[bug] (missing feature?) iPod Compilation album support

[ZPrime]

With iTunes, there's an option (under "get info") you can set on a group of songs to mark them as a compilation album. When you do this, the individual "Artist"s on that album DO NOT get entries on the iPod's Artist list, you get the Album Artist (i.e. "Various") instead. If you have a lot of compilation albums, this keeps you from having a GIANT list of Artists who only have a single song off a single album. It keeps the data from the Artist field though, so when you play the song the Now Playing shows the artist for each song even though the album is by "Various."

MM doesn't have any way (that I can find) to set this Compilation flag on a file, so when I sync a VA album I get tons of Artists in my list that I don't want.

Ideally, it would be something where if the Artist field is filled in, and Album Artist is also filled in, andthey don't match, then the Comp. tag is set in the iTunesDB as the file is sent to the iPod.

Alternatively, just give the ability to add it as a metadata tag in the original files and just read from there, instead of depending on Artist and AA to not match.

FWIW, my library is all FLAC and I use MM3 to go on-the-fly to MP3 for the iPod and keep my metadata (ratings, etc) in sync.

I'm running the latest build of MM3 b4. I haven't yet submitted an official bug report to the e-mail address because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something stupid... I can provide iTunesDB with the iTunes compilation tag set so you can see what they do in there to make it happen.

[ZPrime]

This can be removed / canceled. I thought it was an MM3 bug or missing feature, but in reality I had a mistagged album.

In short - if your Album Artist tag doesn't match Artist, and you sync to a modern iPod, the album *will* be marked a compilation, or at least you won't get artist clutter from it, in MM3.

I can't speak for MM2 as I didn't use it with an iPod.

[DaledeSilva]

aHA!

I was wanting to do this.
I just saw this post and so I played with my ipod settings and found out how to do it.

by default, you ipod will list all artists int he arts directory..

If you go to the "settings", "music menu" and turn ON "compilations"... it will now list compilations as a node in the music menu.. AND it will NOT list the artists involved int he artists menu... awesome!

Dale.