[Dakar]

What the hell does this do? It seems very nuanced... and random.

[Dakar]

Oh god, this is all sorts of weird... and useless.

Nevermind.

[Dakar]

I take that back yet again. Appears to be doing kooky stuff by modification date or something.

[nbnz]

I think it's useful in some cases. For example, sorting just by Album name really screws up my numerous "Greatest Hits" albums. It seems to sort by album name then track number, which doesn't really work if a lot of albums have the same name.

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by nbnz

I think it's useful in some cases. For example, sorting just by Album name really screws up my numerous "Greatest Hits" albums. It seems to sort by album name then track number, which doesn't really work if a lot of albums have the same name.

I just played with it, and its screwed up but in a different way by Album by Artist

Edit: Ohhh... it can't figure it out if its a compilation.

[OAW]

This is an excerpt from a post I made in another thread ....

"First of all thanks for pointing out this feature! I actually don't think the "Album by Artist" feature is counter-intuitive. It's doing exactly what I would expect. But then this may be because I'm in the IT industry so I think of it in terms of SQL. When I see a sort feature that says "Album by Artist" I think this ....

select * from library
group by Album~Artist
order by Album asc, Track # asc

A database will in fact return rows by Artist first, and then sort those rows by Album. Having said that, I can see how others would not necessarily see it that way.

I kind of like the "Album by Year" feature. It appears to be doing this ...

select * from library
group by Album~Artist
order by Year asc, Album asc, Track # asc

And a sort by "Album" is doing this ...

select * from library
order by Album asc, Artist asc, Track # asc"

OAW

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by OAW

This is an excerpt from a post I made in another thread ....

"First of all thanks for pointing out this feature! I actually don't think the "Album by Artist" feature is counter-intuitive. It's doing exactly what I would expect. But then this may be because I'm in the IT industry so I think of it in terms of SQL. When I see a sort feature that says "Album by Artist" I think this ....

select * from library
group by Artist
order by Album asc, Track # asc

A database will in fact return rows by Artist first, and then sort those rows by Album. Having said that, I can see how others would not necessarily see it that way.

I kind of like the "Album by Year" feature. It appears to be doing this ...

select * from library
group by Artist
order by Year asc, Album asc, Track # asc

And a sort by "Album" is doing this ...

select * from library
order by Album asc, Artist asc, Track # asc"

OAW

Its doing other weird stuff in absence of track #s.

I might add they don't mention it actually separates into two sections, one by artist albums, second by album compilations.

[OAW]

And if you aren't familiar with SQL, "Album by Artist" essentially means that it will create a GROUPING for every "Album~Artist" in order .... and then the groupings will sorted by "Album" ... and within each grouping the tracks will be sorted by "Track #".

Now you have to be careful because "Album~Artist" means that it will use "Album Artist" if it exists ... but if it doesn't it will use "Artist". If the values retrieved for "Album~Artist" for all the tracks in an album are the same then it will make a group. But if not, it will make a different group for every distinct combination it finds! This is the source of the frustration that many users are having with this feature. The program is actually doing what it should do ... the problem is that Apple introduced this new "Album Artist" tag without any explanation in the Help file about how it should be used. Here's an example ....

Say you have the Ray Charles - Genius Loves Company album. On this album it he sings a bunch of duets, so the "Artist" tag for the various tracks will say "Ray Charles & Norah Jones", "Ray Charles & James Taylor", etc. Now if you bought this album from the ITMS, then all is well in the world because such purchases already have the "Album Artist" tag set to "Ray Charles" (even though this tag wasn't exposed in the UI prior to iTunes 7). So the grouping logic utilizes this tag ... finds one distinct value ... and groups all the tracks together as expected. But ... say you ripped the CD and you had "Artist" on the tracks as I described above ... and "Album Artist" was not set (which is likely the case because you couldn't do it in iTunes prior to the latest version) ... well then the grouping logic will make a group for each distinct "Ray Charles & Joe Blow" combination it finds. Which again, is exactly what it should do when you are sorting "Album by Artist".

So the key to avoid frustration when using this feature is to either A) make sure that "Artist" has the same value for all tracks in an album if "Album Artist" is not populated, or B) populate "Album Artist" with the same value for all tracks in an album which will override differing values in "Artist".

Hope this helps ...

OAW

PS: Your comment about compilations reminded me about another aspect to this functionality. Any tracks that have the "Part of a Compilation" flag set will be grouped together regardless of the different values in "Artist" or the lack of an "Album Artist" tag. Or another way to think about it is that setting this flag essentially gives the selected tracks the same "hidden" value in "Album Artist" so they are grouped together. Again, this is doing what it should do but it would be nice if Apple explained this in the Help file. I've essentially had to figure all this out by tinkering with various settings and seeing how iTunes reacted.

[Dakar]

Well none of my tracks have album artist yet, but the thought had occurred to me.

I'll post some pics of what I mean later if I can.

Edit: I don't see myself using this feature at all. Maybe with its album/compilation split, but I doubt it.

(it'd be nice if you could choose Artist by Year)