Compilations

From SqueezeboxWiki

This page gives an introduction to how SqueezeCenter handles Compilation albums, i.e. albums that do not have the same track artist for all tracks, and how you can customize this behavior. Like the game Go (“A minute to learn, a lifetime to master), SqueezeCenter’s Compilation album behavior is both simple and complex. We’ll start with a basic introduction to compilations in SqueezeCenter, and then discuss some of the advanced settings. This information is for SC 7.2. It should be noted that right now the Controller does not handle compilations properly (see Bug 8388). SC 8 is supposed to include a new schema that may change (improve?) the way SqueezeCenter handles compilations.

Contents 1 Basic Introduction 2 A typical setup 3 Additional Compilation-related settings

Basic Introduction

SqueezeCenter has built-in logic to determine whether an album is a compilation. If it finds an album that has different ARTIST tags for the tracks and does not have a common ALBUMARTIST tag, SqueezeCenter designates the album a Compilation. You can also use a COMPILATION tag to identify Compilation albums (COMPILATION=1 identifies the track as belonging to a compilation.) In iTunes the “part of a compilation” check box adds such a tag.

When browsing in Artist context (eg. Browse Genre > or Browse Artist > ), SqueezeCenter displays a special item at the top of the page called “Various Artists” which holds all compilation albums. Also, by default SqueezeCenter shows in Artist context every artist in your music library. If you have many compilation albums the artist list may become quite long with many artists represented by only a small number of tracks. You can choose to omit from artist lists those artists that only appear on compilation albums by choosing “group compilations” in Settings > Music Library. Artists that appear on a compilation and on a regular album will still be shown in the artist list.

Whether you group compilations or not, when you browse to a particular artist ALL albums on which that artist appears, both regular and compilations, will be listed. The compilation albums listed here will only show the tracks on which the artists appears. There is presently NO WAY to change this behavior. In other words, “group compilations” does not prevent compilation albums from appearing on the list of albums for individual artists. It controls what artists appear on artist lists.

To illustrate, suppose your library contains two albums:
album YYY
track 1 ARTIST=AAA
track 2 ARTIST=BBB
No ALBUMARTIST tag
Album ZZZ
all tracks with ARTIST=AAA

SqueezeCenter will automatically identify album YYY as a “compilation”. If “group compilations” is NOT selected then the list of artists shown when browsing Genre or Artist will include AAA, BBB, and “Various Artists”:

Artists

Various Artists

AAA

BBB

If “group compilations” is selected then artist lists when browsing will include AAA and “Various artists”, omitting BBB since it only appears on a compilation.

Artists

Various Artists

AAA

No matter how “group compilation” is set, when you browse to artist AAA you will see all AAA’s full albums as well as any compilation albums on which AAA appears, in this case YYY and ZZZ. If you select album YYY you will only see the tracks on which AAA appears, in this case track one:

Artists

Various Artists

AAA

YYY

track 1 title

ZZZ

BBB

Here is another example of an album SqueezeCenter will identify as a compilation:
Album= YYY
track 1 ARTIST= AAA
track 1 ARTIST= BBB
track 2 ARTIST= AAA
track 3 ARTIST= AAA

The following are examples of albums SqueezeCenter will NOT identify as compilations:
Album= YYY
track 1 ARTIST= “Various Artists”
track 2 ARTIST= “Various Artists”
track 3 ARTIST= “Various Artists”

tagging an album with ARTIST=“Various Artists” does not make the album a compilation.

Album= YYY
track 1 ARTIST= AAA
track 1 ARTIST= BBB
track 2 ARTIST= AAA
track 2 ARTIST= BBB
track 3 ARTIST= AAA
track 3 ARTIST= BBB

If an album has the same set of multiple artists on every track it is not a compilation, and will appear under each artist. [Can someone verify this is true?]

Album= YYY
track 1 ARTIST= AAA
track 1 ALBUMARTIST=EEE
track 2 ARTIST= BBB
track 2 ALBUMARTIST=EEE
track 3 ARTIST= CCC
track 3 ALBUMARTIST=EEE

No matter what the individual track artists are, if there is a common ALBUMARTIST then the album is not a compilation. Whether your mp3 files have an ALBUMARTIST tag may be related to how the TPE2 tag is interpreted. See discussion under #Additional Compilation-related settings below.

A typical setup

If you don’t want to see artists that only appear on compilations in your artist lists:

• In settings>Music Library:
  • Choose “group compilations”.
  • Choose “list by all artists” or “list by Band” as you like.
  • Choose “TPE2=Band”. (see discussion below if you wish TPE2 to be interpreted as ALBUMARTIST.)

• For compilation albums:
  • tag each track with the individual track artists.
  • optionally set COMPILATION=1 (not strictly necessary, since SqueezeCenter will automatically identify the album as a compilation since it has different track artists.)
  • optionally set the BAND tag.
  • Do not set the ALBUMARTIST tag.

Note: you will always see all compilation albums on which an artist appears when you browse to that artist. This currently cannot be changed.

Additional Compilation-related settings

There are two other settings under the Compilation heading on the SqueezeCenter settings page. Strictly speaking they don’t change the logic SqueezeCenter uses to handle compilations, but they do change how info is displayed and how your tags are interpreted. The latter in particular can have a major impact on how SqueezeCenter handles your library.

The second setting is “List albums by all artists” vs. “List albums by Band”. This describes how information about an album is displayed (but not how it is sorted). For example, if you Browse Albums, sorted by Album name, you only see the name of the album. If you sort the albums list by album artist, it will display the album artist if there is one, otherwise the artist(s) or band(s) on the album, depending on the selection here. As an example, a song by ARTIST=XXX;YYY, and BAND=ZZZ would appear as "album by XXX, YYY" if "List by all artists", or "album by ZZZ" if "List by Band".

The third setting only controls how the scanner reads id3 v2.3 tags from mp3 files, whether it treats the TPE2 tag as Band or ALBUMARTIST. This is to allow compatibility with other applications that misuse the TPE2 tag for ALBUMARTIST. This is important because, as outlined above, setting ALBUMARTIST for an album effectively prevents SqueezeCenter from treating it as a compilation. So be careful to do this only if you mean it.

The detailed behavior of compilation handling in SqueezeCenter can be subtle and quirky behavior can result in certain situations. Search the Forums to find the many threads discussing the issues. Also, you can search the bug list for bugs related to compilations. Even closed bugs have comments that illuminate how compilations work in SqueezeCenter. The following is a partial listing of relevant bug reports:

Bug 9523
Bug 9938
Bug 9872
Bug 9870
Bug 8324
Bug 8004
Bug 8001
Bug 7698
Bug 6658
Bug 6629
Bug 6490
Bug 6208
Bug 6189
Bug 5108
Bug 4754
Bug 4624