Group Different Albums by the Same Artist under one Album Cover

Question

I've read many posts regarding grouping tracks by different artists into one album, but none dealing with grouping tracks by one artist together from different album titles. An example of this would be classical pieces that are divided into different acts, or more recently, the new Green Day album "21st Century Breakdown," which also divides the album into "acts." Another example of this situation could be a box set by a particular artist, for instance an Eagles box set that contains 3 discs of differing titles (disc one: Eagles, disc two: Desperado, disc three: Live) in which case the three CDs are all essentially part of the same album.
I know the grouping field can be utilized to tag all the CDs within the same set to keep them together; however, I have not been able to use this feature to group albums such as those mentioned above together under one album art in the grid or in the coverflow view. It looks rather silly when there are 3 or 4 of the same album cover in a row in the grid or the coverflow.
The best way I could think to differentiate the different acts on an album or CDs in a set was to group the songs in their own folder and change the title of the album tag to reflect which act (or CD) those particular tracks covered. While this works in the list view to keep the tracks in order, it does not allow me to view the album as a “whole” using the coverflow view. It seems the only way to merge differently tagged tracks is if the ALBUM title is the same even if there are multiple artists. I’ve tried using the grouping, sorting, and “part of a compilation” options with no success. Is there any way to merge these tracks under one album art while retaining the different album names?

Answer 1

Adding slightly to the previous post I would suggest that you give each disc of the set an appropriate disc no., e.g. Discs 1 of 3, 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 for Eagles, Desperado & Live respectively in your Eagles Box Set. Record the individual disc titles in the Comments or Grouping field, then change the Album title for all three discs to something appropriate like "Eagles Box Set". The three discs will collapse into one cover and play in sequence. If marking the transition from one disc to another matters you could, for example, simply add the album name in brackets to the first track of each album. You could use curly brackets to distinguish this from other types of track comment. For more organizational tips see my previous post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums, in particular the topic One cover for multi-disc album.
The alternative approach for box sets which simply repackage a number of original albums together is to find the original artwork for each album.
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