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[magnust]

I noted Album Artist is no more available as an option in the search suggestions anymore  

I use this frequently, I often want to get a result uncluttered from lots of compilation albums.


How do I do this now?

[mwillems]

I noted Album Artist is no more available as an option in the search suggestions anymore  

I use this frequently, I often want to get a result uncluttered from lots of compilation albums.


How do I do this now?

Yeah, it's not one of the suggestions anymore (I used it for the same reasons you did).  One way to force it is to use [album artist]=XXXXXXX.  It's more typing, but it will give you the search you want.

[Matt]

We're still thinking on this one.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that I've seen many libraries where every song has 'Album Artist' set to the same value as 'Artist'.  I think iTunes and Amazon may tag this way.

This leads to bad search suggestions.  If you type 'nat', you'll see 'Natalie Merchant (Artist)' and 'Natalie Merchant (Album Artist)' at the top, and maybe 'Nat King Cole (Artist)' and 'Nat King Cole (Album Artist)' second.  In my opinion, it would be nicer to see four different suggestions.

[mwillems]

We're still thinking on this one.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that I've seen many libraries where every song has 'Album Artist' set to the same value as 'Artist'.  I think iTunes and Amazon may tag this way.

This leads to bad search suggestions.  If you type 'nat', you'll see 'Natalie Merchant (Artist)' and 'Natalie Merchant (Album Artist)' at the top, and maybe 'Nat King Cole (Artist)' and 'Nat King Cole (Album Artist)' second.  In my opinion, it would be nicer to see four different suggestions.

In my library album artist and artist are the same except for compilation albums, collaborations, and classical music.  For a majority of my searches the loss of album artist is probably irrelevant, but I have a lot of compilations.  For example, if I want to find a Buddy Holly album, and search Buddy Holly (Artist) I get dozens of results scattered across various compilations that fill up a few screens.  If I search Buddy Holly (Album Artist), I just get the two albums I have.  Actually, given how frequently Nat King Cole winds up on compilations, I think he's a good example of where artist and album artist would produce different results in a lot of libraries.  

I'm not sure whether it would be possible to differentiate the two use cases in a meaningful way.  I understand that removing album artist as a suggestion provides a better search experience for some folks, I'd probably rather keep it in personally, but the field limited search string isn't onerous, so I'd say it's a pretty soft preference on my side.  

As to why they're usually the same, Amazon definitely tags album artist and artist the same in most cases, but I think the bigger driver is that the databases that Windows Media Player and Itunes pull from for metadata are usually tagged that way.  Before I discovered MC, I ripped thousands of CDs with WMP (sigh) and the album artist and artist were the same for single-artist albums 95% of the time.  I think part of why that happens is that historically some of the smaller, less customizable MP3 players look only at the artist tag and some look only at the album artist tag (I've had some that did either one and could not be configured to use the other one).  For example, I had (several years ago now) a Sansa player that, with default firmware, would use album artist for it's "artist" view and there was no way to get at the actual "artist" information, but the rockbox firmware for the same device would only allow sorting by artist and not by album artist.  So if the tags had different values, I'd get locked into different sorting results for the same files depending on which firmware I was using.

[6233638]

We're still thinking on this one.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that I've seen many libraries where every song has 'Album Artist' set to the same value as 'Artist'.  I think iTunes and Amazon may tag this way.

This leads to bad search suggestions.  If you type 'nat', you'll see 'Natalie Merchant (Artist)' and 'Natalie Merchant (Album Artist)' at the top, and maybe 'Nat King Cole (Artist)' and 'Nat King Cole (Album Artist)' second.  In my opinion, it would be nicer to see four different suggestions.

I assume the answer is yes, but is it slower to use [Album Artist (auto)] in a search?
 
All of my tracks have the Artist field filled out of course, and I would say that most also have Album Artist filled out - though recently I've been leaving it alone if Album Artist (Auto) gets it right.

In probably 90% of cases Album Artist matches Artist.
However on compilations, Album Artist is going to be (Various Artists) in most cases, or whoever created the compilation. (e.g. "Ministry of Sound")
Remixes or collaborations will have the same Album Artist as the rest of the album, but Artist will have all artists that worked on that track.
 
An example of the latter might be "Under Pressure" which is a collaboration between Queen and David Bowie. The album artist is Queen, but the artist field is Queen; David Bowie.
I only want that showing up if I search for Queen, not when I search for David Bowie.
I don't want any Queen tracks that show up on compilation albums when I search for Queen either, only albums by Queen.

And if I wanted to include tracks where David Bowie was a collaborator, or on a compilation album, rather than albums by David Bowie then I would do a specific Artist search, rather than Album Artist.

[Matt]

I assume the answer is yes, but is it slower to use [Album Artist (auto)] in a search?

Performance is a secondary concern.  The quality of the suggestions is the top priority.

I considered using only 'Album Artist (auto)'.  The only problem is this would make it difficult, with a suggestion, to find all your Buddy Holly songs (to use mwillems's example).

If you typed 'buddy holly' that search would show all the songs.  But if you accepted the first suggestion 'Buddy Holly (album artist (auto))' it would only show his full albums.

Maybe that's a good compromise?  I'm not sure.

[6233638]

If that's always the top result and I can just hit tab to display those results, that could work.
 
Being able to disable certain fields from search as discussed in the other topic would also be helpful, then someone could disable Artist if they wanted.

[Matt]

Is it really a concern to see all the tracks by Buddy Holly when you search for him?

This seems better than missing a bunch of his stuff because it happened to be on a mix album.

From that perspective, suggesting only Artist and not Album Artist is reasonable.

