Various Artists in Amarok 2.0

[Jud Craft]

Ah, crafty.  (HA!)  I didn't notice the sane/crazy thing myself.

I agree with most of your analyses; you are right that I am merely
positing use cases that stand in juxtaposition to your own.

I will make the following notes:

1.  I really have no problems with context-sensitive album grouping
like Compilations, and I really like your ideas for Amarok to be aware
of Single Artist Compilations, Collaborations, and stuff like that.
That's cool.

My only beef is that I don't want such context-sensitive grouping
interfering with a specific listing metaphor.  If I list by Artist, I
want to list by Artist, darn it.  (You are right; I can appreciate the
organizational merit of grouping by Various Artists and such like, but
I don't like that for default Sort by Artist behavior).  Perhaps the
default Amarok sort (with compilations pre-groups) could just be given
a different name; I'd just really appreciate being able to actually do
List by Artist on its own, that's all.

2.  For this one I must quote myself.

> At the very least, the problem with Amarok 1.4 should be fixed:  for
> albums which are not marked as compilations (whether intentionally or
> by accident), Amarok should still group those songs on the album when
> the artists are separate (as opposed to failing to do so).  It should
> stop making a distinction between "Albums by Artist X" and "Albums
> that have Artist X", and merely use "Albums with Artist X".

I think this is actually something you'd agree with here, if I said it
less verbosely:  essentially, I mean that Amarok should ALWAYS
recognize a compilation album, even if you forget to flag it as such.
After all, it should be relatively elementary to tell there's more
than one artist on this album; Amarok should be able to recognize it
no matter what.

Under Amarok 1.4, if you forget to flag a compilation album and then
play a track, watch the Context Sidebar:  Amarok pretends to have on
clue what's on the rest of that album.  I think it's pretty obvious
what's on that album (since those songs are tagged with the right
album anyway), and Amarok should be able to figure it out, whether you
specify "List under Various Artists" or not.