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[Matt]

When you have several albums with the same name, the ideal behavior is a bit unclear.

Imagine a library with 10 albums named 'Greatest Hits'.

If you show a pane 'Album', you will see a single Greatest Hits entry with all 10 albums under it.  This seems reasonable, because what good is it to show the text "Greatest Hits" ten times in a row with no indication about which is which?

If you show a category thumbnail view, each album will be its own thumbnail.  That's because this case gets special handling and groups by the album key (basically Artist - Album).  This also seems logical since the thumbnails will provide the information you need to distinguish them.

Gizmo, JRemote, DLNA, etc. work like a pane (the first type).  So a list of albums on a DLNA device will show a single 'Greatest Hits' entry.  We don't know if the DLNA device will try to show images or other information that might help distinguish one 'Greatest Hits' from another 'Greatest Hits'.  Either style we pick seems wrong for different reasons.

So what should we do?  One suggestion here was to switch to something like 'Greatest Hits (Bob Dylan)' when we start having collisions.  This sounded tricky to support internally, so would prefer an easier solution.

Thanks for any advice.

[MrC]

Can you have an Option that a user can toggle which automatically switches the view config from the Album category to an Album (by Artist) category?

[6233638]

I would consider putting the band name first, as that's how most of these albums are presented. It also means that if the name is truncated, you at least have an idea of which greatest hits album it is.
On the other-hand, Greatest Hits (Artist) does put everything into a nice list.

Does it need to be more complex than if(isequal([Album],Greatest Hits,1),[Artist]/ [Album],[Album])?

[MrC]

Does it need to be more complex than if(isequal([Album],Greatest Hits,1),[Artist]/ [Album],[Album])?

Yes, because there are MANY titles that are the same.

The check needs to test for AlbumKey() uniqueness.

[6233638]

Yes, because there are MANY titles that are the same.
The check needs to test for AlbumKey() uniqueness.

You're right - I just came back in here to change that, and you had beaten me to it.

[Magic_Randy]

... something like 'Greatest Hits (Bob Dylan)' when we start having collisions...

Others can comment on it from a technical POV, but this sounds right to me.

For general names like Greatest Hits I've been building the Album Artist into the name of the album. I don't like that but it resolves the issue. Applying your suggestion solves the problem and I would go back and fix my album names accordingly.

[MrC]

As I was pigging out at lunch, it occurred to me that perhaps the right approach would be to have the stock Artist \ Album views use at the album level:

if GroupCount(album) > 1,
   [Album]\[Artist]&datatype=[list]
else
   [Album]

This provides the correct, short album name, and also an additional drill down only when necessary.

[Matt]

As I was pigging out at lunch, it occurred to me that perhaps the right approach would be to have the stock Artist \ Album views use at the album level:

if GroupCount(album) > 1,
   [Album]\[Artist]&datatype=[list]
else
   [Album]

This provides the correct, short album name, and also an additional drill down only when necessary.

This is tough.  GroupCount(...) can't be used while grouping, because the group doesn't exist until grouping finishes.

So we're stuck doing two special passes, which isn't good for performance or code complexity.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Does MC give each album a unique identifier?

[Matt]

Does MC give each album a unique identifier?

Sort of.  We can easily group into actual albums, like the thumbnail method I describe above.

Internally we don't have a field like 'Album Id' that's immutable, but instead do the grouping at run-time.  However, this is mostly an implementation detail and doesn't influence the functionality that the user sees.

So I think the question is basically: what would be the best behavior? 

Once we know that, we'll figure out if / how to do it.

[jgreen]

When the topic of conversation among certain Old Drunkards I Know turns to "Greatest Albums Ever", "Greatest Hits" albums are disqualified.  Therefore, "Greatest Hits (Bob Dylan)" would be my choice (or something similar).

But what about "Live" albums?  Or "Greatest Hits" albums that aren't called "Greatest Hits"?  This has been brought up among the Drunkards and they still don't count (same goes for the Drunkards, not even when they're allowed to use their fingers).

[csimon]

I never use the Album views because I tend to visualise my collection as Artists first. I would never think of trying to find an album by its title, I don't remember them, I would always search for the Artist first. So to that end, my views always have an Artist level first which then drills down into Album. Problem solved!

However, for those who do search by Album, I wonder if this could be solved with the expression language, i.e. allow the user to group/sort by, say, a key of Album+Artist but display Album title only. They could elect to choose to display "Album (Artist)" if they want, but the crux of the matter is to allow a different display string from the string that is used to group by. I don't *think* this facility exists at the moment? Although there is in various places a way to define the string that is displayed on any one particular item.

This approach would help to rationalise/fix a number of other logistical problems too, e.g. sorting albums by a grouping that is something other than either an artist or an album artist. In other words, a sort artist.  (My usual example is to group all Adam Ant albums by "Ant, Adam" regardless of whether it's an Adam Ant album or an Adam and the Ants album. Also, I have a friend who has been in several bands - I like to sort his albums by his own name rather than the individual bands' names) .

I might have missed some built-in functionality here but the way I dealt with this was to define my own custom field called Sort Artist and group albums by an expression of Sort Artist if it exists otherwise Album Artist, the only issue is that I then get artists displayed as "Surname, Forename", i.e. the way they're being sorted, rather then "Forename Surname".

Just an idea!

[Vincent Kars]

Sometimes I like everything to be listed as 1 album, sometimes I don’t so I post fix the album with the performer.
I do think it disastrous if JRiver would break this.

[csimon]

BTW I think the same issue probably occurs with different "albums" of the same name by the same artist, e.g. an album and a single named the same.  Again, I don't have the problem in MC as I have another level between Artist and Album which defines the "medium", i.e. Album, CD Single, 7" Single, 12" Single, Live Albums, Compilation Albums. But I do notice the problem when exporting to iTunes or an Android device that has a fixed browsing structure - I get all the tracks of both the album Ray of Light by Madonna and the single Ray of Light lumped together.  In this case, a key of Album + Artist wouldn't help. A unique Album ID would be the only way to cater for all situations or, as I suggested, allowing the user to define their own grouping mechanism without affecting the text that is displayed.

On that line, how about a global setting that is user-defined to define how you want to identify a unique album, which various built-in views could then use? By default, it could be Album + Artist I guess but the user is free to add any other categories/tags to the key as they feel necessary.

[AndrewFG]

IMHO it is precisely the purpose of the AlbumArtist tag to group / separate tracks sharing the same Album tag value.

Tracks sharing a common Album tag value and also sharing a common AlbumArtist tag value, should be grouped together. And tracks sharing a common Album tag value but not sharing a common AlbumArtist tag value should be separated.

So (correct me if I am wrong) your question is how best to display such albums / tracks in a list. I propose the following:

a) If you are displaying a list with a thumbnail column, and the tracks have AlbumArt/CoverArt tags, use the thumbnails to differentiate co-named albums.
b) If you are displaying a list with a thumbnails column, and the tracks do not have AlbumArt/CoverArt tags, use method c) below.
c) If you are displaying a list without thumbnails, then display album title as a pseudo title "Album [AlbumArtist]"

Note that I propose the "Album [AlbumArtist]" pseudo title because anything fixed like "Album by AlbumArtist" would suffer from language locale issues. And therefor perhaps an even better solution is to have a user setting where you can customize the format string for the pseudo title e.g. "%a [%aa]". Indeed in this case, the format string can be customized to include any other available tags that the user might choose to suit their own personal tastes.