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[6233638]

2. Changed: When all tracks from an album have multiple artists but all the tracks have the same list the first artist will be used for Album Artist (auto) instead of (Multiple Artists).

Please consider the changes discussed here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89956.msg618041#msg618041
I'll try to sum things up:

So I suppose there are four conditions to consider:
 

• When all tracks are by the same single Artist, that should be the Album Artist.
• When all tracks contain the same Primary Artist, but have a mixture of secondary artists, the Primary Artist should be used.
• When all tracks contain the same string of multiple artists, the entire string should be considered the Album Artist, rather than using the Primary Artist, or (Multiple Artists)
• When different tracks have entirely different artists (i.e. lacking a "primary artist") they should be considered a (Multiple Artists) album.

The changes made in build 145/146 are regressions from the previous behavior.

For an album where the artist values on all tracks are a list, such as: “Al Di Meola; John McLaughlin; Paco de Lucía”, Album Artist (auto) results in:

Build <145: Al Di Meola
Build 145: (Multiple Artists)
Build 146: Al Di Meola

 
None of these are ideal.
(Multiple Artists) is better than simply listing it under the first artist name, since those three artists are listed on every track.
However it would ideally use the full list, and format it nicely to display “Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía”


For an album with tags such as this:

Code: (Random Access Memories) [Select]

Track # Name Artist
1 Give Life Back to Music Daft Punk
2 The Game of Love Daft Punk
3 Giorgio by Moroder Daft Punk
4 Within Daft Punk
5 Instant Crush Daft Punk; Julian Casablancas
6 Lose Yourself to Dance Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
7 Touch Daft Punk; Paul Williams
8 Get Lucky Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
9 Beyond Daft Punk
10 Motherboard Daft Punk
11 Fragments of Time Daft Punk; Todd Edwards
12 Doinʼ It Right Daft Punk; Panda Bear
13 Contact Daft Punk

Album Artist (auto) results in:

Build <145: Daft Punk
Build 145: (Multiple Artists)
Build 146: (Multiple Artists)

 
This is a scenario where the Album Artist should be taking the primary artist, and Daft Punk is the expected behavior, since they are listed on every track.
(Multiple Artists) should only be used when there is not a common artist for every track on an album.
 
 
One final thing which would be very nice, though I understand if it's not possible, would be if Media Center could find a common list of artists for an album. For example:

Code: (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack) [Select]

Track # Name Artist
1 Immigrant Song Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross; Karen O
2 She Reminds Me Of You Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
3 People Lie All The Time Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
4 Pinned And Mounted Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
5 Perihelion Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
6 What If We Could? Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
7 With The Flies Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
8 Hidden In Snow Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
9 A Thousand Details Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
10 One Particular Moment Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
11 I Canʼt Take It Anymore Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
12 How Brittle The Bones Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
13 Please Take Your Hand Away Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
14 Cut Into Pieces Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
15 The Splinter Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
16 An Itch Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
17 Hypomania Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
18 Under The Midnight Sun Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
19 Aphelion Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
20 Youʼre Here Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
21 The Same As The Others Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
22 A Pause For Reflection Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
23 While Waiting Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
24 The Seconds Drag Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
25 Later Into The Night Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
26 Parallel Timeline With Alternate Outcome Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
27 Another Way Of Caring Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
28 A Viable Construct Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
29 Revealed In The Thaw Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
30 Millennia Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
31 We Could Wait Forever Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
32 Oraculum Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
33 Great Bird Of Prey Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
34 The Heretics Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
35 A Pair Of Doves Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
36 Infiltrator Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
37 The Sound Of Forgetting Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
38 Of Secrets Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
39 Is Your Love Strong Enough? Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross; How to Destroy Angels
Every track on this album has “Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross” in the artist field, but tracks 1 & 39 have additional artists listed.
Rather than picking the first common artist in the listing (Trent Reznor) or considering it to be a (Multiple Artists) album, it would be amazing if Album Artist (auto) displayed “Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross” since they are common across all tracks - combining scenarios 2 & 3 from the list at the top.

[mojave]

For an album with tags such as this:

Code: (Random Access Memories) [Select]

Track # Name Artist
1 Give Life Back to Music Daft Punk
2 The Game of Love Daft Punk
3 Giorgio by Moroder Daft Punk
4 Within Daft Punk
5 Instant Crush Daft Punk; Julian Casablancas
6 Lose Yourself to Dance Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
7 Touch Daft Punk; Paul Williams
8 Get Lucky Daft Punk; Pharrell Williams
9 Beyond Daft Punk
10 Motherboard Daft Punk
11 Fragments of Time Daft Punk; Todd Edwards
12 Doinʼ It Right Daft Punk; Panda Bear
13 Contact Daft Punk

Album Artist (auto) results in:

Build <145: Daft Punk
Build 145: (Multiple Artists)
Build 146: (Multiple Artists)

 
This is a scenario where the Album Artist should be taking the primary artist, and Daft Punk is the expected behavior, since they are listed on every track.
(Multiple Artists) should only be used when there is not a common artist for every track on an album.
 

I agree. I have many albums with a guest artist on a song or two, but the album artist should still be the primary artist. Another example is Chris Botti in Boston. He has a different guest performer for each song, but "Chris Botti" should be the album artist, IMO.

[kstuart]

I agree that 6's suggestions are better than the previous system or the current system.  His suggestion amounts to the weird thing of having the computer do things for the human, when you can express those things as an algorithm.   (At least it's weird in the current era of "computers are things that allow me to talk with my friends".)

===

The paradigm of allowing a list for [Artist], but not for [Album Artist], is the iPod paradigm, where you are only interested in one track from an album, so you buy individual tracks for 99 cents, and then "albums" are irrelevant.

