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[BigJ]

I have read numerous posts and wiki pages, searched several times, and tried many variations to no avail.  Hopefully it's a simple mistake I'm making.

I commonly use a semicolon delimited list in the Artist field for every noteworthy entity that I care to keep track of as an "artist"... sometimes an established band like 'Pearl Jam' or 'Screaming Trees', sometimes an individual musician like 'Mike McCreedy' or 'Mark Lanegan' or 'Isobel Campbel', and sometimes a noteworthy side project like 'Mad Season', but *not* include something like "Isobel Campbel & Mark Lanegan" as an "artist" - despite them having a few albums labeled as such - and only list those specific albums under each "artist" individually, as the entity "Isobel Campbel & Mark Lanegan" isn't one I want to separately keep track of or view, and I need to be able to make these determinations on a case by case basis, which I thought could be done via the list in the Artist field irrespective of what is in the Composer or Album Artist (auto or otherwise).

A View I want now is (in various forms and locations, such as stacked Artist/Album thumbnails in the theatre view, a grid in the standard view, others) is *my* 'master list of music artists' that's solely determined by the aggregated result of every (single or semicolon delimited) unique value in every Artist field where MediaType is Audio and MediaSubType is Music, then for each unique "artist" value I want to see every thing they're associated with grouped by Album (whether they're on one song or every one on the Album), with the Albums sorted newest to oldest by Year then A-Z if more than one Album has the same Year value), then inside each Album have it sort by Track# ascending like an Album is normally shown.

I don't care who the Composer is or who is listed (or calculated) as Album Artist, and I certainly don't care that Artist and Album Artist differ, and I very specifically want to (in this case) ignore those fields in grouping and display, and if a song or album shows up under 42 different "artists" because I happen to have that many in my semicolon delimited list for a given song or album - so be it, and (as far as I can tell) I don't want MC showing me *anything* other than exactly this (for this View).

But no matter what I've tried I cannot seem to accomplish this.

Help, please.  What am I misunderstanding or doing wrong?

[BigJ]

A View I want now is (in various forms and locations, such as stacked Artist/Album thumbnails in the theatre view, a grid in the standard view, others) is *my* 'master list of music artists' that's solely determined by the aggregated result of every (single or semicolon delimited) unique value in every Artist field where MediaType is Audio and MediaSubType is Music, then for each unique "artist" value I want to see every thing they're associated with grouped by Album (whether they're on one song or every one on the Album), with the Albums sorted newest to oldest by Year then A-Z if more than one Album has the same Year value), then inside each Album have it sort by Track# ascending like an Album is normally shown.

I don't care who the Composer is or who is listed (or calculated) as Album Artist, and I certainly don't care that Artist and Album Artist differ, and I very specifically want to (in this case) ignore those fields in grouping and display, and if a song or album shows up under 42 different "artists" because I happen to have that many in my semicolon delimited list for a given song or album - so be it, and (as far as I can tell) I don't want MC showing me *anything* other than exactly this (for this View).

Further, in a similar but different View, it would start out just like the above example, but when drilling down into the Album it would only show the tracks the "artist" in question appears on, but ideally with a way to link to the entire Album even if the "artist" in question only appeared on one song.

And in yet another, I'd ignore the above and specifically group by and display it based on Album Artist irrespective of who or how many other "artists" are in my Artist field. This is occasionally helpful for electronica artists and producers and DJs like 'BT', who has a boatload of tracks and remixes that're clearly mostly thought of as BT tracks but in reality the Artist field for a given track may contain 'BT;Rabbit in the Moon;Tori Amos', and if I'm in a hurry looking for BT stuff that isn't Tori Amos collaboration then I don't need to see Tori Amos listed at all unless by her own album(s) via the Album Artist field. 

[BigJ]

Similar to my primary example in the OP, I'm sometimes looking for individual Tracks and want a View first Grouped by Genre, then within each Genre have it show all "artists" like I want in the OP, and when drilling down into a given "artist" have it not Group by Album but show a List of all Tracks (that the "artist" is included in the Artist field of the Track) that are Sorted by Album/Year (but showing all tracks/albums together in one List).

