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[Matt]

By default, MC uses "Auto Album Artist" instead of "Artist" in the tree. (where it uses "(Multiple Artists)" for mix CDs)

With an organized library, this keeps multi-artist CDs from making a mess of the tree.  With unorganized libraries, it creates confusion and grumpiness.

So the question is whether we should do this be default.  

Some options:

• do just what we're doing
  
• use "Artist" everywhere and make advanced users change it to "Album Artist (auto)" if they want
  
• don't use "(Multiple Artists)" if the album analyzer determines there are a lot of incomplete albums or that over 1/3 of the songs are "(Multiple Artists)"
  
• ? ? ? (you tell us)
  
  Thanks for any help.

[NoCodeUK]

Matt I think by default you should go back to using Artist in the tree as this will cause less confusion.  personally I have set up Album Artist tags for all my files and use Album Artist so that all my various Artist files stay together but I can still see the actual artist displayed in the view scheme window (Oh how I love the sticky views option )

Adam

[rocketsauce]

Put both and name one Artist/Album and the other Album Artist (Auto)/Album (or whatever the default name is when you create that view scheme). That way users can see that each option uses different components and see the difference between them.

Or put Artist/Album as the default view and create a View Scheme Group of alternate views. Maybe call them something like Audio (main properties) and one Audio (other properties).

Maybe there's some way to let new users know that they can edit/create View Schemes. I came across a couple of posts recently where the person didn't know all they had to do was right-click to setup/edit a View Scheme.

Rob

[phelt]

I use Album Artist Auto, but I wouldn't care if I had to manually select it - I wind up creating my own view schemes and deleting all the presets for each new version anyway.

To the best of my knowledge I don't use the Album Analyzer, so any functionality that's dependent upon it would hopefully be irrelevant to me.

Again, I have no problem with making things automated or simpler for newbies as long as I can still customize everything.

[nila]

I know I've been confused by it many a time when doing a fresh install.
It's because of the way it's written just as: Artist/album - u presume that's what it is and so when stuff isn't showing it gets VERY annoying.

Making it as default is great - naming it to sound like normal: artist/album isn't.

Either one works great as long as they're named correctly.

[mijkuf]

I vote for the second option:

use "Artist" everywhere and make advanced users change it to "Album Artist (auto)" if they want

I'm not sure what Matt means by "unorganized libraries", because I use Media Center to organize my library, and it works fine except for the auto album artist stuff.  I don't subscribe to the notion that media files should be organized on a dozen different levels.

[shAf]

• use "Artist" everywhere and make advanced users change it to "Album Artist (auto)" if they want
  

I agree with this because some of my artists actually disappeared from the list because they had been associated with an album with a similar name (e.g., "greatest hits", "best of", "anthology").  Although the tracks didn't disappear from the library, the fact they were associated with "multiple artists" (i.e., on album "Greatest Hits") made them difficult to find, and was initially confusing.

[slikvik]

If you could do the following I think you could solve a lot of the issues and also one that I have (and maybe others.)

I currently 'Select all' and copy the info into a spreadsheet so I can use Supernudelist with my Pronto. The problem is that the AlbumArtist tag is never filled in so I have to manually add the AlbumArtist tag to every album including Various Artist.

That way my albums are correctly sorted with no immediate need for an Auto list.

In short, I'm thinking if you did these two things:

1) Have an option in your Library Tools to 'Update AlbumArtist Tag' with either the Artist if all the selected files have the same Artist or Various if the Artists are all different for the selected files.

2) Do the same thing but automatically on CD Rip (Please Please!!)

Regards

Vic

[AndyCircuit]

Vote for the second option too.
Reason:
Imagine this: If you're new with this program you don't know about this feature. You're just import all files and want to play them, press some buttons, try this and that ... in other words play around. If then you see some files 'missing', you think this is a bug or something, maybe post a question...

Me, I needed two weeks to catch the most basic functions until I took a first 'closer' look to the view schemes functions. When the default was changed some builds ago I had to  do a forum search to get my multiple artist back in the artist tree.

Now  I can use MC quite well and know whats going on but for a newbie with his trial version at the edge of purchase all this is confusing.

Think, we the forum members, are far away in expierience and you should set the default for the newbies (with a easy help to show them there are other ways to organize)

IMHO Andy

[dwex]

I like it the way it is now in 9.0, but I'd be OK with choosing an option to get the current behavior if you want to change the default.

I would like an option to treat every instance of Artist in any context as "Album Artist (auto)", anywhere in the program (e.g. renaming files from tags).

--dwex

[slikvik]

Any news on this.

Look, the fact is people will almost always have compilations albums. So the Album Artist view is a very important one. The problem at the moment is that it uses a dynamic view to organise rather than just filling the field in!!

Allow the option to autoupdate the Albumartist tag when doing a CD rip AND also have an option to update the Albumartist tag for selected files. Problem solved.

If you can get the software to detect if an album has multiple artists it should be easy to automatically put 'Various Artists' in the tag if prefered.

Cheers

Vic

[Wobbley]

Go Vic!  That's what I need...

Wobbley