Subsonic API - Album Artist data inconsistent across endpoints (breaks "Various Artists" groupings)
WilliamKowalsky
Member
Hello Astiga team!
I'm using a third-party Subsonic client (Feishin on Mac OS 26.5.1) to access my Astiga library. My library is manually tagged (I'm using Astiga with Library Enhancement turned off), and each file has explicit, correct Album Artist tags---for example, "Various Artists" on compilation albums, wherein each track has a distinct and individual Artist tag. For this kind of library organization, when viewing via Album Artist view, all such albums should be filed under "Various Artists," and artists that exist only on tracks in a compilation should not appear in the list of artists at all. Indeed, this is exactly how my library appears in the Astiga web-player when viewing by Album Artist.
However, when viewing via Feishin's "Album Artist" tab (which is distinct from its "Artists" tab), it does not have any entry for "Various Artists," and artists that have only tracks on compilation albums are given their own entry in the artists list. I cloned Feishin and checked its network activity, and indeed, when viewing by Album Artist, it calls the getArtists endpoint---the JSON it receives contains no entry for "Various Artists," and includes all artists on individual tracks on compilations.
On the other hand, when viewing in Feishin by Album, it lists albums correctly: a compilation album is listed correctly and uniquely under "Various Artists." It does this by calling getAlbumList2, and the JSON it receives, under the "artist" key, lists "Various Artists" where relevant. But then, when it gets info for an individual song via getAlbum, each song entry has only an "artist" field, populated by the track-performer---causing Feishin to incorrectly classify the "Album Artist" as the track-artist for the song.
Not sure if this is a bug report or a feature request exactly, so I apologize if this is not appropriate for this forum. I also apologize if this is too focused on a third-party service. But since this pertains to Astiga's way of serving getArtists regardless of third-party client, I thought it worth bringing up---especially since sorting by Album Artist and compiling compilations under "Various Artists" is a foundational aspect of many people's libraries (mine included).
Happy to provide more details! Thanks!