Artist album sort in album view

[Calaat]

Hi:

I have a doubt about how MoOde sort artists in the album view. 

I ask a few weeks ago about how metadata works and i retagged all my library, it took me about a weeks and a half. My surprise was when, after i retagged everything, so i introduce manually, and correctly, all the tags, removing what is not desired, the artist album tag was not sorted using the tag: album artist sort.

For instance if i'm searching Bob Dylan, it is sorted in the B of Bob, and not the D of Dylan, what was the behviour i expected. In the tag, it is sorted by the D.

It is how it is supposed to work?

Thx for the support.

Exemple of the tags: https://imgur.com/qQBI056

Exemple of sort order: https://imgur.com/dDJ6IWF

[Tim Curtis]

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.

[Calaat]

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.

Ok, I understand. Thanks for taking your time to explain it.

It is not what i expected and personnally i'm not agree with this argument. If i can edit my tags, i can decide what is the sort of my library. But i'm not a coder, and i don't decide the way MoOde works. Otherwise, know this aspect makes me happy and i can rest ;0) I was trying a lot of tags trying to understand whats happening.

I found the tag managing very difficult and and not as intuitive i expected it, and now, i assure, i have edit a LOT of tags to understand and know how they show.

[DRONE7]

I had the same thoughts and made a workaround in a much older version of MoOde but it was too difficult to keep synched and I just went with the standard sort. ( I don't like it but it works)

Here is the workaround FWIW... might not even work on current MoOde version. ?

https://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread....ht=library

[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.

[Calaat]

Thx for the comments. I'm really agree with what you say.

In fact, it is so uncomfortable i can't realise that this was the way it works. it is annoying with Bowie and Dylan, surely. But it make sort useless when you face albums of Osees, which change the name commonly and it is Thee Oh Sees, OCS or Oh Sees, which i have sorted as Osees to avoid multiply the presence or with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which is Godspeed you Black Emperor! at the start of his career and then changes to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or Nick Cave, which is sometimes ..and the bad sees, and others ---& The Bad Seeds.

it is the same thing with tracks with multiple artists, which are sorted with the same album artists, but theyre show as differents artists. This ends multiplicating the artists: calle 13 feat. XXXX ten times. I can change the artist tag, but is pointless and clunky. Apart to show two artists, separated with a comma it does not add anything to the experience. All of this, ignoring the fact that i have the artists tag defined and separated with a comma, which is ignored by MoOde.

I love MoOde, and it is something i needed, but i really don't like the tags management.

[the_bertrum]

I actually think moOde is the best I've come across for how it handles tags precisely because it is consistent and does not try to guess what to do with the tags.  It only requires that the user is also consistent.  So for example, it requires that you decide how you want to style "& the Bad Seeds" and make sure all your collection follows the style.  In the case where bands change their name throughout, well again either decide to follow their whims, or decide you will standardise on one of their names.  Admittedly, this is simplified a bit if we could add in the sort field, but moOde does at least make it plain how you can tag your collection so it sorts the way you like it.

For the Album Artist with multiple track artists, I encourage you to experiment with the Library Preferences "Artist Column" setting, There is probably already a setting that gets the Artist list how you want it in combination with the Album Artist tag.

The (i)  text says this:

Specify how to populate the Artist column in Tag view.
Artist: List artists, album artists, performers and conductors. Compilation albums listed for an artist will show only the tracks belonging to the artist. Clicking the album will toggle between showing all the album's tracks and just those for the artist.
Artist (Reduced): Same as above except exclude album artists
Artist (Strict): List only artists (the artist tag). Compilation album handling is same as for Artist above.
Album Artist: List album artists. Compilation albums are listed under the album artist named "Various Artists" or any other string that was used to identify compilation albums.
Album Artist+: Same as Album Artist above except compilation albums listed for a album artist will show only the tracks belonging to the album artist. Clicking the Album will toggle between showing all the album's tracks and just those for the album artist.

[Tim Curtis]

Keep in mind there is no standard for music tagging, just commonly accepted practices, and those only apply to Popular music. There are no commonly accepted practices for tagging Classical music.

Also note that many music tagging programs don't support or populate many of these tags.

In any case here is a list of tags supported by MPD (from the development branch documentation) with the subset of tags supported by moode marked in Orange.

