Option to Hide Artists with Under () songs in Album Artist.

[Absinthequ]

Basically I want to hide artists that only have 1 or 2 songs when viewing the "Album Artists" category. This makes the section much more condensed as you only see your most popular artists and you don't lose anything, because you can still see a more detailed artist list in the Artists category. Also with the new multiple artists splitting option for Artists, these 1 hit wonders could end up with many more songs attached to them in the Artists category. The grouping wouldn't change either, but it's kind of pointless to see 1000 artists in the grouping category that only have 1 song.

I currently I have 1696 Album Artists.... but I only show 344 in that category. I have condensed this down by tagging artists that only have one or two songs as "Various Artists" in Album Artist field. The problem with this is I want to utilize the "View Album Artist tag instead of Artist tag for Songs/Albums" options when in the Artists category and I get stuck seeing "Various Artists" tags everywhere even though most of the albums aren't even compilations and I can never see the actual artist of the song in any view with these options turned on. Being able to remove those "Various Artists" tags and put the proper Artist fixes this, but then i get stuck seeing 1000 artists with 1 song.

It seems like something others may want to use.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Absinthequ

[andrewilley]

If a song exists on its own in your collection - such as a song or two released as Singles, but where you don't have any other tracks by that artist to form an album - then why not remove the Album Title tag data completely as it is no longer relevant? That would leave the Artist information visible in Artists, Albums and Album Artists lists, but would file all of these 'one-off' songs in the Unknown Album category.

I actually go one stage further, and change both the Album Title and Album Artist tag contents to "(Singles)" which tidily forces the whole lot up to the top of the Albums list where I can find it easily rather than burying it two-thirds of the way through a long list under 'U' for Unknown Album. I also remove any Track# and Disc# tags as they are meaningless too. Editing all of the same tags in one folder is a doddle using a batch tag editor, it takes seconds. For example:

Andre

[Absinthequ]

I didn't think about removing the album artist tag. I'll have to try that to see what it looks like. One unknown artist would be better if that's what will happen.

I cant change the wording though because that's my issue right now. I need to use "view album artist instead of artist for albums and songs"  so in your example i would always see the word "(Singles)" in all categories and i would never see "The Tornados".

The reason i always use those options is because Poweramp has no way of grouping artists together other than album artist or genre.

Here's an example of how i group: i have four albums: Chris Cornell, Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple Of The Dog. (Chris Cornell is the singer, he just has different bands). I tag the Artist of all four albums as "Chris Cornell"  and i leave the album artist the correct band name. So when i view chris cornell in Artists i see the albums listed by the correct band name instead of seeing four chris cornell albums. 

Even with the new multiple artists feature i should be able to tag an album "chris cornell; temple of the dog"  etc, but without using those "view album artist instead of artist"  options i wouldn't be able to see the differences in band projects like i can now. This is what i was going on about in another post.

I proposed a grouping category a few years ago but it didn't really get much traction.  We did get maxmp to add the "view album artist instead of artist"  options though. So i was able to make a workaround to this missing feature. At the time people suggested using Genre for this. It just congests the genre section as i have over 50 groupings. 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Absinthequ

[andrewilley]

There would be no need to mess with the Album Artist tag if you are otherwise using it for your own non-standard purposes, and you can leave the Artist tags as you want them too.

Simply removing the Album Title tag from songs that - on your device at least - have no associated albums would do the job fine. In PA that would group them all tidily under "Unknown Album". Or by changing the Album Title tag to something like "(Singles)" you could sort them all to the top of any alphabetical lists. Or use square brackets - such as "[Singles]" - to sort them to the end.

Andre

[Absinthequ]

I call mine "B-Sides" but i pretty much do the same thing. 

[Absinthequ]

Update/bump

With the new splitting of the artists requiring album artist tag to group and show proper artwork in some instances.  Album artist tag is really needed. So being able to hide 100's of artists with only 1 song in this category is ideal. 

[maxmp]

Thanks for the request. Added configurable minimum of songs option to the TODO list.

[andrewilley]

@maxmp While you are adding this, could you also move any 'Unknown' items in lists - such as "Unknown Artist", "Unknown Album", "Unknown Genre", etc - so the item always appears appended at the end of lists rather than being hidden somewhere in the middle of a long list. I feel they should be dealt with as an appendix rather than as a title beginning with 'U'. If you feel it is necessary, you could even make it an option ("Sort Position for Unknown Items" - "Beginning | End | In-Line") but sticking with in-line is a very arbitrary (and even language-dependent) choice.

Andre

[6b6561]

Suggestion, how about adding the blank tags in the DB as "- Unknown -" or "-", basically something starting with a non-alpha-character, then they would sort naturally and you wouldn't have to touch the sorting code?

[andrewilley]

@6b6561 That would do it too, perfect solution! That would only take a few seconds to make the edits, and no code logic for @maxmp to have to change. Win win.

Square brackets would be my suggestion though, which would also have the benefit of making the item stand out as something obviously 'different' from normally listed titles. So in (for example) the Albums category, the current "Unknown album" item would instead be shown as "[Unknown Album]" and sorting would take care of itself. Probably best to avoid using round brackets though, as some song titles officially start with bracketed wording.

Andre

[Stas B]

Any update on this @maxmp? It's been almost a year, you must have a long TODO list;)