I have a hard time believing I'm the first person to want to do this, but after spending about an hour trying to locate a thread about this on the forums I assume I'm just plain using the wrong keywords in my search, or it has in fact not been addressed, at least not in awhile.
What is the best way to sort artists by their last name, given that names of bands and groups should not be sorted by the last word in their name? i.e., would sort as follows:
James Gang
Rick James
Jane's Addiction
Jethro Tull
Billy Joel
and also...
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Dave Matthews
The Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews and Friends
Metallica
Is there some way, other than renaming all my solo artists to lastname, firstname, or entering all the lastnames into an extended field and doing custom views? I don't see how it could be completely automatic given MC can't tell the difference between a group or solo artist's name, however it would be nice to be able to mark tracks as either a solo artist or group, and then have a view scheme option to allow solo artists to be sorted by last name, much like groups starting with "The" can now be sorted ignoring the "The".
This could get even more complicated where a group’s lead is really the part of the name you key off of (I would want to look up Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band under Springsteen, right next to his solo work)
Thanks for any insight or tips.