The following tags are supported by MPD:

artist: the artist name. Its meaning is not well-defined; see “composer” and “performer” for more specific tags.
artistsort: same as artist, but for sorting. This usually omits prefixes such as “The”.
album: the album name.
albumsort: same as album, but for sorting.
albumartist: on multi-artist albums, this is the artist name which shall be used for the whole album. The exact meaning of this tag is not well-defined.
albumartistsort: same as albumartist, but for sorting.
title: the song title.
titlesort: same as title, but for sorting.
track: the decimal track number within the album.
name: a name for this song. This is not the song title. The exact meaning of this tag is not well-defined. It is often used by badly configured internet radio stations with broken tags to squeeze both the artist name and the song title in one tag.
genre: the music genre.
mood: the mood of the audio with a few keywords.
date: the song’s release date. This is usually a 4-digit year.
originaldate: the song’s original release date.
composer: the artist who composed the song.
composersort: same as composer, but for sorting.
performer: the artist who performed the song.
conductor: the conductor who conducted the song.
work: “a work is a distinct intellectual or artistic creation, which can be expressed in the form of one or more audio recordings”
ensemble: the ensemble performing this song, e.g. “Wiener Philharmoniker”.
movement: name of the movement, e.g. “Andante con moto”.
movementnumber: movement number, e.g. “2” or “II”.
showmovement: If this tag is set to “1” players supporting this tag will display the work, movement, and movementnumber` instead of the track title.
location: location of the recording, e.g. “Royal Albert Hall”.
grouping: “used if the sound belongs to a larger category of sounds/music” (from the IDv2.4.0 TIT1 description).
comment: a human-readable comment about this song. The exact meaning of this tag is not well-defined.
disc: the decimal disc number in a multi-disc album.
label: the name of the label or publisher.
musicbrainz_artistid: the artist id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_albumid: the album id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_albumartistid: the album artist id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_trackid: the track id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_releasegroupid: the release group id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_releasetrackid: the release track id in the MusicBrainz database.
musicbrainz_workid: the work id in the MusicBrainz database.
There can be multiple values for some of these tags. For example, MPD may return multiple lines with a performer tag. A tag value is a UTF-8 string.

Other Metadata

The response to lsinfo and similar commands may contain song tags and other metadata, specifically:

duration: the duration of the song in seconds; may contain a fractional part.
Time: like duration, but as integer value. This is deprecated and is only here for compatibility with older clients. Do not use.
Range: if this is a queue item referring only to a portion of the song file, then this attribute contains the time range in the form START-END or START- (open ended); both START and END are time stamps within the song in seconds (may contain a fractional part). Example: 60-120 plays only the second minute; “180 skips the first three minutes.
Format: the audio format of the song (or an approximation to a format supported by MPD and the decoder plugin being used). When playing this file, the audio value in the status response should be the same.
Last-Modified: the time stamp of the last modification of the underlying file in ISO 8601 format. Example: “2008-09-28T20:04:57Z”
added 13: the time stamp when the file was added in ISO 8601. A negative value means that this is unknown/unavailable. Example: “2023-11-25T13:25:07Z”

[the_bertrum]

Thanks Tim, nice to see it all laid out so clearly. As you point out there are no standards, and no two programs have the same capabilities. All we can do is say what moOde does, so that users have the information needed to tag their collections to make best use of the capabilities.

[Calaat]

I actually think moOde is the best I've come across for how it handles tags precisely because it is consistent and does not try to guess what to do with the tags.  It only requires that the user is also consistent.  So for example, it requires that you decide how you want to style "& the Bad Seeds" and make sure all your collection follows the style.  In the case where bands change their name throughout, well again either decide to follow their whims, or decide you will standardise on one of their names.  Admittedly, this is simplified a bit if we could add in the sort field, but moOde does at least make it plain how you can tag your collection so it sorts the way you like it.

For the Album Artist with multiple track artists, I encourage you to experiment with the Library Preferences "Artist Column" setting, There is probably already a setting that gets the Artist list how you want it in combination with the Album Artist tag.

The (i)  text says this:

Specify how to populate the Artist column in Tag view.
Artist: List artists, album artists, performers and conductors. Compilation albums listed for an artist will show only the tracks belonging to the artist. Clicking the album will toggle between showing all the album's tracks and just those for the artist.
Artist (Reduced): Same as above except exclude album artists
Artist (Strict): List only artists (the artist tag). Compilation album handling is same as for Artist above.
Album Artist: List album artists. Compilation albums are listed under the album artist named "Various Artists" or any other string that was used to identify compilation albums.
Album Artist+: Same as Album Artist above except compilation albums listed for a album artist will show only the tracks belonging to the album artist. Clicking the Album will toggle between showing all the album's tracks and just those for the album artist.

Thx you ;0)
I think, ignoring the sort tag it is quite uncomfortable. But it is only my option. Now, i have my Library ready to work as i want with MoOde so, i'm happy. Thx for all the support, thx to you and to Tim. I think this kind of support is great.