Artist album sort in album view

[the_bertrum]

Moode has never used the "___sort" tags because if they are different than the corresponding actual tag, the displayed list appears in a very odd order. For example when the sort tag is [lastname, firstname] and the actual tag is [firstname lastname] we end up with a list like below that seems oddly sorted since we are accustomed to lists sorted alphabetically by the first word or number.

Brian Carrigan
Joe Chambers
Billy Cobham
Alex Cortez

The other issue with the "___sort" tags is that an artist is not always a persons name for example:

Freshly Ground
Floating Spirits
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Broker/Dealer
Bomb the Bass

These types of artist names can't be put into [lastname, firstname] format.

I had assumed that sort tags was not an option because they were not read by MPD.  The issues you cite with sort tags is in fact their entire purpose surely.  One puts a value in the sort order when one wants the sort order to be different to the expected order of alphabetically by first word.  In fact that order is already messed with because of the "ignore articles" option.  I'd certainly vote for a "fall back" position like is done for date, whereby sort order is used for sorting unless it isn't present in which case the display value is used instead.  That way those who like Dylan before Bowie can either set sort tags accordingly, or just omit them while those who want Bowie before Dylan (like I do) can achieve that also; those who like Creedence Clearwater Revival to appear next to The Revivalists (I know, no one wants that , but...) can do so as well.

Having said that I have become used to pressing the D when I want to find my Bowie albums.