2009-08-18, 08:09
As described in many threads in this forum, XBMC does not currently support a good way of organizing a music collection which is a combination of singles and full albums.
Here is a proposal for how this can be resolved:
If the tag ALBUM = <empty>, then XBMC will recognize this track as a 'single' song, without relation to other tracks.
Advantages:
1. It will work for all music formats, since all formats contains an ALBUM tag. No extended tags are needed.
2. It's intuitive and easy to communicate to all users: If a track is a 'single track' without relations to other tracks, then it makes sense that ALBUM tag = <empty>. The track does not belong to any album.
Disadvantages (and why they are not ;-)
1. Some may argue that some albums does not have a title, and hence ALBUM = <> is a valid album name. But to me, it seems like the de-facto standard is this case is that in such cases the ALBUM tag is set to the name of the artist.
2. Some may argue that the proposed solution does not cater for physical single-albums which typically contains 2 - 3 songs. But I would argue that the proposed solution caters for this as well: If you put ALBUM = <single name> for the 2-3 songs, then you want XBMC to treat this as a mini-album. On the other hand, if you set ALBUM = <empty>, then you want the tracks to be organized as individual single tracks.
Proposal for changes in XBMC GUI:
1. All tracks with tag ALBUM = <empty> are removed from Album view.
2. In Artist view, you get a new entry called 'Singles' below the listing of the full albums from this artist. The tracks with ALBUM = <empty> will be available here.
3. XBMC read the embedded image of each file with ALBUM = <empty>.
I look forward to hearing your opinion on this proposal!
Here is a proposal for how this can be resolved:
If the tag ALBUM = <empty>, then XBMC will recognize this track as a 'single' song, without relation to other tracks.
Advantages:
1. It will work for all music formats, since all formats contains an ALBUM tag. No extended tags are needed.
2. It's intuitive and easy to communicate to all users: If a track is a 'single track' without relations to other tracks, then it makes sense that ALBUM tag = <empty>. The track does not belong to any album.
Disadvantages (and why they are not ;-)
1. Some may argue that some albums does not have a title, and hence ALBUM = <> is a valid album name. But to me, it seems like the de-facto standard is this case is that in such cases the ALBUM tag is set to the name of the artist.
2. Some may argue that the proposed solution does not cater for physical single-albums which typically contains 2 - 3 songs. But I would argue that the proposed solution caters for this as well: If you put ALBUM = <single name> for the 2-3 songs, then you want XBMC to treat this as a mini-album. On the other hand, if you set ALBUM = <empty>, then you want the tracks to be organized as individual single tracks.
Proposal for changes in XBMC GUI:
1. All tracks with tag ALBUM = <empty> are removed from Album view.
2. In Artist view, you get a new entry called 'Singles' below the listing of the full albums from this artist. The tracks with ALBUM = <empty> will be available here.
3. XBMC read the embedded image of each file with ALBUM = <empty>.
I look forward to hearing your opinion on this proposal!