[mythtv-users] mythmusic and "various artists" albums

[Curtis Stanford]

On Nov 29, 2004, at 9:04 PM, myth at umich2.com wrote:

> Curtis Stanford wrote:
>
>> I've been using and enjoying mythmusic for a while now and stumbled 
>> upon a problem. I have lots of albums that have various artists on 
>> them (i.e. soundtracks, christmas albums, etc.). I used to just set 
>> the artist tag to 'Various' and put the artist name in the 'title' 
>> tag. This struck me as lame so now I put the actual artist's name in 
>> the artist tag. So, what I end up with is an album where every track 
>> has a different artist tag.
>>
>> Now, when I view it in mythmusic, it displays correctly and puts each 
>> song on the album under the appropriate artist's name. So, the other 
>> day, I wanted to play a certain Christmas album, so I went to one of 
>> the artists in the tree and clicked on the album name itself (instead 
>> of going all the way to the track name). I figured this would play 
>> the entire album. Unfortunately, it only played the one song by that 
>> artist. I discovered I couldn't think of any way of playing that 
>> album now without going into each artist in the tree and checking the 
>> album or track there.
>>
>> So, even though I think this is the proper way to tag 'Various' type 
>> albums, mythmusic is not cooperating with my choice. Does anyone else 
>> do this or have any ideas? I think that clicking on the album, no 
>> matter where in the tree you are, should play that album.
>

> Couple of options come to mind:
> 1. create a playlist for your various artists albums
> 2. change the listings so album comes in front of artist (probably not 
> very user friendly)
>
> One problem with your suggestion is that different artists may have 
> the same album name, eg Greatest Hits.
>
#1 is not really practical. You're right, #2 is not friendly at all. 
Plus, listing album first is still subject to the duplicate album tag 
problem. I think some parts of the music directory I would like to be 
shown by artist and the 'various' part of the music directory I would 
like to be shown by album. Most music I think of from the point of view 
of the artist. However, soundtracks, collections, etc. I tend to think 
of in terms of the album itself. It would be cool if mythmusic would 
reflect this different thinking somehow. Maybe different settings based 
on directory? Thanks for your response.

Curtis