Merge Artists based on aliases
Some musical genres may be more concerned by this feature than others, but there are many artists (including famous ones) who release music under aliases.
At the moment, Bliss is "only able" to manage renaming and file sorting through the artist field. This feature idea would require a database connection such as discogs in order to scrape the "main" artist.
Example : Aphex Twin in his long career has released records under the name of Aphex Twin, AFX, Richard D. James, GAK, Polygon Window...
Renaming through Bliss would move all these files around with no connection whatsoever.
Discogs manages to do so by having a kind of "master" artist that contains all aliases :
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Aphex+Twin
In Bliss, it would mean 2 additional settings :
1/ having another file organisation variable such as "meta artist" (call it whatever you want :) ) that would allow, for example, a
c:\mymusic<metaartist><album artist><album name>\
structure
2/ If this variable is used in the folder and file structure, a setting that would switch between "always do a <metaartist> folder" : if ticked, all artists including artists who released under only one alias would have this structure.
It would mean for example
c:\mymusic\Radiohead\Radiohead
as a single folder in
c:\mymusic\Radiohead\
(but this way all folders have the same depth)
If this box is unticked, AFX releases would go in
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin\AFX\
and Radiohead releases in
c:\mymusic\Radiohead
Some people want to keep their folder structure as short as possible ;)
Please don't mind asking for details if my idea is not understandable, sorry for my bad english.
Thanks for the hard work on the software :)
letraitplat
shared this idea
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Not sure if this is of interest but there is a new feature just gone into beta which detects common misspellings, acronyms and suchlike using MusicBrainz and suggests changes to adopt the 'canonical' artist.
This is not really the same thing as you are suggesting... which is more related to releases released under different names, but I thought you might find it of interest.
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Hey. There's actually a new feature in file organisation patterns released next week that should fix the second part of your idea. See http://ideas.blisshq.com/forums/21939-bliss/suggestions/1336695-add-cdnumber-to-custom-file-folder-template
For "always use meta artist even if single alias found" disabled you'd be able to do:
<album artist><meta_artist>?| - <meta_artist>|/...
Otherwise,
<album artist> - <meta_artist>/...... as before.
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Yep - your idea is easily understandable. I've also noticed this on Discogs.
It's a shame that there is not an obvious way to tag meta artists, because it's not just file organisation that benefits from it. If you are using a music player and navigating by tags you may also want this. At a push, you could use the 'CONTENTGROUP' (or TIT1, @grp) tag to group these.
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letraitplat
commented
Edit : the second setting was not named properly, it should say "always use meta artist even if single alias found"
And it should not be related to folders.Another setting usage example with this structure :
c:\mymusic\<meta artist> - <album artist>\<album name>With "always use meta artist even if single alias found" disabled :
c:\mymusic\Radiohead\Kid A\
c:\mymusic\Radiohead\OK Computer\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin\I Care Because You Do\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin - AFX\Analog Bubblebath 1\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin - Bradley Strider\Bradley's Robot\With "always use meta artist even if single alias found" enabled :
c:\mymusic\Radiohead - Radiohead\Kid A\
c:\mymusic\Radiohead - Radiohead\OK Computer\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin\Aphex Twin\I Care Because You Do\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin - AFX\Analog Bubblebath 1\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin - Bradley Strider\Bradley's Robot\This setting is a bit awkward since if the <meta artist> variable is used as a subfolder insted as a part of an already existing folder name, some album folders would be on the same level as some aliases folders :
c:\mymusic\<meta artist>\<album artist>\<album name>
would result in
c:\mymusic\Radiohead\Kid A\
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin\I care because you do
c:\mymusic\Aphex Twin\AFX\Analog Bubblebath 1So my idea is still a draft ;)
