Music STV Enhancement Suggestions

[malbec]

I have been around this board long enough to know there is some dissent about how the STV handles music. Unfortunately, I don't possess any Java skills so as to simply whip up an STV import with added music features. However, I thought I would post some suggestions in case somebody out there that does have such skills was bored and is dying for "you are the greatest" feedback.

1) I wish Sage used "Album Artist" instead of "Artist" as the artist identifier. By using "Artist" I have way too many "Various Artists" CDs as apparently Sage looks to the name of the artist on the imported CD and if there is any variation at all in teh name across tracks, defaults to "Various Artists." For example, "Around the Sun" by R.E.M. The artist is R.E.M. on every track but one ("The Outsiders" by Q-Tip & R.E.M.) As a result, R.E.M. is not the artist in Sage, but "Various Artist" is. Annoying.

2) There are numerous "Greatest Hits" albums out there. In Sage, every single Greatest Hits album is pulled into a single Greatest Hits album with every other artist that created a like named album. IMO, Sage would, ideally, upon import, a) compare all Album names, b) where duplicates exist, use "Album (Album Artist)" as the name of the album.

3) When you select "Albums" to select a song, there is a bar on the right hand side that lists all 26 letters so as to get to part of the alphabet quickly. Yet, when you select "Artists" such a bar is lacking. I would like the same alphabetical funtionality added tot he Artist section that exist in the Albums section.

[blade]

I agree it needs some improvements. In the meantime, if your music is properly tagged most of the problems you mentioned will go away.

[malbec]

Well, do you have any suggestions on how to improve the tagging then as everything shows up fine in Windows Media player and iTunes...

Particular tagging app of choice I might play around with?

[sleonard]

It's not your tagging. Sage just doesn't support the Album Artist tag. I have the same issues as you.

The good news is that a major revision of music support in the works. Just a matter of time for Sage to write the code.

[Opus4]

I had forgotten that Jeff has already commented about adding an AlbumArtist field. That should solve all those issues about multiple "AlbumName by SongArtist" albums instead of a single "AlbumName by AlbumArtist" entry in the album list. (Items 1 & 2 in the first post, above.)

- Andy

[malbec]

Thanks guys!

[Necro]

Based upon how I tagged all my music for meedio, I would LOVE if the sorting/reading options were configurable. So, my music has the composer and original artists fields used for correct sorting of artist names, display names, etc. So if I could do my own sort methods based on ANY field name, it would be perfect.

Just to explain, my 'composer' field that is sorted on may be Beatles, The while the displayed 'artist' field/tag would be The Beatles. So it would sort right, and appear where I wanted. I also use other tags to set soundtracks/multigenre stuff and exclude/include album types based on that.

Sadly, I kind of just want what meedio did for music. I really would love it integrated...that was kind of a great method for personalizing how to view your music.


(BTW, I'm using a slower/older PC at the moment and until I upgrade running sage and meedio really bogs things down even though I have it setup so I can do that)