Various Artists on Compilation Albums

[Music-Man]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

So your podcasts are literally in the same tree structure as your music, and not like
./podcasts
./music

I suppose the other question is are you looking for something to serve your podcasts too? Whilst it's not designed for it I guess they're just audio files with tags.

The folder structure ist as following:
./music
./music/artist_a/album_1
./music/artist_b/album_2
./music/compilations/compilation_a
./music/soundtracks/soundtrack_a
./music/audiobooks/audiobook_a
./music/various_artists
./podcasts

The audiobooks and podcasts are just regular audio files with genre-tag "audiobook" or "podcast".

Do you have, or could you add a single tag to all your files to differentiate them? At that point you could add that tag as an Index/Container to Asset (or as a Library Exclusion if you're not interested in serving podcasts) and make that your first browsing selection which would exclude all the files from the other categories for subsequent browsing.

EDIT: If not a single tag, I know you have COLLECTION=1 that could identify your collections, but is there a tag that's always used for podcasts but nothing else?

On all audio files the following tags are used:
ALBUM, ARTIST, DISCNUMBER, GENRE, TITLE, TRACK, YEAR.
Additionaly compilations, soundtracks, and the files in the various_artists folder has the tag COMPILATION=1.

If it is not absolutely necessary, I would like to save myself the trouble of having to tag all the other audio files with an extra tag.

COLLECTION=1 would be a custom tag, but I assume you are aware that the standard is COMPILATION=1

Also, don't you populate ALBUM ARTIST? Browsing by that won't include the artists on compilations (but also not guest artists on regular albums).

Of course I meant COMPILATION=1.
Please excuse the confusion.

The tag ALBUM ARTIST is not used yet.


How do other users handle this?

[GBrown]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

The tag ALBUM ARTIST is not used yet.

AlbumArtist is an essential tag to allow most library managers to differentiate Album titles with the same name. This is the prime reason the field has come into use. Greatest Hits packages are the most common, but there are plenty of other examples where two or more Artists have used the same Album title for their releases.

In most cases, the AlbumArtist is the same as Artist for regular Album releases, but if there are "guest" Artist on one or more of those Album tracks, it will also make sure these Album remain grouped under a single folder or location in the library. Compilation titles (the flag for this tag should be set to 1) often have the AlbumArtist set to "Various Artists" or something similar (your preference here). Occasionally this may be something more specific, for "tribute" albums, as an example I usually use the tributee's name for the AlbumArtist field to group these under their folder and library location.

Using your naming convention without the AlbumArtist tag means your discs will be split into separate folders for Compilation titles, or even single Artist releases with a guest performing on a track. Using a tag editor, I would start off by setting the AlbumArtist to "Various Artists" at least for your Compilation=1 tracks.

[Music-Man]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

With 1771 albums, I have not yet encountered the problem of duplicate albums.
Guest artists do not appear on an artist's album under Artist, but in the title as "... (feat. Artist xy)".

Nevertheless, I have now added the tag ALBUMARTIST=various artists to all tracks with the tag COMPILATION=1.

The artists from the compilation directories, however, still appear under "artists".
If I select an album under "artist", not only the albums of the respective artist appear there, but also compilations on which the artist is included.

What I basicaly want is a navigation structure similar to what I know from twonky:
- Genre/Artist/Album
- Audiobooks
- Artist/Album
- Artist Index
- By Date
- By Folder
- Playlists
Compilations, soundtracks, etc. have been defined as so-called "collective folders" and are therefore automatically grouped under "Various Artists", except for the navigation "By Folder", and do not appear anywhere else.