[DejaVu]

Noticed quite a few threads about this on here, I think it's mainly because it works perfectly but is a little hard to explain...

Anyway, my problem is this -

I'm going through my Music collection using a few programs to sort out the Tag's to my liking but I cant get my head around stopping compilation albums showing in the Artists folder.

Example.
I have The Pussycat Dolls - Doll Domination
(dont start, it's my daughters! )

This one is marked perfectly, only show in the artists folder.

I also have FloorFillers Clubmix
It contains the track -
The Pussycat Doll - When I grow up (Digital Dog Radio Mix)

Under the Artists folder this one track shows with the album art of Floorfillers.

The Floorfillers track is marked thus -
Name - When I grow up (Digital Dog Radio Mix)
Artist - The Pussycat Dolls
Album Artist - Various Artists
Album - Floorfillers Clubmix
Sort Artist - Various Artists
Sort Album Artist - Various Artists

Part of a compilation is ticked.

The rest are clear.

These are all sorted with iTunes.


What field should I edit to get Floorfillers Clubmix OUT of The Pussycat Doll Artist folder?

[kraqh3d]

I do not believe this is possible. You would have to either remove the artist tag from that song, or change the source. Since you've chosen an artist as the filter criteria, and that artist appears on that album, it will be displayed.

Look at MusicDatabase.cpp, CMusicDatabase::GetAlbumsNav(). You have to remove the first two clauses which match based off the song table.

[DejaVu]

HaHa!
That certainly told me!

I am but an end user. I have no idea what that means. Should I just take it as a No then?

I thought if the Compilation Tag was used, the Artist field got ignored somehow.

Guessing the only way really, would be to put the artists name into the Song Title of the MP3 and put "Various Artists" into the Artists section?

Would that work perhaps?

[kraqh3d]

That's a no.

This is how it works...

Both albums and songs have an artist association. And as such, Xbmc supports both standard the Artist tag for songs and the Album Artist tag for the album.

If the Album Artist tag is not set, Xbmc will try to automatically identify compilation albums by comparing the artist fields of all the songs.

If it finds there's a common "primary" artist, that becomes the album artist. Any additional artists which appear on individual songs are only linked to those songs. (What comes to mind is Southside by Moby; Gwen Stefani would be the listed as an additional artist if you had her tagged as a secondary artist for only that track.)

If there isn't a single common "primary" artist for all the songs, then the album is considered a compilation. The album gets associated to the "Various Artists" psuedo-artist for navigation purposes. However, the individual songs are still associated with whatever artists that their artist tags contained.

The Album Artist tag overrides this behaviour. If a user sets the Album Artist tag, Xbmc assumes the user did it for a reason, and only associates the album with that artist, regardless of the artist tags of the songs. But again, the songs are still associated with their individual artists. And if you typo'ed the album artist for some songs, those songs will be associated with a different album, as its the album title + the album artist which identifies a unique album. (This makes sense as two entirely different artists could have the same album title, especially in the case of "Greatest Hits", right?)

Lastly, if Xbmc finds the compilcation flag, it sets the Album Artist for that songs to "Various Artists" if and *only* if the Album Artist tag was empty.

One last bit of information... Technically, only songs are linked to genres. Albums and artists are linked to genres through songs.

Now that we've established that... Here's how the navigation works... We have three filter criteria -- genre, artist, album.

When set either genre or artist filters, then all albums for that genre or artist are displayed, including those who's songs are linked against that genre and/or artist. This is why the compilation albums show up. The how is due to the SQL query listed in that function I mentioned.

So, if you don't want these compilation songs to cause the compilation albums to be listed under their individual contributing artists, you need to change their artist tags. What you suggest should work. Set the Artist tag to "Various Artists" and then possibly put the true artist name in the song title.

I hope that helps. (And by all means feel free to paste this in the wiki as I don't know if this level of detail is explained there.)

[DejaVu]

That explanation kraqh3d is absolutely SPOT ON!

Thank you very much for that detailed description. That has cleared everything up for me.

With support like this, XBMC (being the best HTPC Software anyway) just shot to the top of my list and will remain on my machine for good (which is an Acer Revo R3610 - Windows 7) and feels as though this software was designed to work on it!