how to browse by album from Music Explorer w/o artis

[equalizer]

I can't seem to figure out how to browse albums in the left - I want to see just the album names, not broken down by Album Name (Artist Name). The latter is causing multi-artist compilation albums (i.e., much of electronic music) to span twenty lines, when it should all be one line (and all the songs do have the correct, single, same album name in their metadata). I tried searching here for an answer for 15 minutes and couldn't seem to find the solution.

Thanks!

[Eyal]

You can use Track Browser (menu: View|Show Track browser).

First select Library->Album node in the treeview.
In Track Browser, right-click first column header and select Album.
Choose whatever fields you want in other two columns.

[equalizer]

So is there no way to make the list of albums in the tree node match the list in the track browser selection pane? I don't get why the tree node defaults to showing albums segregated by artist, with no option to make it not like that? The track browser is an acceptable solution I guess, just would be nicer to be able to browse the albums to the left (and not be broken down by artist).

I would have thought the album-artist node would show what album does, actually!

[onenonymous]

check out MagicNodes - it can create the node you're looking for.

[Lowlander]

I can't seem to figure out how to browse albums in the left - I want to see just the album names, not broken down by Album Name (Artist Name). The latter is causing multi-artist compilation albums (i.e., much of electronic music) to span twenty lines, when it should all be one line (and all the songs do have the correct, single, same album name in their metadata).

This can be easily fixed. For MediaMonkey to consider tracks to belong to the same Album you also need to set the Album Artist value to the same for all tracks on the Album. In the case of a compilation album this would commonly be Various, VA or Various Artists. You can use the Files to Edit > Multiple Artist Albums to identify albums that need this fix.

[equalizer]

This last one seems like what I was looking for - but is there another data field where I can still store the actual artist, without it affecting the sorting of tracks into albums? Ideally I wouldn't want to lose that data completely.

Again, it would seem like only the Album By Artist node should be splitting the album according to the range of artists, but I guess this basic functioning of the Album node is hard-coded (unless I were to try the Magic Node suggestion).

[Lowlander]

The Artist field is used for the tracks artists. The Album Artist field is used for the albums artist.

All nodes (Artist, Album Artist and Artist + Album Artist) will sort the Album together if the Album Artist value is the same for all tracks on the album.

The build in nodes behavior can't be modified, but Magic Nodes or My Custom Nodes can be programmed by the user.

[equalizer]

Ah I see, I didn't see that Album Artist is separate from Artist, silly me! That explains it all then! I'll just cut the values from Album Artist to Artist field then, so as to preserve the data but also fix the album grouping behavior, sweet!

[equalizer]

Actually even easier than I thought, turns out most of my multi-artist albums were fortunately already filling out the Artist field, just needed to blank the Album Artist to "Various Artists" across the board! Thanks again!