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[Mike...]

My preferred grouping and sorting for music is Year - Album (z-a).

This generally works great, except for when an artist releases for example two albums in the same year. Those albums then get sorted z-a, instead of new-old. For sorting I can sort on year (z-a), then date (release) (z-a), then Album (z-a). I added album to sort multi-disc albums correctly, I have the disc number in the titles.

However, how do I apply this to grouping? If I group by Year - Album, which I'd like to keep, how do I control the order within the same year as above.

?

[wer]

Grouping is used in more than one place in MC.

Can you post a screenshot showing exactly what you mean?

[Mike...]

I'm talking about the default Audio > Artists view. See screenshot. Sorting of the albums at the top is now correct, new to old, sorted as described previously, because Year - Album wasn't working.

The files below are still grouped by Year - Album (z-a) with the "wrong" order, because there seems to be no easy alternative. I want to keep the highlighted info in the first screenshot, year and album name.

I can for example group by Album (by date), the sorting is then correct, but I lose the year info in front of the album name, see second screenshot.

[wer]

I'm talking about the default Audio > Artists view. See screenshot. Sorting of the albums at the top is now correct, new to old, sorted as described previously, because Year - Album wasn't working.

By "wasn't working" I guess you mean "not producing the effect I wanted" because [Year - Album] works fine; it's a built-in field and does what it's supposed to do. Using it in a sort requires understanding it.

All that field is, is a calculated field that prepends the [Year] to the [Album].  Which means if you sort or group by it, newest albums will come first (or last) because [Year] is at the start of the string. This works fine when you view Taylor Swift. It doesn't work so well when you're viewing "All Artists" because it will list all the albums by year first, regardless of the artist.

Now when you use "Grouping" down in that lower pane, the File List, it will only group by a field.  You don't have the same flexibility in defining custom sorts.  By default it groups by "Album" and that is a special case, hard-coded into MC, that doesn't actually sort/group by album, it sorts/groups by Artist then Album, but displays only the album name and adds the words "by [Artist]" at the end. Other fields don't get that special treatment.

So you can group by [Year - Album] and if you do, all your 2019 albums will come first, regardless of who made them, when you're viewing all artists. It will look like you want when you view Taylor Swift though.

If you want it to sort correctly all the time, you could group by a calculated field you create, called "Album Artist - Year - Album" which you set to type calculated data with this definition:
[Album Artist] - [Year] - [Album]

That will always sort correctly. You can decide if you like how it looks.

Hope this helps...

[Mike...]

I never really look at the file list for all artists. The artists themselves are just sorted by name. It's when I click on an artist that the file list comes into view and I use it.

And then I do want the most recent album at the top. Since it is a chronological sort, I was expecting it to stick to that, but apparently it falls back to alphabetical once it encounters the same year twice. I suppose you can say my expectations were not met, but I suppose it could also fall back to a field like release date to keep the chronological sort going instead.

I will look into the calculated field. Thanks for your input.

[wer]

If you don't look at files for "all artists" then I guess I don't understand your concern.

If you sort albums by artist then date above, then when you drill down to a particular artist, they will still be sorted by date below, if you just leave grouping in the file list at the default of Album.

Then it will show the album name, "by [Album Artist]" and the year will still be displayed over on the right.

That seems to give you everything you wanted, except the year displaying on the left.

Importantly, the albums will be sorted by date, not just year, assuming you defined that in the upper pane.

Good luck...

[Mike...]

Then it will show the album name, "by [Album Artist]" and the year will still be displayed over on the right.

That seems to give you everything you wanted, except the year displaying on the left.

Exactly, I like the year on the left. And If I'm only looking at one artist, then the by artist label is too much.

[Mike...]

After reading some more threads, it really seems the solution would be for the developer to give the user control over sorting of groups. This seems a returning thing.

Currently you have Group By and Sort Inside Groups By.

It should be Group By, Sort Groups By and Sort Inside Groups By.

That would remove the hard coded sorting. Group By would then only control the visual layout of the data and the field names displayed. Sort Groups By would then control how the groups are actually sorted.

[wer]

Or, you could just get used to the year being on the right. 

[Mike...]

Group By Album only seems to work old to new though and not the other way around. If I do Group By > More > Album (z-a), then it removes the years entirely.

And Group By Album also doesn't solve the initial problem of two albums in the same year, it also falls back to album name.

[wer]

Like I said, the group sorting in the file list doesn't have as much flexibility as you do in the upper category pane.  You don't get compound sorts saved as presets, and you can't use expressions to group by one thing but display something else, as you can above.