The way that iTunes (sadly soon to be RIP, as it looks like what's next is far worse) stores albums with more than one artist in a special folder called Compilations is extremely annoying, but also typical of the way that modern fascist systems operate. Fascist systems store your data in such a way as to only be useful to THEM, not you (the human user) or any other program.
iTunes is not completely like this in many ways, it's somewhat open actually (which is why I have stuck with it so far), generally intuitively organizing files into hierarchical folders based on Artist, then Album, and also apparently has ways of "sharing" metadata with other programs (such as Sonos and Roon).
But this Compilations things is the minor annoying exception, a not-quite black box in which some albums are pre-ordained (by whoever wrote the metadata, which you can "select" from a list created by others and hope for the best) to be stashed, not easily visible from scanning your iTunes folder. Somehow iTunes knows to look there, whatever the Artist seems to be specified as.
I end up copying my CD's to hard drive multiple times, because I miss details like this "Compilations" folder which often messes me up, along with other similar details. You'd think it takes very little time to copy a CD, but if you are particular about making your collection human-mangeable, not joined at the hip to some fascist program, it takes some time.
Now it would be nice I suppose to separate the "true metadata" (which would list ALL the artists, dates, etc) from the "sorting metadata." But this is no where to be found. So if you want decent sorting, that is if you want your collection to be somewhat human readable and manageable, you need to edit whatever metadata is selected from wherever to something that simplifies the artist, etc, as best works for sorting purposes.
For sorting purposes, I use a few simplifications like this:
For classical works, "Artist" is often the Composer. (In recent years I have given up on this, unless the Artist is very little known--in which case it's essential.)
If the Artist is a key figure, such as Bach, I don't bother with "Johann Sebastian Bach", or "Bach, JS", or any one of the many ways his name can be specified with greater or lesser precision. Bach is just Bach. Now, there are other Bach's, but all the lesser known Bach's get their name spelled out, as commonly pronounced, with no commas. Such as "CPE Bach."
Now, other programs, typically photo programs, dump their data into one big file, so you have to use the program itself, or one of it's brothers, to "export" the data into a standard file format. That's getting much closer to fascist. I suppose if a program is fully facist there would not even be a way to export the data.
Unix, the great seminal operating system, was also one of the least fascist.
iTunes is not completely like this in many ways, it's somewhat open actually (which is why I have stuck with it so far), generally intuitively organizing files into hierarchical folders based on Artist, then Album, and also apparently has ways of "sharing" metadata with other programs (such as Sonos and Roon).
But this Compilations things is the minor annoying exception, a not-quite black box in which some albums are pre-ordained (by whoever wrote the metadata, which you can "select" from a list created by others and hope for the best) to be stashed, not easily visible from scanning your iTunes folder. Somehow iTunes knows to look there, whatever the Artist seems to be specified as.
I end up copying my CD's to hard drive multiple times, because I miss details like this "Compilations" folder which often messes me up, along with other similar details. You'd think it takes very little time to copy a CD, but if you are particular about making your collection human-mangeable, not joined at the hip to some fascist program, it takes some time.
Now it would be nice I suppose to separate the "true metadata" (which would list ALL the artists, dates, etc) from the "sorting metadata." But this is no where to be found. So if you want decent sorting, that is if you want your collection to be somewhat human readable and manageable, you need to edit whatever metadata is selected from wherever to something that simplifies the artist, etc, as best works for sorting purposes.
For sorting purposes, I use a few simplifications like this:
For classical works, "Artist" is often the Composer. (In recent years I have given up on this, unless the Artist is very little known--in which case it's essential.)
If the Artist is a key figure, such as Bach, I don't bother with "Johann Sebastian Bach", or "Bach, JS", or any one of the many ways his name can be specified with greater or lesser precision. Bach is just Bach. Now, there are other Bach's, but all the lesser known Bach's get their name spelled out, as commonly pronounced, with no commas. Such as "CPE Bach."
Now, other programs, typically photo programs, dump their data into one big file, so you have to use the program itself, or one of it's brothers, to "export" the data into a standard file format. That's getting much closer to fascist. I suppose if a program is fully facist there would not even be a way to export the data.
Unix, the great seminal operating system, was also one of the least fascist.
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