[OAW]

The following is feedback I just sent to Apple ....

I'm even more convinced that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at Apple. In iTunes 7 the ALBUM ARTIST tag was introduced, but it couldn't really be used for one main reason. 1) There was no way to browse by ALBUM ARTIST on your iPod/iPhone. And there was no explicit way to browse by ALBUM ARTIST in List View in iTunes 7.

So in iTunes 8 the browsing by ARTIST does a "contains" match which is quite the improvement as it effectively allows one to locate all albums/songs for a given artist ... even when there are guest artists on the album. If you select the main artist name ... it essentially functions as a browse by ALBUM ARTIST b/c it's no longer doing an "exact" match. However, the latest iPhone software (v. 2.1) still does an exact match. So browsing by ARTIST in iTunes gives you different results than doing the same thing on the iPhone. I mean how difficult can it be? The status quo has effectively been maintained. The ALBUM ARTIST feature remains essentially USELESS b/c you can't use it and still expect to be able to browse by ARTIST on iPod/iPhone and get to the ENTIRE album when there are guest artists. I mean come on! Either make the Artist browsing function do a "contains" match like iTunes 8 .... or give us the option to browse by Album Artist on the iPod/iPhone!! What "Genius" allowed two major software updates to go out the door that results in different Artist browsing behavior in areas that are supposed to work identically?

OAW

[OAW]

Anyone know of a way around this situation?

OAW

[kelchm]

I hear you OAW.

I found this thread wondering to myself the same exact thing.

I'm really quite surprised this wasn't introduced in 2.1...

[OAW]

After I read my OP I realized that my description of the issue may be overly technical. So here is an example of what's going on.

Say I have a Ray Charles album with two tracks. The ARTIST on track 1 is "Ray Charles". The ARTIST on track 2 is "Ray Charles feat. Norah Jones". The ALBUM ARTIST is set to "Ray Charles" for both tracks. In iTunes 7 if I selected "Ray Charles" as the ARTIST in the browser ... only Track 1 would be listed below. If I selected "Ray Charles feat. Norah Jones" as the ARTIST ... only Track 2 would be listed below. The iPod/iPhone works the same way.

Now in iTunes 8 if I select "Ray Charles" as the ARTIST then both Track 1 and Track 2 show. Which effectively is the same as browsing by ALBUM ARTIST. Selecting Ray Charles feat. Norah Jones" still shows Track 2. The problem is that the iPod/iPhone still functions the old way. Even though both tracks show in iTunes 8 when I select "Ray Charles" .... only track 1 displays when I do the same thing on the iPod/iPhone.

Surely there can't be a just a couple of us that sees this as a significant problem? Sending feedback to Apple requesting a fix would be appreciated. Without a fix there still is not much point in modifying the ARTIST tag to include guest artists.

OAW

[- - e r i k - -]

All my guest artists are in the title of the track instead, as in: "Song title (feat. Guest Artist) - Artist"

[lavar78]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

All my guest artists are in the title of the track instead, as in: "Song title (feat. Guest Artist) - Artist"

I used to do that, but I stopped (partly because of last.fm). Now I put that info in the comments field. Once the iPhone can handle this like iTunes 8, I may switch it (although I don't think I want all of those extra "artists" cluttering up the list).

[OAW]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

All my guest artists are in the title of the track instead, as in: "Song title (feat. Guest Artist) - Artist"

That's what I do as well. I suppose my point is that this shouldn't be necessary. But I'm forced to since the Album Artist implementation is so half-assed.

OAW

[analogika]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

All my guest artists are in the title of the track instead, as in: "Song title (feat. Guest Artist) - Artist"

That's a crutch, and it shouldn't be necessary. The Album Artist field is designed specifically to avoid this.

It's also useful for, say, labelling all of Aphex Twin's various pseudonyms as all authored by "Richard D. James" for sorting, or allows David Bowie's "Labyrinth" album to be sorted under David Bowie despite the fact that half the pieces are by Trevor Jones and can be labeled as such.


I completely agree with OAW: It makes browsing a properly indexed media collection very annoying on an iPod/iPhone.