Filter "The" from Artist's name - help to start

Volumio Development Development talks
#1

Hi all,

I’ve been using Volumio for several years now, and surprisingly Volumio’s browsing still does not filter “The” at the beginning of artist names (or albums, for that matter). In my opinion any good music library should do this, or at least have the option to do so.
Rather than whining about this, I figured that with a spare R-Pi and programming experience, this is a good challenge for me to contribute to Volumio :slight_smile:

I do need a bit of help on where to start though… I dove into the code on GitHub, and from there I found that the list is loaded by the CoreMusicLibrary. To me it looks that the list is once built by MPD upon updating/rescanning the library, and is later recalled as a database. Right?

From here on I need a bit of help to get on the right track. I think MPD should have functionality for this already, but after a brief search I have not found yet how. Furthermore I need to find out where to modify the MPD parameters for the database.

I’m looking for some input to get started on this. Thanks!

#2

No thoughts on this yet? I know this is not as ‘sexy’ as the hardcore developments. Nonetheless something that bugs me, and probably some others too.

I went deeper into MPD still and found that MPD actually supports a tag AlbumArtistSort. I’m not fully sure what its use is, but the MPD documentation states: “same as albumartist, but for sorting”. This tag is not configured in the mpd.conf, nor is it set in the library.

What do you think: is it something that should be done on the MPD-side or on loading the library?

#3

Sounds like a worthy contribution. It’s something that’s always bugged me too. Good luck with figuring it out. :slight_smile:

#4

I think it makes more sense to do it in Volumio’s library, rather than MPD. AlbumArtistSort is an ideal tag for doing this, but it does require users to manually edit those fields in whatever they’re using to manage files.

iTunes does this by default, of course. I’m curious to know what iTunes does in other languages.

good luck!

#5

I agree with robcee. Mod is just a player in volumio beside other. If something is done, it should be in volumio. Not in mod.conf.
Briefly explain here : https://volumio.github.io/docs/FAQs/General.html

#6

Indeed, it seems this tag is not used in MPD. And having users manually adjust all their tags is definitely not the way to go. All the major music libraries like iTunes and MediaMonkey do this by default, so it should be possible.

… but, the question remains how one would go about this. I wrote before, as I understand it MPD creates the library that is retrieved via CoreMusicLibrary. I guess I’m on the right track in this file in the backend: github.com/volumio/Volumio2/blo … library.js
But then, if this function loads a pre-generated database, where should the listing order be modified?

#7

I would like this too. I have MusicBee setup to remove “A An The” from the front of names before sorting. I’d like the same for the hires versions I’m playing via Volumio.

It’s the right thing to do :laughing: