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Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 17:34
by KevMaverick
I've come across this in one or two media players and it's a very useful feature.

In long collections or playlists, it would be great if the program ignored 'The' at the beginning of the artist names.

Here's an example:

In my playlist I have both 'Beatles' and 'The Beatles', and they are sorted differently - 'Beatles' are amongst the artists beginning with 'B', but 'The Beatles' are with the artists starting with 'T'.

I know I could just go through my collection and change the tags, but with a huge collection of over 20,000 songs, this will be a long job!

Some programs I know do ingnore the 'The' at the start of the names, putting 'Beatles' and 'The Beatles' together. A great idea in my opinion. ;)

ps. I know I can use the search box, and do regularly, but also I like to scroll through the list using the browse function on my MIDI controller. That is where this feature would be most useful.

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 20:15
by Blackbrook
How about using a smartlist with both entries, 'Beatles' and 'The Beatles', as artist names? Will this work?

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 20:30
by KevMaverick
Certainly that would work, but it would mean creating lots of smartlists. Just imagine how many bands start with 'The' - rather a lot I'm guessing! :eek: I have smartlists already for different genres, and also decades, so doing one for each of the bands would take up a lot of room, and a lot of time...

Sadly, there is no fixed rule for naming songs. Whether you rip your own cds, or download from iTunes etc, the names will never be the same, unless you do them yourself...

I wish I'd known about this problem before I started building such a huge collection of songs! :(

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 20:51
by Blackbrook
Yes, okay, I see, that is nonsense then. Forget what I wrote!

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 21:02
by Hannes
Blackbrook wrote:Yes, okay, I see, that is nonsense then. Forget what I wrote!


nonsense? nowadays it´s called progressive :cool:

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 31 Jan 2012, 21:26
by KevMaverick
Absolutely not nonsense! All information is good - if I didn't have so many songs it would have been a good idea. :biggrin:

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 01 Feb 2012, 00:01
by daniel clark
:cool: :cool: not speaking down or negitive,, if the outcome is worth the effort then hardwork doesnt matter, :lol: came across this issue when starting to build my libary,,had to manualy edit titles and artist info.needed to have a list to let people now what music i had and used a program called song list generator to be able to modify it as the libary got larger,still fighting this task,but not as bad ,outcome was having a libary sorted to my liking :cool: and yes it is a big task with 20000 songs,me i an approching about 2000 :cool: :cool:

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 01 Feb 2012, 13:18
by Support@MixVibes
I've seen some tagger software with such options but it was messing things a little bit.
You should try to clean those name manually.

In your case search into the spotlight with beatles, then when they all come together, simply Control+A them, and into the info box change the artist name to only one kind of writing.

Re: Ignore 'The' at the start of artist names.

PostPosted: 01 Feb 2012, 13:32
by KevMaverick
Support@MixVibes wrote:I've seen some tagger software with such options but it was messing things a little bit.
You should try to clean those name manually.

In your case search into the spotlight with beatles, then when they all come together, simply Control+A them, and into the info box change the artist name to only one kind of writing.


I'll try that. Thank you for the great information. :biggrin: