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Re-add "Album artist" as Sort Option for Album view


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Hello,

One thing that's stopping me from updating to the new version of Poweramp is the lack of "Album artist" sorting when I want to scroll through Albums. I have a large Classical Music collection and often times, the way I format each track means that if I just use the "Artist" sorting option or the "Albums by artist" scroll option, the tracks get scattered all throughout the library. 

 

The new layout and features are great but this sort option is a bit of a deal breaker.

 

Thank you for your work.

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3 minutes ago, maxmp said:

There is a separate Album artists category (can be enabled via Library header menu / List options - it uses album artists instead of artist everywhere).

I tried that option and the problem is that I'd really like it if I didn't have to click the album artists to get to the albums. I much prefer just being able to scroll through every album. 

Sorry about the nitpicking.

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The problem is that if some songs has no album artist tag (and that usually happens) and some song have it, it’s not possible to consinstently group songs into albums in one list.

Or, alternatively, if you have normal Albums list (albums and songs inside are grouped by usual artist tag), sorting that list now by album artist tag will result in pretty random ordering - not what you’re expecting to see - as multiple album artists are possible in one such album, or none at all.

Thus it will require one more category for just albums (by album artist).

Did you try Album artist option in settings / Library / Lists? It will try to use album artist instrad of artist everywhere (if tag exists. If it doesn’t, just artist is used).

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7 minutes ago, maxmp said:

The problem is that if some songs has no album artist tag (and that usually happens) and some song have it, it’s not possible to consinstently group songs into albums in one list.

Or, alternatively, if you have normal Albums list (albums and songs inside are grouped by usual artist tag), sorting that list now by album artist tag will result in pretty random ordering - not what you’re expecting to see - as multiple album artists are possible in one such album, or none at all.

Thus it will require one more category for just albums (by album artist).

Did you try Album artist option in settings / Library / Lists? It will try to use album artist instrad of artist everywhere (if tag exists. If it doesn’t, just artist is used).

Yeah, I think that I probably do more manual tagging than most in order to get the sorting that I like. 

I tried using the Album artist option but the list generated is one of album artists instead of albums.

Actually, the option that is most similar to the setup I had in v2 was actually the "Albums by Artist" option and then within that listing, changing the list option to sort "By artist" instead of "By name". Basically, if that option was to sort "By album artist", that would be exactly what I'm looking for. 

 

Sorry again, I thought that this would be a really minor detail that would be easy to include. This feature was only found in the beta versions of between v2 and v3 so I thought that it was a direction you were already thinking but perhaps was forgotten.

 

I appreciate the replies and the work on the app. 

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On 12/8/2018 at 11:40 PM, blakiceomega said:

Actually, the option that is most similar to the setup I had in v2 was actually the "Albums by Artist" option and then within that listing, changing the list option to sort "By artist" instead of "By name". Basically, if that option was to sort "By album artist", that would be exactly what I'm looking for.

Thats exactly the option i want too.

 

On 12/8/2018 at 11:40 PM, blakiceomega said:

Yeah, I think that I probably do more manual tagging than most in order to get the sorting that I like.  

And thats also a thing i do.

 

So i hope we can get this feature.

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All these "sorting", "album artist", "album by artist", "artist by album artist", etc. get confusing fast.

Some people use "sorting" to name what is a category (i.e. the list you see when you press 1st level item in Library), other (properly) call that the sorting options available in List Options dialog, other mean grouping.

So please, using the terminology currently in Poweramp v3, describe what you do you want exactly and where 🙂 Thank you!

Terminology:
- category - top level categories visible in Library. Some are disabled by default and can be made visible via Library menu / List Options.
- sub-category - 2nd+ level categories, e.g. Artists / <some artist> / albums
- sorting - sort option selected in the specific category List Options menu, such as "By name", "By artist", "By year"
- grouping - as there are no physical albums or artists on sd card (we have just tracks), grouping is used to bind tracks together into one album. That grouping can be by the album tag, by the album tag + the artist tag or by the album tag + the album artist tag
- album artist tag - additional tag in songs, can be optionally set (usually set for iTunes m4a, not set in the wild for most mp3/flac/etc.)
- Albums - top category grouped by the album tag
- Artists - top category with all available artists (from artist tag), inside there are albums grouped by the album tag + that artist tag
- Albums by Artist - top category with all available albums grouped by the album tag + artist tag
- Album Artists - top category with artists based on album artist tag, inside there are albums grouped by the album tag + that album artist tag. Sorting "By artist" is changed here to use album artist tag. Also, when tracks are played from this category, album artist tag is used everywhere: in main ui, notification, widgets, etc.
- settings / Look and feel / Player UI / Album Artist Label - option which will force Poweramp to always show track album artist tag instead of artist tag, if such tag exists for given track. It doesn't modify sorting or grouping

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55 minutes ago, maxmp said:

All these "sorting", "album artist", "album by artist", "artist by album artist", etc. get confusing fast.

