Album Artist Node

davey · Post by **davey** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 10:46 am

Hey,

first off, apologies of this is the wrong place for this question. I was just wondering if there's going to be an album artist node in MM3? I really couldn't understand its absence in MM2 and assumed the devs would include it this time around, but I'm looking at some screenshots here and all I can see is the usual Artist/Album/Genre nodes.

I know people will say use the magic nodes script but that caused difficulties for me last time (my library had trouble sorting artists with 'the' in their name) and would rather if this function was natively supported this time.

Any of you testers care to enlighten me?

k_r_eriksson · Post by **k_r_eriksson** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 12:48 pm

The Album Artists node is not i MM3 (so far)

I also miss the Composer node.

ksteele · Post by **ksteele** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 2:25 pm

I second this. Album Artists should be a native node. It's a must have for folks who have "Various Artists" albums.

davey · Post by **davey** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 2:38 pm

I'd love to know why the devs keep omitting it... my understanding (admittedly limited) is that it wouldn't be difficult to implement at all.

Customisable nodes would be pretty cool actually.

daveee · Post by **daveee** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:20 am

i'd also love to know where there's no option for album artist node! in mm2 i constantly used the magicnodes album artist node. i've got so many compilation albums that using the artist node is a real chore and a pain. i also can't understand the reasoning for not including it.

liger_trainer · Post by **liger_trainer** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:07 am

I completely agree. This has been a major annoyance for me. Album Artist should be the default node. Please oh great developers, help us out here

cmx · Post by **cmx** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:09 am

The focus here in the beta thread has seemd to be working out bugs and problems......not really wishes or new feature suggestion....

That said, because there seems to be interest in this and I too have a large number of compilation album, I have some questions.

I don't remeber a previous "Album Artist" node. Possibly that is what I am seeking. How did it work?

Currently the "artist" node DOES NOT display the compilation albums that contain individual tracks by an artist. This seems counterintuitive to me.

I would expect it to show me ALL albums that the artist appears on as subnodes. Is this functionality what the "album artist" node supplied?

k_r_eriksson · Post by **k_r_eriksson** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:30 am

Before in MM2 you could do a album artist node with magic node.

Today the artist node lists all artists. Under an artist (for example Elton John) I can see all song with that artist. As subnodes i see all album with album artist same as the artist (all albums that has Elton John as Album Artist).

An album artist node will only list album artists. Under each album artist I will see albums as subnodes.

liger_trainer · Post by **liger_trainer** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:51 am

^Right. Album Artist was never (to my knowledge) a standard node. The problem doesn't only apply to "Various Artists" albums. It's an issue with any album that has "guest artists" on a track. What happens currently with Artist node:

The Roots
> Game Theory
> Illadelph Halflife
> Organix
The Roots/Jack Davy
The Roots/John-John
The Roots/Maimouna Youssef
The Roots/Malik B

As you can see, each "artist" or multiple artist is listed, but if they are an "album artist" the will have an expand/collapse option. Clicking on the actual album artist - in this case The Roots - will show only tracks that the are the only "artist." Selecting the album will display all tracks from that album.

What should happen with Album Artist node is that the multiple artist tracks would be displayed along with the main album artist.

Hope that makes sense... I can do screen shots if that would be helpful.

k_r_eriksson · Post by **k_r_eriksson** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:38 am

liger_trainer wrote:^Right. Album Artist was never (to my knowledge) a standard node. The problem doesn't only apply to "Various Artists" albums. It's an issue with any album that has "guest artists" on a track. What happens currently with Artist node:

The Roots
> Game Theory
> Illadelph Halflife
> Organix
The Roots/Jack Davy
The Roots/John-John
The Roots/Maimouna Youssef
The Roots/Malik B

As you can see, each "artist" or multiple artist is listed, but if they are an "album artist" the will have an expand/collapse option. Clicking on the actual album artist - in this case The Roots - will show only tracks that the are the only "artist." Selecting the album will display all tracks from that album.

