MediaMonkey forum

I'm considering making the leap from iTunes to MediaMonkey since my library is growing rather large. I've downloaded the newest version of MM and like many of the features, but I can't find a way to customize sort options for various fields (artist, album, song). It's a feature that iTunes has had for years. I see that MM offers the option to ignore "The" in an artist's name, which is great, but that's the only thing I see.

Is there a way to choose how the artist's name is sorted? In other words, can I specify that Curtis Mayfield's name be alphabetized under 'M' for Mayfield and not 'C' for Curtis. Or that Os Mutantes be sorted under 'M' and not 'O' (Os is just 'the' in Portuguese). I think this is one of the handiest features in iTunes, since I can expect to find mp3s organized just as they would be in a physical collection or in a record store. I'm close to making the leap to MM, but if this feature is not something available then it will definitely force me to stay with iTunes.

No, this feature is not available. Your only workaround would be to enter that sorting information into a Custom field and use that for sorting, but probably not the most efficient way to do things.

An other possibility is to use " Mayfield Curtis" instead.

For Os Mutantes: In the option you can put "the; os" In front of " Ignore prefixes when sorting by Artist".
( In options > Library > Appearance )

That's really surprising. iTunes has offered this since at least 2008, I believe. After enjoying "intelligent" alphabetizing in my collection for the past few years, I can't imagine going back to the "ignorant" order now. And employing backwards workarounds with commas and custom fields just seems ridiculous at this point. If bloated old iTunes has managed to do it, I can't believe a highly regarded alternative like MediaMonkey hasn't implemented it. Especially in the $20 "Gold" version.

Thanks for the quick replies, I do appreciate it. But I'm afraid I'll be sticking with iTunes for now.

Maybe you didn't understand my post.

What you ask is possible.

Go to options > Library > Appearance > Ignore prefixes when sorting by Artist

and put there as many prefix as you want. (the , os ; curtis; ... )

Enjoy.


btw. do you have a link or a name for the feature you are referring too.
I never heard of it so I would be able to answer more precisely if i can read about how it works.

They are additional fields that define the sort order. So you would still be able to show an Artist as normally, but define a different value to sort on. Artist = Bonnie Tyler ArtistSort = Tyler, Bonnie. What I wonder is if iTunes fills ArtistSort by itself or that the user has to do this. It seems that this field is a lot of work for the user and that's maybe why it has received little interest from users and developers besides that part of it can be done with ignore prefix (which is limited to Artist though).

Lowlander wrote:It seems that this field is a lot of work for the user and that's maybe why it has received little interest from users and developers

True, it would have to be a manual step as I don't see how MM could differentiate between "David Allan Coe" and "Jane's Addiction" for example.
This wouldnt be a big problem for one CD's worth of music at a time, as I would imagine that in MM this ArtistSort field would be left blank by default and only populated when the user manually enters data.
I run a couple of scripts on Mp3Tag that copies the Artist tag, strips off all but the last word in the tag and inserts it into the ArtistSort tag. This works for the most part, but as you can see from the above example, the script would sort Jane's Addiction alphabetically in with the "A"s. If I try and do a large number of files at a time, I sometimes miss things. I figure it out fairly quickly when I am looking thru Slimserver/SqueezeCenter/SqueezeboxServer/LogitechMediaCenter.


Not to beat this subject up too much, but can the AlbumArtistSort tag be exposed as well?

Many thanks!

Buck

I am also interested in using ARTISTSORT. My ARTISTSORT Id tags are all filled in correctly so that John Doe is entered in that tag as Doe, John. It is silly for me to have to find John Doe under the J's instead of the D's.

I know this is an old post but I would still love to see this feature implemented. It's especially helpful for those using older media players (5th gen iPod in my case) that don't support the "Album Artist" field. For example, in iTunes if I had a compilation album, and wanted it to be sorted under a single artist, rather than a different artist for each track, I could use the "Sort Artist" field so specify a single artist for the Album and have all tracks for that album show up when selecting that artist on my iPod.

Not sure if this helps, but when I enter my songs into the library, I enter the artists like this:

Beatles, The
Who, The
Tucker, Tonya
Benny Goodman and his Orchestra
Carpenters
Jackson, Michael
Brown, Jackson
Nelson, Willie

They then sort by last name, group name, etc. as I want to see them.

Also, if the album is a single artist or group, it is entered as that artist/group; otherwise, I set it to "Various" so these albums get denoted, essentially, as multi-artist/group.

Song titles are the same - I don't "ignore" the "the", "a", ... I move it to the end
Hard Day's Night, A
Night Santa Went Crazy, The
These Eyes
End of the World, The

this way, even if I use another player, they show up as I want them to.

Hope that helps a little.
It's tedious; but you only need to do it once.

Would it be possible to have a "Sort by" field in the properties? The reason for this would be that I have 119 films that have the word "The" at the beginning of the title. Alphabetically this puts them ALL in the "T" section. Also there are films franchises where the titles are not all the same, so listing them alpabetically doesn't put them in the correct chroinologial order, or even under the same letter category. A film franchise that demonstrates this perfectly are the Fast and Furious films.

Chronological
The Fast and the Furious
2 Fast 2 Furious
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fast & Furious
Fast Five
Fast & Furious 6
Furious 7
The Fate of the Furious

Alphabetical
2 Fast 2 Furious
Fast & Furious
Fast & Furious 6
Fast Five
Furious 7
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
The Fast and the Furious
The Fate of the Furious

As you can see, alphabetically its a mess. One film is up in the "0-9" category, 4 are in the "F"'s and 3 are in the "T"'s. And even the ones that are grouped together are not in the correct order. If there was a "Sort By" field, this could all be solved by putting "Fast1", "Fast2", Fast3" etc etc.

Hi,
Ignore "the" can be set under Tools -> options -> appearance

You can also use SEASON # to Add your order ant then sort by that.

The ability to filter out prefixes is ONLY available in the "Artist" field. Not any other field at all. Lowlander even confirms that a few posts above. If there was a dropdown list of all the available fields that you wanted to exclude prefix's from that would be a step in the right direction.

Now in reference to using the "Season#" field to sort movies, that only works if you add info to the "Series" field as well. And when you add info to the "Series" field, it sorts that group separately from everything else. Secondly this doesn't work at all in the "Show Art" view.

This would be why we are all asking for a more intelligent way to sort and display the media. The moderators on this forum keep offering work arounds, but they are all extremely limited and specific. The single feature we are asking for would address all the issues listed in this whole thread. A number of other media management solutions offer this field and it makes things very simple, but none of them offer the ability to quickly and easily manage metadata across a wide library of media files the way MM does.

Here's a Dropbox link to several screencaptures
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w04g3fp2r4h4z ... M.png?dl=0

Ahhh, I see you are right. Handling "The" should be expanded and better defined

Added this at https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14245