Album Artist vs Album Artist (Auto)
Most albums have a single artist with all of the tracks on that album by the one artist. MC automatically groups these tracks into an album displayed under the one thumbnail picture.
Compilation albums have multiple artists and in standard view schemes MC will list albums multiple times, once for every different artist's name on the compilation album. Thus multiple representations of the same album.
So, to group tracks together into one album, under the one thumbnail pic, MC uses either the [Album Artist] field or [Album Artist (Auto)] field.
If [Album Artist] field is typed in manually that value is automatically entered into the [Album Artist (auto)] field as well. Each individual track will still have its own respective artist but all tracks will be grouped as the one album.
[Album Artist (Auto)] is a built-in field which auto-completes if the [Album Artist] field is left empty…..but,
○ All tracks must have the same [Album] field value
○ If all tracks have the same[Artist] then it uses that artist.
○ If there are more than one artist it uses the default of "(Multiple Artists)"…, in order for (Multiple Artists) to appear automatically the album must be in its own exclusive directory and contain only audio files.
NB You can put whatever you want into [Album Artist] and MC will use that. Call it "My Compilation", "Best of 80's", whatever. This will display your
compilations by what you called them mixed with, in alphabetical order, regular albums.