Some people use "sorting" to name what is a category (i.e. the list you see when you press 1st level item in Library), other (properly) call that the sorting options available in List Options dialog, other mean grouping.

So please, using the terminology currently in Poweramp v3, describe what you do you want exactly and where 🙂 Thank you!

Terminology:
- category - top level categories visible in Library. Some are disabled by default and can be made visible via Library menu / List Options.
- sub-category - 2nd+ level categories, e.g. Artists / <some artist> / albums
- sorting - sort option selected in the specific category List Options menu, such as "By name", "By artist", "By year"
- grouping - as there are no physical albums or artists on sd card (we have just tracks), grouping is used to bind tracks together into one album. That grouping can be by the album tag, by the album tag + the artist tag or by the album tag + the album artist tag
- album artist tag - additional tag in songs, can be optionally set (usually set for iTunes m4a, not set in the wild for most mp3/flac/etc.)
- Albums - top category grouped by the album tag
- Artists - top category with all available artists (from artist tag), inside there are albums grouped by the album tag + that artist tag
- Albums by Artist - top category with all available albums grouped by the album tag + artist tag
- Album Artists - top category with artists based on album artist tag, inside there are albums grouped by the album tag + that album artist tag. Sorting "By artist" is changed here to use album artist tag. Also, when tracks are played from this category, album artist tag is used everywhere: in main ui, notification, widgets, etc.
- settings / Look and feel / Player UI / Album Artist Label - option which will force Poweramp to always show track album artist tag instead of artist tag, if such tag exists for given track. It doesn't modify sorting or grouping

Yeah, using the terminology definitely got unwieldy by the end there haha.

In the simplest terms, what I would like to see is an "Albums by Album Artist" category alongside the existing "Albums by Artist" category.

 

Hope that helps.

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2 hours ago, maxmp said:

- category - top level categories visible in Library. Some are disabled by default and can be made visible via Library menu / List Options.

It might be worth going through some of the menu and command terminology to make this a bit more consistent - for example the Repeat button needs looking at, and even the use of the term "List Options" when in what is now a "Category" view.

Andre

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On 12/10/2018 at 4:03 PM, maxmp said:

- settings / Look and feel / Player UI / Album Artist Label - option which will force Poweramp to always show track album artist tag instead of artist tag, if such tag exists for given track. It doesn't modify sorting or grouping

I hate to be annoying forgive me if you already saw my posts, but this is the one that several people have been requesting be updated. It doesn't show when viewing albums in Genre Category and Artists Category so it makes our library looks like we have duplicate albums by the same artist. I'm more of an advanced tagger so I have lots of albums with the same Artist tag and album tag but a different album artist tag for a few songs. Another reason we do this is so we can group together albums by one singer who might be the lead singer of multiple bands. Poweramp groups these together great and we love that with this option you can now see the album artist tag for individual songs, but we would like to be able to see which band/artist it is when you see the album listed throughout Poweramp also. All this customization is what makes Poweramp the best so thanks for tolerating people like me.

This is an example of what I see in Artist category or Genre category when looking at certain albums (because this option doesn't override Artist tag when looking at albums):

Screenshot_20181211-180820.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you know that with the new update, I was able to get the album artist settings the way I wanted them!

Coming from a fresh install, what I did was:

1. Went into "Albums" from the Library menu

2. Used the "List Options" to sort "By artist" instead of "By name"

3. Went into the "List Options" window again and used the gear icon on the top right to be sent to the Library settings

4. Scrolled down and entered the "Lists" window

5. Scrolled down and enabled "Album Artist Label for Albums" (I think this setting was just added)

After doing this, my albums seem to be in the same order as when I was using Poweramp 2.0.

 

Hope this helped and thanks a lot for adding this feature!

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