Artist with Album Art option?

[Trollheart]

Just re-downloaded and installed MM again (system crash = apes a-poppin'!) and wondered if this is possible?
You're allowed to select, with Album Art, Composer/Album/Artist and album.
If you select the last one you get a separate album graphic for every track in every album, and if you select the middle one it just gives you the albums in alphabetical order with art.
What I want to do, if it's possible, a la JRiver Media Centre, is to have the artists, with album art (for let's say the first album alphabetically in that artist's directory) and then you click on it and it allows you to select a particular album from that. So for say Marillion you would be presented with a graphic of "Script for a jester's tear" (their first album) but when clicked on you could then select from "Fugazi", "Season's end", "Marbles" etc.

Is this possible? It can be done, as I say, on JMC, but I don't know whether it can be done on MM. As it is, if I select Artist I get each album separately, but arranged as per album title, NOT artist title, so if I'm looking for the aforementioned Marillion's "Season's end" I have to go all the way down to S, find the album and click on it. I'd rather go to M for Marillion and then click to find the album.

Am I just dreaming, or can this be done?

Thanks for any replies.
TH

[Lowlander]

No, MediaMonkey can't add this extra step to get to the Album.

Things to look at:
- Sort, you can sort on different columns
- Track Browser, you'd be able to click on the Artist there and then have all the Albums by that Artist remaining.

[Trollheart]

OK thanks for that.
I notice there's a script "Exchange artist and title", which would go some way towards working for me, but when I select it the prog crashes! Any ideas how this should be done? I'm selecting all by ctrl-A and then running the script, and then the monkey falls out of the tree! Any help on this would be very much appreciated.
Thx
TH

[Lowlander]

Do you get an error message? What if you select a single track?

[Trollheart]

No, it just goes to "not responding". Haven't managed to try it with a single album yet, as it's hung on me.
I'm now seeing for some reason that even when selecting ALBUM and ALBUM ART, I'm getting a separate graphic for each track from each album. Sigh!
Here's what my layout looks like at the moment: am I screwing something up here?



Thx again for any help.
TH

PS sorry for the big ugly graphic --- thought it would link to the JPG on my site, not here!

[Lowlander]

The bold text indicates the Album and the regular text under it the Album Artist. As you can see in your image you have the same Album name (01011001), but not the same Album Artist. MediaMonkey only considers tracks belonging to an Album when all tracks have the same Album Artist.

Also see: http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/f ... erties.htm

[Trollheart]

Thx for that(again!)
I see what you mean.
I tried the solution you suggested, but it seems virtually all of my albums (or at least a large percentage of them) have the Album Artist field different to the Artist field, so I'd have to change too many albums manually to make this worthwhile. Essentially, what I have to do now is RE-tag all my albums and either kick out the Album Artist field or make sure it ties in with the Artist field. That'll take time....

It's something that constantly annoys me about tags. I mean, 90% or more of the time, Album Artist and Artist are going to be the same, so why can't tagging programs have the Album Artist field as optional, not filled in or selected unless you actually want it? Having a default of it always being on is in my opinion overkill. I know Marillion is the Artist, for example: I don't need to know/show that they are also the Album Artist! The only possible instance I can see this field being needed is in compilation albums, where you DO have various artists, but even then, so what? Who needs the Album Artist tag to be filled, really? It's just overkill imo.

Anyway thanks --- looks like I have some (a lot of) retagging to do!

[Lowlander]

Because the Album Artist field is used to identify who the Album is from and thus tie tracks to an Album and thus essential information. Otherwise you'd end up with all Greatest Hits albums listed as one single album. The Artist field is an indication of who performed the track. MediaMonkey should automatically fill the Album Artist with Artist and can automatically change albums with multiple artists (File > Maintain Library and enable Create multi-artist Albums).

[Trollheart]

Don't mean to argue with you, and thanks for all your help, but I don't understand or agree with your contention as to the AA field. Why would all greatest hits albums be shown as one? The album title is, well, the title of the album, and the artist is who it's by. Surely, for example, Bon Jovi's Keep the faith would be Artist Bon Jovi, Album Artist Bon Jovi, and their greatest hits album would be the same? As I say, I can only see its use being needed in the case of "various" albums (NOW series etc), where you have more than one artist on an album, but a GH package is going to be the same artist (99% of the time at least) on all trax, so why would AA be required? If MM is going to mix up titles which are the same, then are you saying it would see, say, "X" by the band Ten with "X" by the band Spock's Beard? ISurely it can differentiate between the two? If so, then why would it mix up Greatest hits of Abba with Greatest hits of Thin Lizzy, let's say, without the benefit of this Album Artist tag?

Sorry, but I maintain that it's just superfluous. Title. Artist and Album should be quite sufficient, then add the likes of (if you want them) year, genre etc.

Anyway, again thanks for the help but this is putting me off using the program. As much as I hate it, the dreaded itunes does not take this sort of approach, and as I only want to use the program to organise and transfer my music to my new ipod classic, there's a lot of fine-tuning here that I can really do without.

Funny: I don't recall MM giving me this problem before....

TH

[Lowlander]

Actually many tracks have featured artists which many will enter as Artist 1;Artist 2 in the Artist field, thus all these Albums would be split up as well. This is why there is a need to identify what tracks belong on an Album. You can't rely on Artist as it doesn't work 100% of the time. That's why MediaMonkey uses the Album Artist for this.

Also for regular Albums where all tracks have the same Artist by whom the Album is this isn't an issue as MediaMonkey will auto-fill the Album Artist with the Artist value if not present. When you change the Artist, Album Artist will change along. The part where user interaction is required is where tracks on the Album have different Artists (like compilation Albums). MediaMonkey doesn't auto-change those to Various Artists (which would mess up Greatest Hits Albums for example) and thus the user has to do so. MediaMonkey does provide tools to help out.

What you propose to use Artist would lead to the issue you're currently experiencing where the tracks are split in separate Albums as they're from different Artists.

[Dreadlau]

I have 30K songs and it didn't take long to fix the inconsistent or missing Album Artists.

There are plenty of reasons why the approach of Mediamonkey regarding the Album Artist field is superior.

.Albums where some tracks have featuring Artists.
.Compilations
.Soundtracks
.Split Albums
...

Besides there are several tools to help you fix the inconsistencies in your tags.

[RichyBling]

I understand Trollhearts' issue as I also came to use Media Monkeys product after using J. River Media Centre.

When I initially started using Media Monkey, I seriously thought what the hell is this album artist field all about. I initally got rid of it by deleting the contents of the field for every song in my library but that had the side effect of not allowing me to click through and expand an album on its own on the tree tab. This side effect annoyed me alot so I decided I was going to try and make it work, I started using the album artist field and to be honest it works very well.

I think the only issue is that a lot of us can be anal about tagging our files correctly or in our own particular style and if you've managed to get by for the last 5 years without that field, you've probably developed some sort of way to work around the solution that "album artist" solves. So basically when its initially presented to you its hard to see the benefits.

For me personally I listen to a lot of artists who have other artists featured on their tracks so I actually use "Album Artist" a little backwards and put the featured Artists aswell as the Main Artists in the "Album Artist" field and I leave the Artist field only for the the artist whose album it is. I do it this way because I use Last.fm and Last.fm and basically most other programs do not understand "Album Artist".

Unfortunately using my method still creates duplicates of the same album so I have to play all my albums from a playlist. On the whole "Album Artist" is a good tool that takes some time to work your head around.

Also looking at your screenshot you have over 15,000 tracks, when you have that many songs iTunes basically becomes useless its impossible to find anything quickly. I think its impossible to have that many songs and be able to use iTunes.