Artist Name and Sorting

[Starrcade]

I am having trouble understanding what to do when it comes to the artist name starting with The.

I am testing, and I ripped a CD by The Cure. I want it to sort so the band is under the letter C instead of T. The artist filename in my main Albums folder is called "Cure, The" and I am ok with that (so it shows up under C). When I look at the song properties, I see the meta ID tags have sort artist and album artist as "Cure, The." But when I play the song, the artist shows up as "Cure, The" instead of "The Cure." See my first screenshot below.






I did another test, and I changed the Artist and Album Artist to "The Cure." This created a filename folder "The Cure" which is now sorted under T. I also don't see any meta ID tags for sorting when I look at the song properties. See my second screenshot below.

How do I make the filename for a band show up as "Artist, The" so it will sort as "Artist, The" but show up in my audio player correctly (The Artist)?

If you need to know: In the CD Ripper options, in the MetaData and ID Tags section, I have "Replace The [artist] with [artist], The" selected, and I also have "Detect xxx, yyy in Artist and swap with yyy, xxx" selected (which I don't think is related). I also have Artist Sort, Album Artist Sort, and Album Sort selected in the Write ID Tags section.

[Henkjan_O]

just to make sure I get the question correctly: this is about sorting on the disc (screen shots appear to be from windows explorer) not inside some media player?

you can adjust the file name from the ripper in the below dialog. you could then use the ArtistSort tag (Cure, The) for file and disc folder naming, and use the Artist tag (The Cure) for the meta data

[Starrcade]

My screenshots are from Windows Explorer. I was showing the result of the folder/file names and the meta ID tags based on what I did in CD Ripper.

- The first screenshot shows what happened when I left both the Album Artist and Artist fields at the top of the ripper window as Cure, The. The bad thing (not shown in the screenshot) is my audio player shows the artist as Cure, The (I want the bands to have the correct name in my audio players).

- The second screenshot shows what happened when I changed both Album Artist and Artist fields to The Cure (you can see the sort tags disappeared). The audio player showed the correct name, but all the sorting looks wrong.

I want the media players to display the correct name for the band (The Cure). But I want the name of the folder to be sorted as C instead of T (which is Cure, The). And I want the metadata to be sorted by C instead of T.
Is Album Artist supposed to be Cure, The and I change only the Artist to The Cure? Or vice-versa? If it is the same artist/band, then I would think both fields should be the same.

One additional question related to ID tags: I do not have "Composer" selected in my Write ID Tag list on the Options menu. Why do my screenshots show a tag (which is blank) for Composer?

[simbun]

MusicBrainz and Discogs provide (Album)Artist and (Album)ArtistSort tags e.g.

Artist             ArtistSort

The Flaming Lips   Flaming Lips, The
Elton John         John, Elton

If you want to use the sort tags for all artists and not just those with a prefix of "The":

• Disable "Replace 'The [artist]' with '[artist], The'"
• Enable "Artist Sort"
• Enable "Album Artist Sort"

If you want to use the sort name in your file naming string simply replace (Album)Artist with (Album)ArtistSort.

All audio players should use the non-sort tags for display purposes.

The sort tags are typically used (for sorting) when presenting lists of artists:

David Bowie
The Cure
Eagles
The Flaming Lips
Elton John

I prefer to use the sort tags for both sort and display purposes in lists, but not all servers/players support that:

Bowie, David
Cure, The
Eagles
Flaming Lips, The
John, Elton