However, it is exactly the person who still cares about "albums" who wants MC19 instead of iTunes, so doing everything in the "tracks for iPod" paradigm is mysterious to me.

The point of this is that for playing music by album, you select your choice by Album Artist.  So, when that Album Artist is a collaboration between two artists, working in an equal collaboration:

John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana

then you also want this album to appear under each individual person as well.   So, if I look through a list of Album Artists, and I say "Hmm, I haven't listened to John McLaughlin in a long while" then I want the collaboration to also appear in the "John McLaughlin" list - otherwise I never remember it exists.

[6233638]

That's something I had not even considered.
If MC is able to determine which artists are listed on every track in an album rather than just the "primary artist", there could also be an option—and it would have to be an option—to also list these collaborations under the individual artist names.
 
This would prevent something like a "top 40" compilation appearing as single-track items under 40 different artist names, but would make collaborative albums easier to discover when browsing.
It would add some redundancy, but I don't know it's such a bad thing in this case, for people who browse their library visually rather than using search.

[Gatherum]

Honestly, the (Multiple Artists) solution is really the best solution in this case for both albums with more than one artist of equal precedence, or for multiple-artist compilations, because there are simply too many deviations to consider. There are albums out there, such as Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit or The Serpent and the Sphere, that feature one or two tracks that the primary album artist had no part in whatsoever. In the case of the former, the first and last tracks are performed entirely by Jackie Perez Gratz of Grayceon. In the case of the latter, tracks 2, 6, and 9 are performed by Nathanaël Larochette. However, both are, indisputably, Agalloch albums. It is simply a better idea to make use of the overriding features of the [Album Artist] field, rather than to rely on an automated system.

The point of this is that for playing music by album, you select your choice by Album Artist.  So, when that Album Artist is a collaboration between two artists, working in an equal collaboration:

John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana

then you also want this album to appear under each individual person as well.   So, if I look through a list of Album Artists, and I say "Hmm, I haven't listened to John McLaughlin in a long while" then I want the collaboration to also appear in the "John McLaughlin" list - otherwise I never remember it exists.

Easiest way to accomplish this is to set the list style to thumbnails, sort by [Artist] rather than [Album Artist (auto)], and then include [Name] in the thumbnail text. However, this does cause albums, such as the two mentioned above, to no longer be contiguous within a single primary artist.

[rudyrednose]

Album Artist (auto) : I agree with kstuart (and by inference with 6233638).  And to cover Gatherum's objection, if no single artist appears on all the tracks, revert to (Multiple Artists).
However, as this thread will be superseded by the next version's thread, I think Matt should create a thread on the subject with kstuart proposal as a strawman.

I am aware of the thread http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89887.msg617432#msg617432 but this needs better visibility.

Cheers !

[6233638]

Honestly, the (Multiple Artists) solution is really the best solution in this case for both albums with more than one artist of equal precedence, or for multiple-artist compilations, because there are simply too many deviations to consider. There are albums out there, such as Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit or The Serpent and the Sphere, that feature one or two tracks that the primary album artist had no part in whatsoever. In the case of the former, the first and last tracks are performed entirely by Jackie Perez Gratz of Grayceon. In the case of the latter, tracks 2, 6, and 9 are performed by Nathanaël Larochette. However, both are, indisputably, Agalloch albums. It is simply a better idea to make use of the overriding features of the [Album Artist] field, rather than to rely on an automated system.

I'm not suggesting that [Album Artist] be removed, just that [Album Artist (auto)] be improved so that it is less necessary for manual intervention.
 
From what you describe, those albums would still be listed as (Multiple Artists) as there would not be a "primary artist" that is listed on every track.
 
You could use a rule that includes artists which are on say 80% or more of an album's track listing rather than being on every track, when there isn't an artist that appears on all of them, but I think that would cause more problems than it solves.
 
For situations like that, manually overriding the automatic value via [Album Artist] would be necessary, but I think the rules listed above handle most situations, and improve upon the current behavior.
 

Easiest way to accomplish this is to set the list style to thumbnails, sort by [Artist] rather than [Album Artist (auto)], and then include [Name] in the thumbnail text. However, this does cause albums, such as the two mentioned above, to no longer be contiguous within a single primary artist.

Using [Artist] instead of [Album Artist (auto)] in a view means that a "top 40" compilation will be listed as 40 different 1-track albums under each artist's name.
That's why [Album Artist (auto)] exists to begin with.
 
However, if [Album Artist (auto)] is improved so that it can determine that an album is a collaborative work (i.e. two or more artists listed on every single track) rather than a compilation (different artists on each track) the option to list it under the individual artist names in addition to the "group" might be nice.

[Matt]

Just bumping this again. I have a ton of albums listed under (Multiple Artists) now, which should be listed under the name of the primary artist instead.

They'll only be listed under (Multiple Artists) if the artist field varies.  If they all have the same exact list the first will be used.

[6233638]

They'll only be listed under (Multiple Artists) if the artist field varies.  If they all have the same exact list the first will be used.

Yes, this behavior is broken.

Previously if the Artist contained multiple values, but there was one "main" artist present on every track, Media Center used to list the album under that name instead of listing it under (Multiple Artists)
 
Now everything gets treated as if it's a compilation album.
 
 
Rather than expanding this function to treat collaborations differently from compilations, everything just gets treated like it's a compilation now and put into the (Multiple Artists) category.
 
This is something where Media Center should be doing all the work, instead of requiring manual tagging.
Manually inputting an Album Artist value should only be required in rare circumstances - not for every album that has more than one artist on it.

[Matt]

Could you send me a library backup that shows the issue along with instructions on how to see the issue?  I'm matt at jriver dot com.