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[locust]

Hi,

In my music collection I have many separate artists that collaborate on eps and albums. Beccause of this, I don't name the Album Aritst field "Artist 1 & Artist 2", I use the ";" delimiter so that when I build my panes those albums appear under both artists.

Because I've opted to organise my music this way it has thrown up a few inconsistencies that don't look right. I've got a problem, I could live with it but I want to see if it is possible to iron it out..

In the image below you'll see that I have a selector pane that is just letters. These should change the Album Artist/Album pane correspondingly. You'll see that the letter "M" is selected but in the Album Artist/Album pane there are artist that don't begin with the letter M..



Here is the code for my selector
formatrange([Album Artist],1,1)

And here is the code for my Album Artist/Album pane
[Album Artist]\[Year - Album]&datatype=[list]

Is there a way to alter the code of the selector. That would for instance if the "m" was selected in the selector and were an entry for a track that the album artist field was named "M-Artist;A-Artist". The selector would then separate the two entries and ignore the one that didn't correspond with the letter selection..

I don't think I am getting the full picture here because it is the Album Artist/Album that is displaying the entries when a letter selection is made, so must that panes' code be altered as well?

Does anybody else separate multiple artist albums with a ";" delimiter? I've read some threads that say it causes problems for other music devices when you sync your music, I haven't experienced this yet as I haven't listened to music on any other device for quite a while.. This could be avoidable if in the sync options of J river that there was a check box that when ticked would temporarily replace the ";" in any album artist or artist fields with " & ". It would only have to happen as the music is syncing and only need done to the tracks in the sync list..

I hope this is solvable because it is plane ugly, although I wouldn't need a selector if my Album Artist.Album could have a search box built in 

Thanks

[MrC]

The non-M items occur because the Artist and Album Artist fields are not lists, but are simple strings.  That you happen to be splitting them using expressions in later panes is inconsequential.  To truly manage multiple artist entries, create your own Artists and Album Artists of type List (note I used the plural forms here to differentiate these from the stock non-plural versions).

Here's a good thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57477.0

[locust]

Thanks MrC,

I've read that thread before but that was when I first started using MC, now I understand it better.. I've got some Field & tag tweaking to do... Need to revert my delimited lists and use two new "Artists" and "Album Artists" fields that will read the stock Artist and Album Artist field. And if they contain anything that indicates multiple artists..

I'll need to double no triple read it before I do anything drastic.. "Clone my library actually in case I do anything brash" There is only one thing I haven't sussed out yet..

Thanks again MrC

[locust]

I've tried making the Album Artists & Artists field, but my selector problem still occurs.. Any suggestions?

[MrC]

Sorry, I've misguided you a bit.

When you make a selection in a pane, a query is run against the database, and a set of results is returned.  Subsequent panes are filled with values from all the results.  Thus, a single track that contains multiple values, say in an Artists field, will cause an Artists pane to enumerate and list all Artists for those tracks.  In other words, the panes lists the set of all values for the selected tracks.

[locust]

So do you think there is anyway to fool a pane into showing only the entries I want?

[rick.ca]

I'm not sure I'm following this, but it sounds like a job for a Regex() function that can handle lists.

I can't imagine any other way to convert a list of "Names" to "N\Names," which seems to be the essence of the problem.

But do you really need this? You can still use [Album Artist]&DataType=[List] in a pane, and use the keyboard to jump th the first name starting with a particular letter. That's pretty much all the "selector" is doing for you (although it can also be used with a mouse).

[locust]

Hey I never realised how well using the keyboard works, thanks.. I never tried it before.. I suppose it isn't really that obvious...

I think I tried it before & it never worked.. I realise now that I didn't have the right pane selected, it was disc type, so pressing any letters on the keyboard didn't work.. I was't just hovering the mouse over what I wanted to search.. I have to keep in mind it must be selected.. A search box would still be nice though..

Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with multi artist albums, if you deal with them at all?

Thanks Rick

[rick.ca]

Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with multi artist albums, if you deal with them at all?

My collection consists mainly of single-artist albums. I do have some multi-artist albums, but they're compilations, not the "collaborations" you're referring to. I do, however, combine [Artist], [r.Members] (i.e., individual members of [Artist] per AllMusic) and [Featuring] in the expression field [Artists], and display that in a pane. I use that primarily to display Members in the pane when I have one Artist or Album selected, but I can also use it to select an individual and see what Albums they're associated with. See my previous explanation and screenshot here.

[locust]

Thanks Rick that looks interesting, I might try and do something like that in the future.