Artist sort order - weird

[Rob_S]

New here - Have used Mediamonkey Gold for some years now. Searched a bit here and can't find anything on this issue.

Working with (sorting and tagging) a large collection (12k) of mp3

When I display all my music, in the middle pane, and click the "artist" column header, I find it sorts by some combination of Album artist and artist. What I get is something like this:

- First I get all files which have both, in "album artist" order and not in "artist" order.
- Following will be all the files with artists and blank album artist
- Then follow the files with album artist "Various..." in "artist" order

My question is there some way to sort by artist only, totally ignoring the "album artist column??

[Lowlander]

No, but you can define what the secondary sort column should be. So you could sort Artist > Title or something like that. Just hold down the Ctrl button while applying additional sorts.

[Rob_S]

So, if I sort by "artist", by clicking only on the artist column header, then why is that alone not the primary sort key??

I tried sorting by "artist", with control click on the "Track volume" column which is blank, and it still used the "Album artist" column as part of the sort key.

[Lowlander]

You'd always have something else sorted on when you have multiple matches to the sorted column. A random secondary sort would not be useful.

MediaMonkey applies many additional sorts, for example a sort on Album sorts on Album > Album Artist > Disc# > Track# > Title.

You can't sort on a Column in MediaMonkey and then apply a random secondary sort.

[Rob_S]

I am ok with any sort of secondary sort.

My question is, when I click on the "artist" column, I would like to see all entries by the same "artist" together.

As it seems to be working now, I get one group that has this artist name in the "album artist" field, and another group of the same artist way down lower, that does not have anything in the "album artist" field.

ie The column header I am selecting is NOT being used as the primary key.

[Lowlander]

What node in the Media Tree, which View and which version of MediaMonkey (Help > About)?

[Rob_S]

"Music" node itself at the top, or any of its sub-nodes such as album, etc

Under "View" I have the top 5 items ticked, and "Show art with details"

Latest version AFAIK 4.1.31.1919

By the way, it works the same on a filtered sub-set of my music, in three groups as noted in the first post.

[Lowlander]

That view is designed to group by Album which is what I assume what's happening. If you switch to Details you'd get the files together.

[Rob_S]

Confirmed, it works in details view as you say.

However, I find it strange that any other key (column header) I sort on such as Title, Album, filename, length, date etc all sort "correctly" in "art with details" view.

Only the "Artist" sort displays this unusual grouping. I just tested, and found that if I delete the "album artist" tag from one file within a named album set, it separates, and displays further down with other songs by that artist.

So it does not seem to be accomplishing the stated objective of keeping entire albums together.

For example I have many "albums" or collections of country music each containing some songs from each of several artists. I still think if I want to sort by "Artist" I should be able to see all of those together in this view.