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[JazzDoc]

I decided to rip my box set of Beatles CDs today. I created a new artist 'The Beatles (Stereo Box Set)'. When I select this artist, the albums in the box set order alphabetically according to album name ('Abbey Road' appears first). Is there a way that I can order them by date in order that 'Please Please Me' appears first and then the set is listed chronologically by album release date?

Thanks

[MrC]

You should set the Artist to The Beatles, the Album to The Beatles (Stereo Box Set), set Disc # appropriately! and Date of each album to the original album Year (or full date).

[6233638]

You should set the Artist to The Beatles, the Album to The Beatles (Stereo Box Set), set Disc # appropriately! and Date of each album to the original album Year (or full date).

I don't know that I agree with this.

Media Center doesn't make it easy to use "proper" tagging for collections like this, or keeping multiple versions of the same album without a lot of work on custom views/fields (and even then it's still not quite right) so this might be the easiest solution in the interim.
What you suggest will just list a single "The Beatles (Stereo Box Set)" with 16 discs and hundreds(?) of tracks.
 
As far as I am concerned, the name of the Album should be the album name alone.
I would then use something like "2009 Stereo Box Set" (or just "Stereo Box Set") as the Description for these albums.
 
If you don't want to set up complex custom views though, it would be a lot easier to simply name the album "Abbey Road (Stereo Box Set)" etc. rather than using the description field, assuming you have multiple versions of the same album.

And due to the way that things are sorted, I use the original release date for an album in the date field, and a custom field for the date of this release. (I actually feel like it should be the other way around, but that makes sorting a pain)
 
 
You may have to edit your view to change "[Album]" to "[Year - Album]" for them to be listed in the correct order though.

[MrC]

Yeah, I can see why.  Good catch.

It also all depends on a) how the box set is packaged - is it N original album discs, or is it a multi-disc package with dozens of individual tracks from all the albums (like this)?  I didn't look-up which it was, and just foolishly assumed the latter.  If it is the former, then yes, by all means, label the Album with the original album name, and supplement with some other field.

There's usually no getting around some view customization for things like this though.

[arin]

I agree with 6233638...

That's why, following MrC advice on the way to read iTunes tags (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86779.0), I created a custom field to be populated by the SortAlbum tag and now I can see the Beatles Box albums in the correct chronological order even if the date is 2009 for all of them.