Help with compilation album naming schemes

[RSH]

If this is already spoken about - Sorry, but I can't seem to find an answer!
I use the CD Ripper to turn all my CD's into .flac files. When it does that it puts them in folders by artist/album/title. The problem with this are CD's that have multiple artists. The CD album is found in many different artists folders.
I am using the Elan G! system to listen to the music throughout the house. Elan looks at the directory with all the music files. Under Elan I can then select items to play by either album, artist, or song title (track.)
My problem comes when I look at the album listing of the CD's. If a CD had multiple artists on it, the CD is listed multiple times in the album listing.
Is there a way to have multi-artist albums list the album title as the artist so the album is stored in one place, has one artist (other than various artists so there are not a bunch of those) and therefore shows up only once in the album view and also once in the artist view?

Thanks for any help!

[Spoon]

Re: Help with compilation album naming schemes

Yes the default naming string does this:

[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

If it is a compilation it is put into Various artists, if there is an album artist, it is used, otherwise the artist is used as a last resort.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Help with compilation album naming schemes

Is there a way to have multi-artist albums list the album title as the artist so the album is stored in one place, has one artist (other than various artists so there are not a bunch of those) and therefore shows up only once in the album view and also once in the artist view?

Thanks for any help!

I'm the same way....I don't like all the compilations bunched together under "Various Artists." Too generic, especially if you have a lot of them.

Fortunately, there is indeed a solution. The key is the ALBUM ARTIST tag. This is what your Elan system uses to group albums. When that tag is not present, it defaults to using the ARTIST tag, which is how you end up with all those different listings for one album (one for each artist). Every track on a compilation album needs to have the same ALBUM ARTIST tag in order for your player(s) to see it as one discrete album.

Now, if the default naming string is used, you will end up with "Various Artists" as the ALBUM ARTIST. You indicated that you don't want that....you'd rather use the album's name as a more unique identifier. You should be able to modify the default string to accomplish this:

[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Album[][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

Now, whenever CD Ripper sees the compilation flag, it will copy the ALBUM tag to the ALBUM ARTIST tag. Keep in mind that you can put anything you want in the ALBUM ARTIST tag, so with a little creativity and manual intervention, you can make the tag even more useful (in terms of forcing the way that your player sees it in your music library). You can even make meta-categories. For example, if you want all your soundtrack albums listed in one place, you could put "Soundtracks" as the ALBUM ARTIST. Then they would all be listed (by album title) under "Soundtracks" in your player's artist view. Similarly with things like "Jazz Festivals" or other groups of compilations that kind of naturally fall into a category.

Also, there may be times when you want to truncate the album name in this usage. Consider "Stax-Volt Singles Vol 1" and "Stax-Volt Singles Vol 2" and all the way up to vol 10, each as a separate entry in your artist view. Kinda clumsy & messy. But if you put "Stax-Volt Singles" as the ALBUM ARTIST for all ten albums, there will be one entry in the artist view, with the ten separate albums listed under that. Very clean, very easy to navigate.

The ALBUM ARTIST tag can be incredibly useful. Rather than being a piece of metadata about an album, it's better thought of as an organizational tool for controlling the the way your player(s) see & organize your music library.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Help with compilation album naming schemes

For some reason, I can't edit my last post from my phone. But I just noticed I omitted the brackets in the name string, so it should read:
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP][Album][][IF!COMP][artist][][]\[album]\[track] [artist] - [title]

[RSH]

Re: Help with compilation album naming schemes

Sorry for the delay in replying.

I think this is doing exactly what I need. Thanks very much!:smile2::smile2: