Changing Browser to Album Artist?

Question

Hello,
I've got iTunes 7 on my PC and have a question about Browsing by Album Artist:
Can I change the "browser" (turn-on-and-off-able bit at the top of the main song selecty window) to work off "Album artist" instead of/as well as Artist?
Just to fill in what I already know, and to help people who are confused or stuck with iTunes organising things into folders where they don't want them stored...
I have worked out so far that I can fill in Artist and album artist (as I always did in WMP to keep things organised) so I can put Various Artists or the DJ/Compiler/Record Label in Album Artist, and the actual Artist in the Artist hole.
I also noticed that I need to check "Compliation" to make it store it in my HDD under Album artist so it doesn't confuse the **** out of me by spreading everything around into individual song artist directories and stuffing me live when DJing and looking for a particular "record" using Atomix Virtual DJ (which goes by the file structure in windows).
In the main window view I can sort all music by album artist by clicking on that title in the complete song list of all music, (and it being a "compilation").
Also in the big CD cover browsing view (which is nice btw!) it sorts by album artist. Yay! Marvellous!
However, because I have loads of CDs, sometimes if I'm not having a browse and want to go straight to a CD I'd like to be able to use the 1st or 2nd browser view. If I want a Blue Note Compilation, Various Artists, any of my soundtrack albums, or DJ/Record label compilations I have to scroll all the way up and down the long list. If for example I wanna listen to "Keep it solid Steel" by Mr. Scruff, if I choose him in the artist box it won't have anything off that album as it's a compilation by him, and will only show his own songs. WMP will go by Album Artist (even though it actually says Artist in the left Colum on the new WMP11 beta), but I'd rather use iTunes as it seems faster and nicer generally (and has useful things like the backup option). If iTunes does this it'll definitely be my media player of choice.
If this isn't possible, any chance of iTunes 8 being able to select what options you can sort by at the top of the browser?
The only way I've found is to type "Various", "Warp", "Blue Note", etc. in the search box
It seems very frustrating to me if you can't, especially since like all media players iTunes comes with "Genre" which seems far less useful amongst the widely varying crossover artists, styles, and vibes, that music comes in! Can anyone tell me if Lamb are Dance, Drum n' bass, Jazz n Bass, Electronica, Trip-Hop, Hip-hop, Trance, Soul, Pop, Alternative Pop, Jazz? Heck, today I discovered a handful of new musical genres including "Wonky Trance" and "Clown Step"! (see wikipedia if you don't believe me!)
Cheers,
Me
Custom P4 3.0GHz   Windows XP   3Gb RAM, 500GB HDD, FX5900 Ultra, M-Audio Delta 1010LT, flashing lights, extra cooling fans to suck more dust in! ;o)

