Viewing Albums from the Artist List

[jimnms]

Until a couple of months ago, I've been using a Toshiba GigabeatS 60GB as my portable music player. I liked the Gigabeat, but I wanted something smaller and I didn't need that much space. I've only got about 5-6GB of music that I actually listen to. I only used it in the Gym and when on long driving trips. I felt kind of like an dork at the gym seeing all these people with thise nice little players on their arm or waist, and here I am with this massive brick strapped to my arm. My biggest complaint about it was the battery. It got the 12 hours it claimed, but the "power" button really only put it in standby. The only way to really turn it off was to use a small pin or something to flip a small switch on the bottom of the unit. It sucked the battery down fast when "off" unless you remembered to flick the little switch. I found myself without music way too many times because it would drain dead in about a week if I forgot to flip the little switch. I also typically went on 6-9 hour trips. I have a car charger for it, but a few times I forgot to plug it in to charge the night before coming home which left me without music for a portion of my return trip (my car only has one accessory plug, which is used by my GPS).

Anyway I did a lot of looking around and I bought an 8GB Sansa Fuze a couple of months ago. So far I like it, the battery is great and the size is much better. I have only one complaint though. The Gigabeat had a feature similar to the "go list" of the Fuze that I used a lot. I usually just listen to all music on random, but sometimes I'll be in the mood to listen to just certain albums or artists. On the Gigabeat, when you browsed by artist, it would list all albums by that artist, and when you selected that album, it would show all songs on the album. However, on the Fuze, when you do the same, if there are songs on that album that aren't by that artist, they don't show up.

One example is Rob Zombie's "Past, Present & Future" album. It has songs by Rob Zombie and songs from when he was in White Zombie. When I browse by artist, select Rob Zombie, it shows all albums with songs by Rob Zombie on it. If I select the "Past, Present & Future" album, it only shows 10 songs when there should be 19.

Also, using Rob Zombie as an example, when browsing artist and it's showing all albums that have songs by Rob Zombie on it, it will also list the Matrix and Mission Impossible sound tracks, which he has one song each on those albums. If I select the Matrix sound track, it only shows that one song from the album. The Gigabeat on the other hand, when I would browse by artist, select Rob Zombie, it also showed all albums that had songs by him on it. If I selected the Matrix sound track though, there was a way that I could add just Rob Zombie's songs from the album or the entire album to the quick list. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this with the Fuze.

I use Windows Media Player 11 to sync the Fuze. If I look at the ID3v2 tag for one of the songs from the "Past, Present & Future" album that doesn't show up when browsing by Rob Zombie as an artist, it shows the following:

Artist: White Zombie
Album: Past, Present & Future
Album Artist: Rob Zombie
Composer: Rob Zombie/White Zombie

[CrowdAds]

[FreeZ5]

Sounds like it is working correctly to me. You initially asked for songs by Rob Zombie. That's what it gave you.

If it worked the way you want, I'm positive that somebody else would want it done this way.

Obviously MUSIC -> Albums will give you what you want, but you probably have a LONG LONG list of albums (I certainly do).

Steve

[Chili]

Originally Posted by jimnms

I use Windows Media Player 11 to sync the Fuze. If I look at the ID3v2 tag for one of the songs from the "Past, Present & Future" album that doesn't show up when browsing by Rob Zombie as an artist, it shows the following:

Artist: White Zombie
Album: Past, Present & Future
Album Artist: Rob Zombie
Composer: Rob Zombie/White Zombie

That's probably why. When you browse by Artist, that song will show up under White Zombie. The latest firmware added folder browsing to the Fuze though, you can try that route and see if you can find your songs easier that way.

[Hirudin]

It sucks that the Fuze sorts differently than your old player. I must say though, I think the Gigabeat was doing it wrong and the Fuze is doing it right.

Attached is a screenshot of what I get when I select "Rob Zombie" in J. River Media Center. I have to assume you would get a similar result in pretty much ever music management program. Mine has 13 "Rob Zombie" songs for Past, Present & Future though.

As FreeZ5 said, if you want all the songs on an Album just select "Albums" in the main Music menu.

[jimnms]

Originally Posted by Hirudin

I must say though, I think the Gigabeat was doing it wrong and the Fuze is doing it right.

Your screen shot is sort of like what the Gigabeat does, but it lets you go one step farther and select a whole album or just the songs by Rob Zombie.

I'd say the Gigabeat has it right. My guess is that the Fuze is looking at the song artist rather than the album artist. It's common for bands to play songs written by other bands. If I'm looking for a song performed by artist X that was originally written by a different artist, that makes it hard to find if I don't know the name of the original song artist.

Browsing by albums isn't easy since the list is quite long.