These seem rather straight forward, but I'm stuck.

[6233638]

I could be mistaken, but I don't believe that this is currently possible, as views filter down.
 
So if you have a view which is "Artist → Album" since you are filtering by artist first, any albums listed can only display tracks containing that artist name.
 
There is an "expand to full albums" option, but it doesn't really apply to category views since the top-level artist filtering takes priority. I'm not sure if that's something which could be changed.

[BigJ]

Thanks for your help.

...if you have a view which is "Artist → Album" since you are filtering by artist first, any albums listed can only display tracks containing that artist name...

If I am understanding you correctly: as I drill down from Artist (as it stands) or "artist" (as I want them to work) to an Album under the given artist, and they were only on Tracks 2 and 4 of 10 it won't/can't show me any Tracks from that Album (in this View and under this Artist / Album) other than Tracks 2 and 4. Correct? That I can live with, I guess, though it seems somewhat trivial if I were querying a big database directly, as you'd already have the albumID (or whatever convention MC uses) and can just query (the overall database, not the limited dataset in question) for the whole Album before displaying it, by hopping from querying the View's dataset to the whole database.  Either way, being able to link/jump/toggle to seeing the whole Album from that specific-artist-centric view would be immensely helpful in navigating large and interconnected collections. Having to crawl back out or go all the way over to another View to see a whole Album (from there) wastes lots of time/adds many steps.

To be clear:

If I start out in an Artist/Album centric View, drill into a specific Album, which in this case the Artist in question is only on Track 1, but I then decide to queue up that whole Album and all its Tracks (no matter which Artist is on which Track), I'd have to exit that View and pick another that somehow shows me a whole Album, all before I can play it or add it to Playing Now queue or another playlist?  Is this correct?

But more importantly, to me, much more, is how to sort out the artists like I've described in the OP.  Any ideas?

[6233638]

If I am understanding you correctly: as I drill down from Artist (as it stands) or "artist" (as I want them to work) to an Album under the given artist, and they were only on Tracks 2 and 4 of 10 it won't/can't show me any Tracks from that Album (in this View and under this Artist / Album) other than Tracks 2 and 4. Correct?

Yes, that seems to be how things work.

That I can live with, I guess, though it seems somewhat trivial if I were querying a big database directly, as you'd already have the albumID (or whatever convention MC uses) and can just query (the overall database, not the limited dataset in question) for the whole Album before displaying it, by hopping from querying the View's dataset to the whole database.  Either way, being able to link/jump/toggle to seeing the whole Album from that specific-artist-centric view would be immensely helpful in navigating large and interconnected collections. Having to crawl back out or go all the way over to another View to see a whole Album (from there) wastes lots of time/adds many steps.

I agree that it should not be difficult. Maybe post a request in the MC20 forum?

If I start out in an Artist/Album centric View, drill into a specific Album, which in this case the Artist in question is only on Track 1, but I then decide to queue up that whole Album and all its Tracks (no matter which Artist is on which Track), I'd have to exit that View and pick another that somehow shows me a whole Album, all before I can play it or add it to Playing Now queue or another playlist?  Is this correct?

There is an "Add Album" playback option in MC20 which would add the whole thing to Playing Now.
It's not ideal, as it would not list the full album prior to playback, but it would let you at least play the whole thing.

But more importantly, to me, much more, is how to sort out the artists like I've described in the OP.  Any ideas?

I suppose it depends how you have things tagged.
 
With your example of "Isobel Campbel & Mark Lanegan"
I would have tagged the album as:

Code: [Select]

Artist:         Isobel Campbel; Mark Lanegan
Album Artist:   Isobel Campbel & Mark Lanegan
Which I think would solve that issue?

[Dawgincontrol]

I may have lost you in the translation, but I have made a view I call "Individual Artists" where I list each member of a band or artists involved in a track/file which will show me every song/file they contributed to.

To do this I made a new library view and listed them all separated by the semi-colon.  It should work off only the artists if you want by expression.  It was easier to do it with the new view for me.

Mr. C gave me the expression in this post:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89899.msg617559#msg617559

[6233638]

It would work if all artists were listed on all tracks, but I don't think that would solve this problem.