[6233638]

With the very rare exception of when I use Play Doctor (though I haven't for a while since rating my albums and finding out you can't adjust the scale) I only play albums - I don't play tracks.

[mwillems]

Is it really a concern to see all the tracks by Buddy Holly when you search for him?

This seems better than missing a bunch of his stuff because it happened to be on a mix album.

From that perspective, suggesting only Artist and not Album Artist is reasonable.

[My remarks below edited for clarity]

The concern is that when I'm looking for the albums, I have to sift through a few screens of stuff unless I search for album artist.  To be clear, often, I really do want to see all his songs when I search for him, and I think including everything is the correct default behavior (i.e. if I type in buddy holly and hit enter, I would expect to see everything).  Sometimes, though, when I'm looking for an album by an artist that I know has tons of compilation activity, I'd choose the (album artist) auto suggestion because it made it faster to find the albums.  I generally also play albums, not tracks, but sometimes I am looking for a specific track to play for friends.

I'm not sure album artist should displace artist as the default first suggestion. Like I said above, I can still get the behavior I need, my preference would have been to keep both as suggestions, but it's a soft preference.  If for no other reason, seeing both helps make the difference clear to users as it can be a kind of confusing issue when migrating to JRiver (not all other players do a good job of distinguishing these tags in their default UI, so it seems to confuse folks first arriving, e.g. these kinds of inquiries http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81143.0, http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82572.0, http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=71334.0, http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78259.0).  JRiver's default views handle album artist and artist a little differently than WMP and iTunes, and that's a good thing in my opinion, but the two different search options help make it clearer what's going on (at least they did to me when I migrated over).

[6233638]

I generally also play albums, not tracks, but sometimes I am looking for a specific track to play for friends.

Wouldn't you be searching for a track name then?

I'm not sure album artist should displace artist as the default first suggestion.

But aren't the results that display when you type Buddy Holly the ones for "Artist"? The first item on the suggestion list is the second set of results.

[mwillems]

Wouldn't you be searching for a track name then?

Not if I don't remember the name, but do remember the artist, which unfortunately happens more than I'd like to admit  

But aren't the results that display when you type Buddy Holly the ones for "Artist"? The first item on the suggestion list is the second set of results.

No, although they are inclusive of the "Artist" results.  The results that display when I type Buddy Holly and hit enter include every song that includes any reference to Buddy Holly in it's metadata, to include Weezer's "Buddy Holly," and all the songs by other artists on a Buddy Holly cover/tribute album.  In my opinion this is the ideal default behavior because it's most similar to the search behavior I'm accustomed to in other settings (windows search, google, etc.), it would be weird to just type in "Buddy Holly" and not get the Weezer song (if you see what I mean)

[6233638]

I suppose you're right - I think we might be stuck with Artist and Album Artist (auto) as the first two results to be able to properly filter them.

[MrC]

I have a lot of soundtracks, and many have a primary artist with a couple of extra tracks by other artists.  So I set the Album Artist to the principal artist.  Now when I select the auto-suggested Artist, the albums returned are incomplete.  This just seems wrong and not very useful.  I really don't think I'd be able to commit to memory which albums are entirely by some Artist and which have been tagged via Album Artist.

[Matt]

For me, the question is really: will picking Artist be exactly the same as picking Album Artist?  If so, it should be one suggestion instead of two.

If they're truly different, than it's fine to list them separately.

I'm going to look at if the system could reasonably calculate the result set of top recommendations to filter out duplicate-like entries.

[6233638]

Artist includes a lot of results I don't want to see, that Album Artist excludes.
It seems that other people feel the opposite way about the two.

[mwillems]

For me, the question is really: will picking Artist be exactly the same as picking Album Artist?  If so, it should be one suggestion instead of two.

If they're truly different, than it's fine to list them separately.

I'm going to look at if the system could reasonably calculate the result set of top recommendations to filter out duplicate-like entries.

That sounds like the best of all worlds.  I think they're different enough in certain circumstances that it makes sense to have them both sometimes, but there are a lot of cases where they're the same.  If you can make the recommendations "smarter" (i.e. distinguish the cases where they'd produce identical results from the cases where they'd produce distinct results), that'd be a home run from my perspective. 

Obviously that may not be possible (or may defeat the underlying effort to speed up the search function), but I appreciate you trying to accommodate those of who use both searches

[csimon]

At the risk of stating the obvious, Artist contains the track artist, Album Artist contains the album artist. They may be different.

Those people who care enough about the difference to have tagged their media properly will understand what the difference is and what they need to specify in searching, and now there is a lack of functionality with one being removed.

[Matt]

Next build:
Changed: Search suggestions show album artist, but only when the results differ from the artist alone (the same treatment is also applied to composer and publisher).

In my opinion, this is the best of both worlds.  The impact on performance is negligible.

[mwillems]

Next build:
Changed: Search suggestions show album artist, but only when the results differ from the artist alone (the same treatment is also applied to composer and publisher).

In my opinion, this is the best of both worlds.  The impact on performance is negligible.

Sweet!  I agree, it's the best of both worlds.

[MrC]

Next build:
Changed: Search suggestions show album artist, but only when the results differ from the artist alone (the same treatment is also applied to composer and publisher).

In my opinion, this is the best of both worlds.  The impact on performance is negligible.

Excellent, thanks.  You've been re-promoted to Hero status.

[magnust]

Excellent, thanks.  You've been re-promoted to Hero status.

+1 

[magnust]

No chance of "search history" added in the drop down now when you are working on the search box? 

[6233638]

There are a number of changes I'd like to see made to the search UI, but I think that belongs in another topic.
 
This change seems to be working well though.