I'm trying to make a sorting string in the album list panel. I have a few albums which have a number of different artists on them. These albums are tagged with Album Artist: Various Artists. In the album list, let's say i were to sort by artist, i want all albums which do not have the album artist tag to be sorted under the artist name, and all that have the tag to be sorted under an entry called Various Artists. This became a little messy, but i hope you understand what i mean.

An example: If all is done correctly, my album list should look something like this:'

-Turbonegro
--(2005) Party Animals
---01. Intro: The Party Zone
---02. All My Friends Are Dead
---etc.
-Van Halen
-Various Artists
--(2005) Metal For Muthas
---01. Iron Maiden - Sanctuary
---02. Sledgehammer - Sledgehammer
---03. E. F. Band - Fighting For Rock And Roll

At Preferences, Media Library, Album List, create a new view with the following pattern:


Now just switch to this view in the album list.

Well, not quite what i had in mind. I want to implement it in some way in my normal sorting string, so i don't get a bunch of entries with just one or two songs in them. The way i have it now, with just a standard string sorting by artist, all my various artist albums are spread all over the list, which i do not want.

In fb2k's Preferences under Album List, then double-click on the 'Artist' view, and change :

%<artist>%

Into

%<album artist>%

Btw, the view that Frank Bicking posted, where actually an "enhanced" version of the normal 'Artist' view, and where both VA and non VA albums gets sorted correctly and where there would be a year in front of the album names, so that they get sorted chronologically...

Edit: Corrected a stupid mistake; thanks for the correction Frank (I wrote : <%field%> instead of %<field>%)

i wonder if this is helpful?


for the above to work you dir structure need to be

.....\Various Artists\%what ever you like here%\

Not what you had in mind? I perfectly get the part about various artists, I'm not new to this you know, and it seems to me like you haven't even tried what I have suggested, because in my opinion, it's the adequate solution. Also, you might want to show a little bit more appreciation to people trying to help you, instead of just dismissing their posts.

The addition suggested by Martin splits albums or tracks by multiple artists into separate items. Note that his post had a small syntax error, it should read %<album artist>%. Might be a good idea to replace %album artist% by this in to my proposed pattern.

@A_Man_Eating_Duck:

There is no need to check the folder names, as he already has proper album artist tags.

I didn't get it to work the first time i tried, so I've must have been doing something wrong. I didn't mean to dismiss your post. Anyways, it seems to be working smoothly now, so thanks for the help.

Doh! (I must be some kind of moron apparently!) Sorry about that and many thank's for the correction, mate