Answer 1

Bollocks! No, it doesn't work nicely as they all appear in the wrong track order! Doh!
I noticed other people have brought this up before in the forum.
I sent a feedback to Apple. Here it is for those of you having the same problem, or who agree, or who don't understand what I'm on about:
Hello,
I've just changed to using iTunes a few weeks ago as it has some nicer user functions (was previously using windows media player) and it's making me very frustrated...
I store all my albums (well over 10,000 tunes I've collected for YEARS on CD!) by the way they come on the CD; by Track Artist for the Artist and Album Artist for the Album artist. Normally for e.g. Michael Jackson, Artist and Album Artist will be the same. For compilation/DJ mix ablums this means the Album Artist will be Various Artists, the DJ/Production Crew, or Record label as applicable. If, for example, I want to listen to my Jazzanova Remixes album I can sort by album artist, choose Jazzanova, and get all the tunes on that album, whilst artist points out who each individual track is by (that Jazzanova remixed). Likewise, if I scroll to "various artists" in album artist I'll get compilation albums, or a particular DJ/collective such as by Mr. Scruff, Blue Note records compilations, etc., etc.
Also this applies to artists where the album may be one artist, but each song artist may be that artist + another, e.g. Artist being Eminem & Dr Dre, Eminem & Dido, Eminem (feat. Joe Bloggs), etc., whilst the Album remains filed under the "Album Artist" of Eminem so I don't get millions of "X with/featuring Y" artists and spreading my albums out in a big mess.
The problem of iTunes filing them in different artist folders for each track on that album on my harddrive can be overcome by making them a "compilation", then it seems to store in Compilation instead.
However, it seems to insist on filing secondarily by artist, not track number/and album, when album artist is selected. This then messes the list up completely as, if I use the artists "Coldcut" as an example, when I go to Coldcut as an album artist it displays the beginning of the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut (album artist) from "track artists" alphabetically A->C until it gets to the Coldcut songs on it, then has a completely different coldcut album (Sound Mirrors) of which all tracks are written by Coldcut and the album artist is Coldcut, then finishes the "Journeys by DJ" album by coldcut with the rest of the track artists from Coldcut->Z!
The only way around this seems to be to file by album, then scroll all the way through loads of tunes to get to that particular album, defeating the idea of an easily organised music collection!
This problem is made worse by the fact if I have "browse by compilations" on to help, and use the browser at the top, Artist only chooses by track artist. I then need to go to Compilations and (assuming I remember it's called "Journeys by DJ" since I can't go straight to Compilation Artist) click on the album, from a list of all my "various artist" and DJ/remix/record label compilations.
At this point it gets worse as having chosen the album (for the sake of this example "Journeys by DJ" by Coldcut) all the tracks then appear in track artist alphabetical order since it's either still being browsed by Album Artist as I would have had my records diplayed by that to begin with and it sorts secondarily by track Artist. Alternatively it could be sorted by (track) "Artist" since I'd browsing by compilation. Regardless since I would have narrowed it down to one album with the browser function so "album artist" will all be the same for all tracks, it makes no difference - it is going to be listed alphabetically by track artist.
This means therefore, that unless the album is alphabetically sorted by artist to begin with it comes up in the wrong order!!! Therefore when you play your lovely expertly DJ mixed compiation you bought on CD all the crossfades between tracks don't happen as the album's in the wrong order!!!
You can get around this by then clicking displaying "Track number" too. This seems silly though as normally in a normal view it already shows them at the front of the track listing. You therefore have to have them displayed twice, and then after going into compilations, choosing the album, you then have to sort by track number each time! If you do this, whenever you go back to the rest of your albums they then have all the track 1's first, then all the track 2's, and again you have to change what you sort by (Album Artist or Artist) to make them sensible again!
As you can imagine this is a pain! It happens with all my Various Artist albums, and various other DJ artists such as Mr. Scruff, and soundtrack albums, or record label compilations too!
The obvious possible answers to this problem are:
a) when sorting by the column "Album Artist" make it search secondarily, after Album Artist, by album then track number, then finally "(track) Artist" after that (in case there are no track numbers!).
b) make "artist" in the browser search by "Album Artist" not artist. This is what Windows Media Player does (even though it actually says "Artist" in the broswer), and goes by track "Artist" if there is nothing in the "Album Artist" tag field. it will then search by album and track number, but not Album artist followed by Artist. The browser could also be set to search in both Artist and Album Artist fields to save me having to go through all my 40+ compilations to find an album I know is by coldcut or Mr Scruff. If it did I could just turn "Browse by Compilation" off in preferences and get the same effect. Regardless to stop the wrong ordering it needs to not organise by Artist secondarily if I have it organised by album artist.
Whether the "Artist" in the broswer does Artist/Album Artist/or both could be set in preferences? Also this could change it to file in folders on the harddrive by Album Artist too. I'd far rather have my Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff, etc. albums in Coldcut, Jazzanova, & Mr. Scruff directories, so when I browse my harddrive it's obvious who they are by rather than apparently being by "Compilation"!
Regardless iTunes should try to put things in the library view in order of Album and track number as much as possible when I have it organised by Album Artist. As mentioned I had been using WMP 10 & 11 beta until recently, but I changed as iTunes seems to work faster and smoother, and has the handy backup feature and seemless playback so I made the shift. The seamless playback made me instantly go to try DJ mix albums to hear them seamless, hence why I became frustrated very quickly!
Also I intend to get a Mac as my next computer so I won't have the option of WMP!
Another thing I noticed was the "Remember position" tag under the "get info" section when you have multiple selections. I wondered if this could change the order it plays them in but didn't seem to do anthing and can't find mention of it in the help or on the forum! What's that for?
If I'm being stupid and there's an easy way to make it work let me know, but I've tried as many things as I can think of, but I think it's reasonable not to have to keep changing the way everything is displayed in the library view to find an album and play it in the right order. I want it to work like the pile of CDs on my shelves and appear as I got them in the record store! If not Microsoft might have finally made something that seems to work in a more user friendly way than Apple, and that can't be right!
...as you can see I also pointed out that it might be nice to be able to get iTunes to file my Mr. Scruff, Coldcut, Jazzanova, etc. compilation/DJ albums on my hard drive by the Artist who released them (or by "various artists"); the same place I'd find them in the record shop I bought them from, and the main name on the album cover of the CD!
I DJ too (using Virtual DJ) and hence DO care about where I find these files on my hard drive, and would like to be able to find them based on the Album Artist! Also when I copy tunes over to my MP3 player, again I want them filed like the CDs I bought them on! I'm not just wingeing about this point for no reason. Obviously you don't care where they actually are stored on your HDD if it's only ever iTunes you play files with, and own an iPod where it automatically copies files for you, but it makes a big difference to me!