Suppress ‘The’ from artist names

[jgoor]

Hi,

This is probably already asked for, but is it possible to neglect the “The” from artist names?
Example:

The ‘artist’ tags contain:
The Smiths
The Tubes
The Boomtown rats

While using ‘artist search’ all show up under ‘T’, while I expect them to show up under ‘S’, ‘T’ and ‘B’ respectively.

I do not want to re-tag the songs (like Smiths, The).

Thanx!

John

[Anonymous]

Use mp3tag to change the names.

Just create a regular expresion for field ARTIST with ^The (.+) replaced by $1, The. It changes “The Rolling Stones” in “Rolling Stones, The”. I have it also for “de”, “die”, …

There is a number of actions I perform on each CD I rip and this is one. Easy, clean, fast, perfect.

[jgoor]

That’s the point; as I said: I don’t want to retag.

Since bands mostly tend to prefix with stuff like ‘the’, it is plausible to have firefly take that into account while indexing.

Then you do not need to modify tags which is great if you consider most people just want to ‘just listen to the music’ and ‘just use the soundbridge/firefly software’.

When I’ve ripped an album, I press the ‘check cddb/freedb’ button and without exception: the bandname is prefixed with “the”, and why not? “The Cure” never called themselves “Cure, The”. The latter is just an administrative trick for putting the band in a logical position in a catalogue.
So… why not offer that service to the end-user?

As I think of it…. “the ” is the mostly used prefix in english bands, so adding a custom field is even better! (Eg. In stead of “The” in dutch we say “De” of “Het”, in Germany they say “Der/Die/Das”, in France it is “Le/La”, Italy ‘il’ etc etc….. I think this is just Plain Good Functionality.

IHMO it is the other way around to expect from non-techies (read: the average user) to re-tag of otherwise explicitely have to modify stuff in order to have it work as expected.

They (the average user) should acually be targeted at to make good software, like Firefly, a success. Without them one can write software, but it will stay at the ‘in-crowd’ since it needs too much hassle to work as expected. So… think of it. Think of your 60+yr old dad who is given a Soundbridge, and you set up firefly. Then he starts ripping/downloading stuff and put it in a directory, like you taught him to do. Finally he presses the ‘scan’ button and sits and waits. Then your phone rings… “Hey son, why do all bands appear under “T”? What? I need to do WHAT first? Use a regular WHAT?? I just want to find my friggin’ albums there where I expect them! Then the soundbridge is to blame, then the software industy, then communists and finally the soundbridge just looks nice on the cupboard and the music server keeps the room warm!

.. and that all for not adding the suggested functionality… O man..! 😉

[stretch]

My SoundBridge’s ignore the “The” in artists names when connected to my Firefly servers.
“The Offspring” is found under ‘O’, “The Corrs” under ‘C’, “The Living End” under ‘L’, etc…
If your Soundbridge/Firefly setup is doing something different then it’s a setup/tagging problem

[Anonymous]

jgoor. Everybody has his/her own needs.

Mine is not to press a button and listen to the music. I want to control the tags of my music. I decide how they are used (capital letters, prefixes, file names, directory structure, etc.). I even hate iTunes way of saving data into the directories. I also listen to music in many languages and I need a flexible solution on this part.

If someone wants to have it automatically, the software is not doing it and does not know / want to do it him/herself, then you have to live without it. No gain without pain. I don’t know how to change the code of firefly but it is there for anybody that wants to implement it.

Regards.

[Author]

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