What should happen with Album Artist node is that the multiple artist tracks would be displayed along with the main album artist.

Hope that makes sense... I can do screen shots if that would be helpful.

If you use a ";" between artists they separate.

If you got a song with The Roots and Jack Davy name it The Roots;John Davy and it will show under The Roots and under John Davy

cmx · Post by **cmx** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:50 am

Thanks for the responses...for some reason this is a complicated issue...looking back in time using searches there is a HUGE amount of discussion concerning these and surrounding issues....its extremely complicated to discuss.

I do remember trying to use the "Magic Nodes" add-on to deal with some of these issues...it became problematic and I just "lived" with the status quo.

KR yes that seems to be the way it is working in MM2. Currently in MM3 it works similarly. How would you use the album artist node? Could you give an example...how would compilations with "various" as the album artist be handled?

Liger I think I see your point too...not completely sure though. Could you explain a bit more on how you would use it and expect it to work...a screen capture would help too. Are you speaking more of "multiple-artists" per track?

My issues are these:

I have a huge number of compilation albums.

For the most part my files do not have a specific "album artist" tag. MM itself defines the album artist field entry for the library.

MM3 is behaving differently than MM2 in this respect. MM2 seems to employ "various" as the album artist on albums it deems "multi-artist"...MM3 seems to use the individual artist for each track as "album artist" on multi-artist albums.

I have a huge number of files so it is not a practical consideration to "edit" each track to comply with a certain style.

From a simple visual perspective, what I am expecting intuitively as a user is to see ALL albums that an artist appears on in the Nav tree as subnodes of the artist node. Even if the album artist is defined as "various". All tracks on ALL albums by the artist appear in the library window...that is true. It only follows logically that albums presented there should be represented in the Nav tree also...at the very least as a matter of continuity. There are tracks on albums being displayed in the library window that are not represented in the nav tree display.

This simple visual aid would help working with my collection immensely.

Thanks for the discussion.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:40 pm

My 2c.

I've grown to appreciate the existing single artist/album tree node.

If I expand an artist node, it shows all of the albums to which that artist is an album artist of.

The track list shows all tracks.

What I don't think I really want is to have 982374982 different compliations suddenly show up on my artist node.

I have alot of soundtracks and compilations. If all albums did show up on the artist tree, then it would be alot more messy.

I guess possibly the best solution is to let the user choose for himself, but my preference is for the current behavior.

cmx · Post by **cmx** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:50 pm

I can see your point techno. User choice is always good.

The thing is, currently in MM3 I have both the individual artist "name" AND the term"various" showing up in the "album artist" field....

So some compilation albums show up, some do not....consistency and completeness is what I would want....showing everything seemed the logical starting point.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:58 pm

"Various" is simply the exact same as any other artist.

If you expand your "Various" artist node, you will (or should if they are properly tagged) have all of your compilations indicated on that "Various" artist node.

I use a few different 'special' album artist designations:

- soundtrack
- various
- techno
- ministry of sound

etc

If I go to the 'soundtrack' artist and expand it, I see all of my soundtrack albums.

Same with the others, If I go to my Techno artist and expand it, I see all the techno albums that I have grouped under the techno album artist.

cmx · Post by **cmx** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:54 pm

I understand "various" is simply a name.

I depend on the MM scan to set/infer file "properties" and arrange my files for it's db when I scan. There is simply no way all the files can be uniformly tagged.

MM2 assigned "various" to the "album artist" field, MM3 does not. Yet there are compilations that have the "album artist" tagged as "various" and other things. Looking at the various "Various"(yes there are various variouses) nodes is not very useful with my library.

There are many sources and files types for my music library. "Properly tagged" is kinda relative and problematic here. That's why I would depend on it to revert to the lowest common denominator "artist"....

Just getting ACC capability is HUGE for me. I haven't had complete access to a huge portion of the library until now.