All Artists filter: incorrect count of songs for Artists that are also Album Artists
I've come across multiple cases of the above in my music that I can see with either the Astiga web app or the Astiga Android app. Here are 2 examples showing a different aspect of the bug:
1) Frank Sinatra (Duets album - 13 songs): he is the Album Artist, but every one of the 13 tracks has as the Artist him and someone else (e.g., Frank Sinatra & Anita Baker). He shows up in the Album Artists view with 13 songs of course. But in "All Artists", he shows up (by himself) as having 0 songs, while each of the 13 duet Artist combos (e.g., see above) show as having one song, as expected. The other odd thing is that if you click on Frank's 0-song entry, it shows him as having 13 songs and shows all the song details, just as in the Album Artists view.
2) Stranger still is the case of Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová (Once: Music from the Motion Picture album - 13 songs): they are the Album Artists for all 13 songs, and also the Artists for 5 of those songs; and their entry shows up as having 5 songs under "All Artists". Glen Hansard (by himself) is the Artists for 7 songs, and Glen Hansard & Interference are the Artist for 1 song, adding up to 13. Now when I click on the Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová 5-song entry, it shows them as having 13 songs with all the song details, just as in the Album Artists view.
I find this confusing and think the code is strangely merging the All Artists and Album Artists views. IMHO the "All Artists" view should not show a Frank Sinatra (by himself) entry at all because as the app shows, he indeed has 0 songs as a solo Artist. OTOH, in the Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová case, the entry should be there, but when I click on it it should only show details for 5 songs, not 13, since they are only the Artists for 5 songs.
Thanks,
Dennis
Comments
Thanks - we'll take a look in the week...
The two cases are essentially the same bug, but with slightly different data sets.
IMHO the "All Artists" view should not show a Frank Sinatra (by himself) entry at all because as the app shows, he indeed has 0 songs as a solo Artist
The trouble with this is that it forces the user to know the artist filter exists (most people work by intuition, they don't perform a mindful sweep of every UI widget on the page), then find and select the correct artist filter. There are other use cases, e.g. "I want to find all my Various Artists compilations" - the user would have to know to click "Album artists" first. Other more "meta" album artists - "Other" etc (which all boil down to album-artist/band only tags) are similarly requiring finding the option and clicking it, which I don't want to force.
A counter argument is to make album artists the default, so "Frank Sinatra" would disappear when the user changes to "All artists". Only, we're not all album listeners, and the list may thus appear incomplete to some libraries.
I think I'd rather "x songs" remains meaning "involved/linked with X songs". Retaining the simple "X songs" makes that abstract enough to cover these cases. The "Album artist" filter is just a convenient way of listing broader album artists for album listeners in the same way that you'd pick an album from the shelf. Thus, the artists listed are potentially (and intentionally) an over coverage (the songs will sum to a number greater than the number of songs in the library... but who's counting really?) to ensure the listener can find the music they are looking for.
OK, I see why you're doing it. A bit confusing to me at first, but now I understand.
And in the case of Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová where they are the Album Artists as well as the Artists on 5 tracks, I can look at the list of the 13 album tracks that show up when I click on their names and see which specific tracks are listed with both their names. So I can find those specific 5 tracks with a little extra work.
Hard to please everyone, I know. Thanks for the helpful reply.
Dennis
I definitely agree about the "0 songs" bit, so we'll fix that. Thanks for your understanding!