Re: [Banshee-List] Problem with compilation albums

[Jon Cosby <jon jcosby com>]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 13:16 -0700, Keith Curtis wrote:
> Hmmm. I saw that advice but I didn't entirely understand it because I
> thought it was to help with browsing by compilation artist.
> 

Each track has an artist and a compilation artist tag. The compilation
artist is not required, but if an album has one, it will be listed by
that artist in the album browser. To assign a compilation artist, 

- Select all of the tracks on the album
- Right click and select "Edit track information"
- Check the box "Compilation Album Artist"
- Enter a value for the compilation artist
- Click the button to the right to set all compilation 
  artists to this value
- Click "Save"

Do this once for each album.

> 
> I don't understand why is that necessary. When the albums have the
> same name, why can't the album browser group them together? My music
> collection is basically a bunch of compilation albums so it would be a
> huge pile of work to do this. Why can't software be smart and figure
> this out on its own? (Even assuming that there are cases with albums
> of the same name, then maybe it could use a heuristic and look at the
> directory structure.)
> 

You're assuming that people organize their files in basically the same
way. I have compilation albums with tracks in different directories, and
I have a media player with zero folder depth. Would this work in all
cases?

> 
> This sort of barrier increases the hassles for those who want to start
> using Banshee
> (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html)
> 
> -Keith
> 
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Steven Côté <steven cote gmail com>
> wrote:
>         
>                 I'm having the same problem as below. My album browser
>                 has individual entries
>                 for every song even though the album name is the same.
>                 (Note, I don't copy
>                 my music over to the new structure if that matters.)
>         
>         
>         Assuming you're using a reasonably up to date version (this
>         works in 1.4.3, the version that ships with most distros),
>         then you need to set the Compilation Album Artist for each of
>         the tracks in the compilation album.
>         
>         I find the easiest way to do this is to select all of the
>         entries in the album browser that you wish to group, this will
>         filter the tracks to those on the album. Select all of the
>         tracks and Edit Properties. Then check the Compilation Album
>         Artist box and put something in the field (like "Various
>         Artists" or some such). Then there's a convenient button
>         beside the text field that will automatically set that value
>         to all selected tracks.
>         
>         Hope that helps!
>         
>         
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> 
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