Compilation albums not handled correctly, Boxee doesn't use Album Artist tag

Rafael Mizrahi [Boxee] added a comment - 16/May/10 10:02 AM boxee is only using ID3 tags to identify your music library items. please verify that the tracks in this album have a proper ID3 tag.

Dom added a comment - 16/May/10 10:15 AM Each track has title/album/artist/albumartist ID3 tags. I think I've tried the 'compilation_artist' tag aswell but I'm sure that's not a standard ID3 tag.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 16/May/10 11:02 AM This bug is very general, if you could please add reproduction steps and results that would be great, it will also be great to get some sample files to investigate boxee behavior as you described. Can you provide these? if you need uploading service with storage i can supply you with one.

Dom added a comment - 16/May/10 6:42 PM I will try and sort some sample files but can I just check what ID3 tag is used to correctly label a compilation album, i.e 'album_artist'? Thanks

Dom added a comment - 17/May/10 4:47 AM - edited As an experiment I took a compilation album with distinct artists for each track and tagged it as follows album - "MyAlbum" artist (TPE1) - "SomeArtist1" performner (TPE2) - "Performer" conductor (TPE3) - "Conductor" arranger (TPE4) "Arranger" I used EX Falso to tag, it only displays human readable tag names and not the 4 character ID3 frame name so I had to do some googling to find out what maps to each of the TPE frames. Boxee seems to be ignoring all of these compilation type TPE2-4 tags and the album was recorded as one of the individual artists and not as Performer/Conductor/Arranger.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Jun/10 7:20 AM When no 'ARTIST' found boxee doesnt look for the ALBUM ARTIST, it resolves the album as "UNKNOWN ARTIST".

Tom Pieters added a comment - 06/Jun/10 12:25 PM This is indeed my number one complaint in the current handling of music files. I'll try to make Dom's point clear with some screenshots. First the representation as can be seen in iTunes, this is obviously a self-compiled album. "Compilation" flag is on, "Artist" is filled in with the individual names and "Album Artist" contains the general "Various Artists" content.

Tom Pieters added a comment - 06/Jun/10 12:27 PM Zooming in on a particular song, same detail is visible ...

Tom Pieters added a comment - 06/Jun/10 12:33 PM As you're able to see, Boxee insists that it's playing a "Pink Floyd" Album ("Another Brick in The Wall" by Pink Floyd is a random song of my "Best Of" album) so it will use this artist for all songs ! And yep, don't know where the lady comes from - probably another random song.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 28/Jun/10 3:08 AM darcilicious: I have a number of (DJ) CDs that have one Album Artist (e.g. Markus Schulz) and individual/differing track artists in the Artist field. Boxee apparently grabs the Artist from the first track (??) and displays that as the Album Artist. This is incorrect and should be fixed. Or even better, do what SageTV does (I just discovered this tonight, myself) and let the user decide how Artists should/shouldn't be grouped together -- see second screenshot.

darcilicious added a comment - 28/Jun/10 1:37 PM An example of letting the user select what should be used for "Display by Artist" view.

Tom Pieters added a comment - 28/Jun/10 1:37 PM Ami, if I can elaborate a bit further on the requirements, taking the info of how it is handled in iTunes and applying it on Boxee in a logical way: In the ALBUM view, Boxee should grab the Album Artist from the first track, only if not available the current choice of grabbing the Artist tag seems fine. In the ARTIST view, there are three options depending on the complexity of the implementation:   1. Currently, I don't think that these compilations appear in the artist list at all (which is fine for me)   2. You could argue that they should be displayed, though it will clutter up the list with one-song artists, which I personally not like   3. Best choice (à la iTunes): you offer an option (see second screenshot) to group or not compilation albums and depending on the choice, you display the artists or not. Any comments welcome... Tom

Daniel Dunk added a comment - 29/Nov/10 9:52 AM I would also like to have to option to sort by 'AlbumArtist'. Right now my compilation albums are shown under one of the Artists that are on the compilation album, but i can't understand how Boxee determines which artist to sort the album under. Itunes and Windows Media Player also sort by 'AlbumArtist'. I am not asking to change the default sorting method, but just add the possibility to do otherwise. Thanks in advance.

Jeffrey Elzenaar added a comment - 03/Dec/10 3:34 PM In my opinion a very important thing. I've now an album from ministry of sound and it has all the ID3 tags as various artists but in the boxee box it shows 3 different artists and then the 3 parts of the CD's. It should be seen as various artists and then the full cd.

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 13/Dec/10 8:07 PM Its easy if your not a listener of DJ mix albums (or concerts grouped by performance I am told) to underestimate how essential this is. I have 100's of mixes, maybe 1000's.. And they are all properly tagged by the separate track artist and as a group / album / mix by the DJ who mixes the set as album artist, without this as a browsing option I have 1000's of artists, each with a single track, or one track from one album and another from another, with no proper context or organisation. Its essential for dance music listeners.

Jeffrey Elzenaar added a comment - 14/Dec/10 4:10 AM I Totally agree with you Phat Freddy. I have the same problem. I use a lot of mixed albums too as i'm listening to a lot of dance. I don't understand why this issue has been open for so long and in the backlog. There should be a lot of people who have the same problem as us. And in my opinion it's a very critical one for people like us who listenins to music like this,

Jeffrey Elzenaar added a comment - 12/May/11 1:41 PM I was wondering why this bug with 52 votes is in the backlog. Of course i want to push my own troubles to the top :P but just want to give it some attention again to everyone so maybe we get more votes for this as for me it's kind of annoying.

Jeffrey Elzenaar added a comment - 13/May/11 9:03 AM That's very understandable. But lots of people in Europe also want Spotify on Boxee which is also music of course, so i think music is as much important as video for a lot of people. I agree video has to be the main focus, but video is pretty good in my view already! Only music can be a bit better.

Bryan added a comment - 25/May/11 7:38 PM I see this problem a lot with various music playing apps for my Android phone. I too have a few DJ mixes where it's just 1 artist playing other artists music. One fix is if "Folder" view is supported. That way, all tracks inside that folder get treated as one body of work

Peter added a comment - 26/Jun/11 4:07 AM I was considering buying a boxee box, but after finding out that this basic functionality was missing in the software I decide not to buy it until this issue has been resolved.

Daniel Martin added a comment - 05/Aug/11 10:19 PM This is such a trivial code change I cannot believe the Boxee developers still haven't just fixed this & made a lot of the community happier! I expect this would take an adequate developer less than 2hrs to implement & test. Cmon, whats the hold up!? If Boxee was Open Source for what you could then you'd see more bugs squashed & features updated in quicker time.

Rui Pinheiro added a comment - 25/Oct/11 11:51 AM is this fixed??!

darcilicious added a comment - 25/Oct/11 12:07 PM @Rui, yes for a future release (no idea when, I'm just another Boxee user)

Rafael Mizrahi [Boxee] added a comment - 20/Nov/11 9:45 AM closed. verified in 1.5.0.22423