[Chili]

Originally Posted by jimnms

My guess is that the Fuze is looking at the song artist rather than the album artist.

If you put the song artist in the "artist" field of the tags, then yes, it will.

The Fuze sorts differently than the Gigabeat. You'll either need to re-tag your songs after how the Fuze does it, or switch to Folder browsing. Either way, while I realize it's probably frustrating, the easiest solution for you is to just relearn and adapt to how your new player does it. As much as we want it to, the Fuze just won't change how it works just because we're used to soemthing else.

[bassbrnr]

The problem is a missing feature in most non-Zune mp3 players including the Fuze. You should have the ability so select which artist (track or album), is showing in the artist list. I want to see a list of the album artists. This problem commonly shows up with compilations or soundtracks. The artist listed in the list of artists should be Various Artists, Compilation, Soundtrack, or whatever you have it defined as. When playing you should then see the track artist listed. This is a similar problem to what you have. By default to play the Matrix soundtrack you have no option except to switch over to the album list. It also has the additional negative side effect of listing extraneous artists which have only one track on some compilation or soundtrack you want to have.

And don't even get me started on alphabetization. When was the last time you went into a record store and looked for The Ramones under the T section instead of the R section. I learned basic library alphabetization in elementary school.

Anyway until RockBox is ported to the Fuze and I can fix this myself if it hasn't been already, I created a little utility to work around these shortcomings if you use MSC mode. It's here if you want to give it a try: http://code.google.com/p/msccleaner/.

It will put the album artist into the track artist tag and append the track artist to the end of the song title. It'll also remove The from the beginning of the artist name.

[tenzip]

Originally Posted by bassbrnr

And don't even get me started on alphabetization. When was the last time you went into a record store and looked for The Ramones under the T section instead of the R section. I learned basic library alphabetization in elementary school.

I will look with interest at your utility.

The problem here is tagging, not the player.

I tag all my music 'correctly', so that I find Katie Melua as Melua, Katie under M, as she should be, and not K, as she would if I left it as read from whatever database when I ripped it.

The Who is found as Who, The, under W, as they should be.

And of course, Pink Floyd is found under P, as they should be.

Yes, it takes a small amount of time and attention, but it's better than being annoyed not finding what I'm looking for, or finding half of The Beatles' albums under T and not B.

[bassbrnr]

Really there should be two tags. One for display purposes and one for alphabetizing.

Also, I can deal with Roger Waters showing up under R if I know that's how I have my songs tagged. The problem with the 'The' issue is that it's hard to remember which artist is listed as which and I would prefer to display the artist names properly. However, I tend to just remove the The as in my utility.

By the way, I added ignoring The in alphabetizing without even thinking when I wrote my first jukebox application in 1996 in VB4. 13 years behind and counting.

[tenzip]

Originally Posted by bassbrnr

Really there should be two tags. One for display purposes and one for alphabetizing.

Meh, I don't agree with you there, I find it strange looking at someone else's player and seeing 'Béla Fleck & The Flecktones' instead of 'Fleck, Béla & The Flecktones'.

I think it's an acclimation thing. Once you get used to it, you just read it.

Or maybe I just go to the library too much.

Oh, BTW, what would your utility do with 'The Flecktones' in the example above? Lose it, or ignore it? I assume ignore, as it's not at the beginning of the artist name.

[bassbrnr]

It only changes The if it's the start of the artist name is 'The '. That's The with a space after it so "Theodore's Stinky Band" wouldn't get changed. It has one hardcoded exception. It ignores "The The" for any new wave fans out there.

[bassbrnr]

Also, it removes it and doesn't add it to the end. I think I'll change that though.

[Hirudin]

This doesn't help with the stupid sorting on most players, but J. River Media Center has an "Ignore articles (a, an, the)" setting in Options -> Tree and View -> Sorting. Personally, I hate it when the "The" is moved to the back of the artist's name or is removed. I also hate it when bands can't make up their minds as to whether there is a "The" in their name. "The Offspring" comes to mind.

[tenzip]

Originally Posted by Hirudin

This doesn't help with the stupid sorting on most players, but J. River Media Center has an "Ignore articles (a, an, the)" setting in Options -> Tree and View -> Sorting. Personally, I hate it when the "The" is moved to the back of the artist's name or is removed. I also hate it when bands can't make up their minds as to whether there is a "The" in their name. "The Offspring" comes to mind.

Again, I think it's an acclimation thing. I am used to seeing an author's name listed as Last, First, so seeing Firm, The, seems fairly normal to me. I guess I've always tagged and named files/directories that way, so it is just the way I'm used to. It just so happens that it works the way that my MP3 players do. Happy coincidence.

As far as the bands that can't make up their minds, I decide if they are unable/unwilling/inconsistent.