!!Power to compilations!!

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Matt
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 11:43 am

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by Matt »

Hi guys,
great piece of work. Love it ... so fast, so lightweight: Makes organising my music fun again.

One problem / future request: Compilations
I've got a bunch of compilations and soundtracks, as every song is from a different artist and different album, having no option to sort for compilations is a huge inconvenience.
When I go to the browser window it would be great if compilations would be organised as 1 item and not 20 different albums with 1 song each. Same in the library window: There are options to view genres, albums and even album artists but again it would be great if compilations would be organised as 1 item in the albums dialog box.
I have found the compilations option in the 'edit' dialog but it does not seem to have an influence.
(or maybe thats already possible and I havent found it?)

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
Cheers!
Matt
genesys87
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 5:20 am

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by genesys87 »

I don't understand: if the compilations and soundtracks are official, the album tag of the songs is the name of the compilation/soundtrack, so there are no problem.
If the compilations are not official, ie: you choose the songs of the compilation, they should be treated as playlists.
Maybe there could be a playlist box in the library browser, or the playlists could be included in the album box in the library browser.
tamalet
Posts: 490
Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2010 4:34 am

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by tamalet »

Guayadeque is not so good at handling non-album compilations. By design it assumes that you have albums, each on a different directory.
One way around is to make extensive use of the Album Artist tag. When I have an album like a tribute to U2, I put as Album Artist U2 and in Artist the band that plays the song.
When it's just a mix of bands you can put Various Artists as Album Artist.

Then I use Album Artist instead of Artist as the main tag. Guayadeque has good support for it, there is only a few places where it is not on par with the Artist tag:
1. The Browser cannot group by Album Artist.
2. There are labels for Artists but not for Album Artists.
And maybe some other small thing.

By the way Edit Songs does not have an option for compilations, the "Comp." field is for Composer.

From what I read iTunes allows you to mark an album as a compilation. It uses the id3 tag "itunescompilation", which can be 0 or 1, for that.
tamalet
Posts: 490
Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2010 4:34 am

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by tamalet »

A bit more about how iTunes handles compilations: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/a ... ether.html

It's not that Guayadeque should imitate iTunes, but it can help to get some ideas.
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anonbeat
Posts: 2048
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:47 pm

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by anonbeat »

I agree with genesys87. If the compilation is official then the album name should be the same for all the tracks and it should be in the same directory. If its just a compilation done by the user this is a static playlist.

Guayadeque handles compilations by default. If you put the tracks in the same dir and name the album with the same name only one album is created even when have different artists. And you can pust the tag AlbumArtist to 'Various artists' to find it more easily from the library panel.

Thanks for your help
tamalet
Posts: 490
Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2010 4:34 am

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by tamalet »

That's the way I use Guayadeque and I'm fine with it.

But there is people that put songs from different artists and albums in one directory. And I can understand it, sometimes you don't have (nor want) the full album, it's just one song that you like. Sometimes it's not even included in an official album. Probably you don't want to create a directory for each of this songs, you just want to have the related "lonely" songs in one directory.
I have a directory like that and I decided just not to include it in Guayadeque's library (also because I have not had time to tag it properly yet and because it would increase the number of artists and albums too much for my taste).

How does Guayadeque handle that? (Sorry I'm not at home to try it now).
dafreez
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:18 pm

!!Power to compilations!!

Post by dafreez »

Don't know if this thread is still active:

A problem I have with genesys87/Anonbeat's solution, is that if you use artist as the primary sorting in the library view, tha album still gets split up. I use tamalet's solution but have the same problems he does (especially in the browser view).

A possible solution (at least for me) would be to include the comments tag as one of the columns in the library view. That way Artist could function essentially as albumartist and I could place the individual artists in the comment tag.

(no disrespect meant Anonbeat, I am a huge fan of Guyadeque!)
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