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Topic: Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers (Read 6567 times) previous topic - next topic
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Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

So I've used winamp forever, but with my brand new fresh install of Windows 7, I decided I'd like to go with something less... intrusive. Having heard about how great Foobar is for a long time, I settled on it.

Now, so far, I love it. Moreso than winamp. Except for a small number of relatively minor things. Still, they're enough to bug me when combined.

The main issue I have is that any artists that start with the word The are alphabetized in the T's. Winamp would naturally organize them with the first letter of the word following The. I like my Beatles in the B's, my Doors in the D's, and my Reverend Horton Heat in the R's. Anyway to have it automatically alphabetize them that way? Another feature I'd love, that winamp didn't have, is the ability to organize my albums by year, rather than alphabetically, but still have artists alphabetical. It's not a huge deal, but with bands like The Protomen, it'd be really nice. Lastly, is there a way to have foobar automatically search the internet for album covers so I don't have to rely on what's embedded in the files, since more often than not there isn't anything? I don't like keeping jpgs in my music folders, and I liked how winamp would just hook up to some massive database, so even for my obscure black metal bands, I could have the album art right there.

Thanks for any help.

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #1 –
1) Ignore prefix: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...refix2.2C....29

2) Sort by artist, date, album:
Preferences > general > sort incoming files by > %artist% - %date% - %album%

3) Don't know about auto downloading covers.

C.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #2 –
I thinks Biography view panel could do the job for your third question.
It searches information (including album art, if available) on last.fm.
It lasts some time to display the downloaded informations, though (depends on the speed of your internet connection). But only for the first time the informations are loaded. No problem with following playbacks, if you enable to save the infos/images to your local disc and read them from here.
But its only available for Columns UI...

I don't know any similar plugin for Default UI.

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #4 –
Here's where you guys hate me for being a stupid noob.

1. Where do I put in the function to ignore prefixes?
2. When I input %artist% - %date% - %album% in the general tab for preferences, there's no apply button, and when I hit close, my music remains the same. Hitting the auto-organize in the playlist just keeps it alphabetized. Do I have to re-load in all my music with the new preferences?

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #5 –
1. It depends on which library viewer you are using. Assuming you are using the default user interface it either is album list or facets. For album list go to Preferences>Media Library>Album List and edit or add a new view.
eg. by artist: $swapprefix(%<album artist>%)|%album%|[[%discnumber%.]%tracknumber%. ][%track artist% - ]%title%
For facets: Preferences>Media Library>Facets, make a new column or edit the existing artist column to: $swapprefix(%<album artist>%)

2. There is no "auto-organize" i'm aware of. Existing playlist will always stay sorted as they are. "Sort incoming files by" defines how items will be sorted which you add from a library viewer or from the shell. To sort existing playlist you can select the whole playlist content and Edit>Sort (unless it's a force sorted auto-playlist).

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #6 –
Just to add to what smkk said.
If you use Columns UI, you can create "custom sort patterns", so that what is seen in a column doesn't dictate how that column will sort the playlist when clicked on, i.e. you can have %artist% displayed, but when clicked on the column will sort according to your custom sort pattern (not sure if Default UI does this, as I haven't used it for a long time). This is very handy, especially if you have classical music in your collection, as you can use $if to sort in different ways by genre:

Code: [Select]
$if($strcmp($lower(%genre%),classical),ENTER CLASSICAL SORT PATTERN,ENTER NON-CLASSICAL SORT PATTERN)

Finally, added %date% to smkk's suggestion, so it matches your date requirements:

Code: [Select]
$swapprefix(%<album artist>%)|[%date%]|%album%|[[%discnumber%.]%tracknumber%. ][%track artist% - ]%title%

C.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #8 –
Ah, useful. Missed that. 

C.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #9 –
Similar question: I want to sort by artist, then date, then disc number, then album, then track number (yes disc number before album)

However this puts albums without anything in the disc number field before the other albums, regardless of date (so the multi-disk albums end up at the end of the artist's section). Instead, if there's nothing in that field, I want to ignore it. I tried something like this:
Code: [Select]
%artist% %date% $if(strcmp(%discnumber%,),%album%,%discnumber%%album%) %tracknumber%

But no luck. Any suggestions?

Moderation: Changed CODEBOX to CODE.

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #10 –
Well maybe because [font= "Courier New"]%discnumber%[/font] returns ? (a question mark) when there is no DISCNUMBER field.
Also you should put some kind of separator between the parts, like the usual "pipe" character, to avoid e.g. albums with space in their title create a mess.

[font= "Courier New"]%artist%|%date%|[%discnumber%]|%album%|%tracknumber%[/font]
Full-quoting makes you scroll past the same junk over and over.

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #11 –
Thank you! I had completely forgotten both that an empty field returns ? and about the [] method. So either a modified version of mine or your much cleaner version works well. And I had been wondering what the standard for separation was, I wasn't even using spaces in my actual code.
Thanks again

Ignore leading "The", sort albums by year, download covers

Reply #12 –
Great that you got it working!
There is no "proper" separator, | is usually chosen only because it's very uncommon in artist/album/song names. For example, a simple space can create ambiguity when sorting items which themselves contain spaces.
Full-quoting makes you scroll past the same junk over and over.