Re: [Banshee-List] Handling various artist albums

["Josiah Ritchie" <josiah ritchietribe net>]

On Jan 28, 2008 10:59 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:
> On Jan 28, 2008 2:49 PM, Josiah Ritchie <josiah ritchietribe net> wrote:
> > > The way it works in other players (including iTunes) is to add an
> > > albumartist tag set to something like "Various Artists." Does Banshee
> > > handle that?
> > It is really annoying to me when I see a song and thing "Oh, who did
> > that?" and look only to find "Various Artists". Is there some way we
> > can group an album together irrespective of artist and not have to
> > deal with the blight that is "Various Artists". I never understood why
> > anyone thought that to be the slightest bit useful. I've been using
> > iTunes a bit lately and this is one of the many gripes I have with it.
> > Anyone planning a Mac port?
>
> You seem to confuse "artist" and "albumartist" tags. The latter's sole
> purpose is for grouping albums while preserving proper song artists.

I understand that albumartist is meant to be used to bring an album
together, but I don't understand why it is needed and what you'd put
in it that would be useful. If artist has the real artists name and
the same album name is used by multiple artists, then shouldn't it be
assumed that the album includes various artists? It just doesn't make
sense to me to define an album by the name of the artist of the
included songs. I'd rather see other information that should line up
like album name, release date and album art be put to that use. The
artist is known to be inconsistent and untrustworthy. iTunes
albumartist seems like an ugly hack to me. I will, of course, defer to
he greater community on this. :-)

JSR/

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