How do you handle multi-artist albums?

[TentaM]

How does everyone handle multi-artist albums? Currently, sorting my folder structure by /[first letter of artist]/[artist]/[album], when I have an album that contains multiple artists, you have to go through and add each song by hand to your playlist.

I've thought about making the folder structure be /[first letter]/[album artist]/[album] and having the multi-artist albums have "Various Artists" be the album artist, but I am unsure if you would still be able to search for/see a particular artist on that album, or if the artist would simply always be shown as "Various Artists."

I haven't tested this yet because it would be a bit of an undertaking just in terms of processing - my collection is 1.2 TB. (Note, that is why I have it first sorted by the first letter of the artist - for manual browsing)

Has anyone else found a way to work around this?

Donated a few months ago - amazing program, and thanks for any ideas!

[kermit22]

I have my library set up as \First Letter\Artist\Album\ and I have a spot under"V" for various artist albums. \V\Various Artist\Album.

I don't have any trouble searching for individual artists while doing a search and if I browse all the way through the directory tree to get to an album Subsonic lists all of the tracks correctly because it uses the id3 tags embedded in the mp3.

Hopefully I answered your question. Cheers

[stennie]

Also, it's worth noting that ID3 tags have (at least) 2 "Artist" fields -- "Artist" and "Album Artist". I usually tag the latter as "Various Artists" while putting the explicit artists in the former.

You could then sort them as /V/Various Artists/[Album/Compilation Name]

Though the file names and directories may not show it, each track will contain the relevant artist(s) while treating the album (as a whole) as "Various Artists".

[ccandreva]

When I had CDs I would put them alphabetically by album title, intermixed with artists, so I've done the same thing. So, Nuggets is under "N", Toga Rock under "T", etc.

[ShaqFu]

I'll post the Library of Congress rules (aka the rules) for multi-artist albums later

[kroken]

How do you guys handle albums with more then 1 cd? do you place all the files in just one folder or sort them by cd like this VA->Best Of Pop->CD1,CD2 ?

[stennie]

How do you guys handle albums with more then 1 cd? do you place all the files in just one folder or sort them by cd like this VA->Best Of Pop->CD1,CD2 ?

That works, but I just use 3-digit track numbers and store them all in the same folder. CD1 is 1##, CD2 is 2##, and so on.

[kermit22]

How do you guys handle albums with more then 1 cd? do you place all the files in just one folder or sort them by cd like this VA->Best Of Pop->CD1,CD2 ?

I used to use the 3 digit track number like stennie, but I recently switched to a directory structure with a disc 1 directory and a disc 2 directory under Artist>Album in order to meet the needs of a different project I was working on with my music library. Either way works well with Subsonic. I think it is just a matter of personal preference.