort information. This sometimes drives people crazy as they swear they have dozens of albums of an artist with no sort info entered. But it always turns out that they have some soundtrack, etc. compilation CD that happened to have the sort tag filled in for that artist.

[ghosthost]

Re: Artist Sort issue

Because in some systems (including mine: Logitech Media Server (LMS)), the sort tag tells the music library database where to LIST your artist in any listing. So If I have an ArtistSort or AlbumArtistSort tag with "Dylan, Bob", but ALBUMARTIST of "Bob Dylan", when listing artists, I'll see Dylan under the "Ds" and not the "Bs". In fact, something that catches users unaware sometimes in LMS is that if *any* track has an artistsort or albumartistsort for an album filled in, all other tracks by that artist will use that sort information. This sometimes drives people crazy as they swear they have dozens of albums of an artist with no sort info entered. But it always turns out that they have some soundtrack, etc. compilation CD that happened to have the sort tag filled in for that artist.

Which is precisely what's driving me crazy here, Gary. What I'm using to inspect this behavior is standard UPnP stuff (foobar 2000 on Android, Asset's own deprecated Asset Control). Asset UPnP seems to be so user-friendly when it comes to the user's ability to have control over the behavior of the server... and then there's stuff like this which seems diametrically opposed to that...

S.

[mville]

Re: Artist Sort issue

Which is precisely what's driving me crazy here, Gary. What I'm using to inspect this behavior is standard UPnP stuff (foobar 2000 on Android, Asset's own deprecated Asset Control). Asset UPnP seems to be so user-friendly when it comes to the user's ability to have control over the behavior of the server... and then there's stuff like this which seems diametrically opposed to that...

What is driving you crazy, exactly?

If you have Artist and Album Artist tags populated e.g. Bob Dylan and NO corresponding sort tag, then Asset will sort these tags (and they appear in Artist and Album Artist listings) under B.

However, I might want Bob Dylan to be sorted under D, so we have the faciltity to add a corresponding sort tag e.g. Dylan, Bob and Asset then sorts Artist and Album Artist under D.

As I stated earlier (and garym has also alluded to), if your tags are NOT consistent across your library, you will get unpredictable results.

[ghosthost]

Re: Artist Sort issue

What's driving me crazy is what seems to me to be an inconsistency in what those sort tags are affecting. If "Album Artist" and "Artist" are two different tags quite possibly representing two separate values, why would I expect "Sort Artist" to affect how "Album Artist" sorts? How "Artist" sorts? Sure!

S.