Compilation Album Display

[tedfroop 34]

Any way to change the display so it shows one compilation instead of the same Album cover for each Artist?

My library is organized by Artist folders not by Album.  Seems to work fine except:

[Happy2Play 9780]

For these types of compilation albums if you want all tracks to show up as a single entity you want to make sure both the "album" and "album artist" fields are the same for all tracks. Otherwise the album will be split up for the various artists listed.

[tedfroop 34]

Oh goody, they are all Flac tags.  Well, at least DBPoweramp adds the ability to right click and edit the tags.

 

Any way to add a sort option to exclude Album Artist from sort?  I also use LMS (Logitech Media Server) for my Squeezebox and it offers the option as the two seldom match on compilations.

[Luke 42078]

Hi, what would we sort on then?

[tedfroop 34]

I generally use my Squeezbox for music listening and use Logitech Media Server to play music.  All my music is ripped and tagged FLAC.

Their sort system is set up so you can list by Album Artist, Artist, Composer, Album, Compilations, Genre, Year, etc.  Each option sorts by the single tag option selected.  The reason is - compilations. 

Problems are:

- Generally speaking compilations do not have the Album Artist tag set as it would be a list of artists rather than a single artist. Where it is set as the track artist the album shows each track as an album in Emby.

-Setting the Album artist to match the Album name as @Happy2Play suggests, All the tracks show as one album but  you end up with all your compilation album names showing up as Album Artists.

- The Compilation tag isn't universal as it is not part of the MP3 tag structure, but could be used when available (Vorbis/FLAC tags) to group compilation songs into a single album.

It would be nice if the Album sort was based solely on the Album tag for these reasons. 

 

Edited December 19, 2022 by tedfroop

[Happy2Play 9780]

@tedfroop No you do not make album artist name the same as album.  All tracks have to have the same Album name and same Album Artists name.  I use Various Artist for AA.  

You can't just group by album name, what are we supposed to do with same named albums like "Greatest Hits"?  I know that would merge multiple artists album in my collection.

[tedfroop 34]

But Emby wouldn't group it as one album until there was an Album Artist.  Because of previous issues NONE of my compilations have an Album Artist tag.

All album titles match as you can see in this screenshot that shows several compilations in LMS.

[Luke 42078]

What previous issues? Why not just add the album artist tags back?

[Happy2Play 9780]

12 hours ago, tedfroop said:

All album titles match as you can see in this screenshot that shows several compilations in LMS.

Can only guess LMS is using PATH logic also.  Emby removed PATH from the equation (embedded tag driven) to allow any structure, it needs two points to group an Album together as Album name will not cut it when more than one album has the same name as it would group dozens of "Greatest Hits" into one album.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Happy2Play

[tedfroop 34]

Very likely that PATH is involved in some way. My library is very structured FLAC with embedded tags, so that makes perfect sense.

Various artists sounds like a solution and I will check it out and see how it works for me. Sorry I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this right now.  I have PTSD and it comes with a side helping of Executive Dysfunction and memory issues.  It's sort of like a ll the logic gets sucked out of your head.  When it comes to tagging a lot of tracks I need to figure it out and them paper and pen my way through modifying everything or I can really make a mess.  It sucks to be able to forget what you are doing while you are doing it......

@Luke, my memory is bad at times but I do remember due to some issues with how album artist is used it was making a mess of my LMS library so I just made it a thing to remove album artist on compilations, and modify the name of greatest hits to include the Artist/Band name.  To this point it has worked.....

Edited December 20, 2022 by tedfroop

[Luke 42078]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[tedfroop 34]

Got it.  Wanted to do some checking and went with Various Artists suggestion.

Sorry to be a bit of a PITA but just want it ALL to work.  Plus I need to make changes to the master backup.....

 

Thanks for your time @Happy2Play and @Luke