[kraqh3d]

yup. that works. i can have it append the artist name if this works reasonably well for "greatest hits" albums. do some more testing and report back.

[C-Quel]

i think the record label e.g [emi], [geffen] etc.. and the year (2003), (2004) etc... need to be filtered out of the items found to make it more accurate as they seem to throw the artist, album search way out. bit like the stacking used in videos only on the items found so basically strip anything between [] and () and the - might help make the search more precise.

[kraqh3d]

i've never seen the record label in square brackets. typically anything in square brackets is an album name qualifier like [uk release], etc. this is used in the comparison because there's multiple versions of the same album. removing anything in square brackets would be bad. it will likely yeild more albums of exactly the same name.

and we add the year in parens... its not used in the comparison.

[C-Quel]

i'm lost then as i think that some of the info in the brackets is throwing the searches out of sync... oh well ill manually add them using folder jpg thanks anyway mate

[kraqh3d]

sorry bud, i cant help you if you cant give me some examples. i've not seen the record label in square brackets in my testing, and i did a decent amount (that's how i discovered the bug with the image not being updated when picking a different album from the chooser dialog.)

i have seen things in square brackets, but as i said earlier, it was usually some qualifier to seperate identical albums. (different regions, a limited edition version, extra bonus tracks, etc, stuff like that.)

for that reason alone, i would not want to blanket remove all items in square brackets. it would create multiple identical album names, thereby negating the 100% matching which now (mostly) works.

folder.jpg wont work, and never did. once you do an album lookup, that cover gets cached as the album cover, and as the folder icon if theres only a single album in that folder.

[C-Quel]

right then so i think its confirmed allmusic does not allow for greatest hits lookups as the artist name cannot be looked up at the same time. unless the greatest hits tag is unique i.e. greatest hits [asia] then it will find *any* artist with [a?] after the greatest hits text.

roll on amazon :p

[kraqh3d]

uh no... not really.

allmusic.com is apparently limiting the number of returned items. querying for album name "greatest hits" yeilds too many matches, so the list is truncated back to their limit. how they determine whats is returned in the list when that limit is reached is unknown.

the [asia] has absolutely nothing to do with the artist. that is just how the album is named in their database. it means its the asian release. nothing more.

adding [a to the query means the query returns less items that just searching for "greatest hits". i assume in this case their internal limit of the number of returned items is not reached, and the correct item is in the returned list.

[C-Quel]

ahhhhhhh yes! now i see... damn... so basically for greatest hit lookup you would need to retrieve every album allmusic has listed then filter the artist...   now thats a scary thought  :verysad: and not possible until allmusic lift there limit if they do. i suppose they filter by most recently viewed or edited or such like? who knows. oh well thanks kraqh3d i now understand the logic now

[spiff]

just wanted to say; great work! works much better now.

on the record label in brackets thingy. just a theory, but if a artist has several best of records on different record labels, it might be the identifier used to differentiate between these..

[C-Quel]

spiff i believe thats correct mate... each of top listed labums seem to have on average 5-6 records labels all titled 'greatest hits'

[kraqh3d]

dean...

exactly! there's not much more i can do now. allmusic is limiting the number of returned items. my changes merely used the artist to more accurately determine the correct album from those in the returned list. in this case, however, the correct album isnt even in the returned list.

if anyone figures out a way to reliably combine the album and artist together in the query, i can test it out and change it.

spiff...

thanks!

[C-Quel]

the only way i have managed to even return the album is being registered and doing the following.

choose advanced search

database to search = pop
looking for = text mention
search by = name
enter name == robbie williams

this is the only way i have managed to list his album.

way to much hassle for you guys!

[pade]

thanks all dedicated developers. personally i hate these kind of programming so i'm glad someone else did it  :o. i did ask allmusic.com for a combined artist and album search

hi, i registred in order to get access to the advanced search. i thought that i then could serach with both album and name. i realised that that was not the case. why not? it's almost impossible to search for e.g. "the best of" since there are to many artists producing that album title

and here are the answer.

thanks for your feedback. we always love hearing from our users and appreciate, and take to heart, their feedback. we are continually evaluating new features and functionality. we have forwarded your suggestion about improving our advanced search on to our website development team & editorial staff for consideration.

stay tuned. we hope you continue to visit, and enjoy, allmusic.com.

best regards,

amg

i post a new reply as soon i hear something new from allmusic.com. shall i or someone else ask them for the limited number of results return, that gives us problems when looking for e.g. "the best of". that might result in that they change the interface, and i don't know how much work that could generate for us.