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I am using Android S2 V80.10.06 of 20041007 and Firmware S2 81.1-58074.

While the current firmware has corrected the indexing of the local library where Album Artist and Artist are not the same, allowing compilation albums to list correctly, which is great, there is still at least one anomaly in the way Search works.  This is compounded by the fact that, in S2, you can no longer specify which field (Artist/Songs/Albums etc) is to be searched as you could before the May update.  You can now only enter a search term and hope for the best.

For this example, I am using the artist Aretha Franklin, for whom I have 2 Albums with her as the Album Artist and 8 compilations where she is the Artist of a single Song.
A search for her comes up with the following
 


where it has found her name as Artist and as part of the title of the one Album shown.

Tapping on the Artist icon gets me this


which lists all 10 albums with her tracks on, including the second album with her as Album Artist (A Natural Woman...) which did not appear in the first screen.  The two albums in which Aretha is the Album Artist have her as the Artist in every track, no "featuring" etc variations.
So the Search function has to be looking at the Album tag to pick up the album "Aretha Franklin - Greatest Hits" and the Artist tag to find the 10 Albums in which one or more Songs are tagged to her as Artist.  

It is NOT, however, looking at the Album Artist tag as, if it was, it would have found the Natural Woman... album in the first screenshot.

Just to prove this, I tried finding for "Various Artists", knowing that I have 166 compilation albums tagged with this as the Album Artist.  What I got was this
 

Why?  Because these three albums each contain, for whatever reason, a single Song tagged with "Various Artists" as the Artist, and they are the only Songs in my library tagged like that.  That Song is the only one listed for each of the albums on the above screen.

In order to have any search for compilation albums, and it doesn't matter what the Album Artist tag is as long as it's consistent, make sense, the Search function should be amended so that it addresses the (a) Album Artist and (b) Artist and (c) Album tags.  This would return a correct listing of what is being searched for, as the S1 app does from the same Library using the search term “Various Artists” and selecting the category “Artists”.
 

 

Now doesn't that make a whole lot more sense, and doesn't it look a whole lot nicer too?  @Corry P , you might care to pass this up the line as a suggestion from out here in the field...
Cheers
John

Hi @jreddaway 

Thanks for your post!

Also doing a search for “Various Artists” on my own system, I get 0 results, despite having a good 30 or so compilation albums with “Various Artists” as the Album Artist metadata entry. So, I have been able to recreate this behaviour that you report.

Thank you - I've been asked to mark this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

Thanks @Corry P , but my comment arose from the fact that I have 3 Songs where the Artist (as well as Album Artist, as the Albums are compilations) is tagged as "Various Artists". The S2 app only finds these 3 songs when searching for "V.. A.."

So the S2 search criterion would appear to address only the Artist  tag. 

S1, addressing the Album Artist OR the Artist OR the Album, gives a more rational and useful response. 

I trust this clarifies my perhaps pedantic suggestion.

All the best, and keep up the good work.

John

Hi @jreddaway 

I was agreeing with you - I basically see the same results, but slightly differently due to different metadata in use.

In my mind, a Search should indeed include data from the Album Artist metadata tag, and I personally thought of this as a bug, but when I reported it, I was informed it would be best to class it as a feature request, which has now been done.

Incidentally, the new search method was introduced long before the new app, but only started supporting Music Library more recently.

Thanks, @Corry P , good to have a kindred spirit. 

My point is that, in the S1 app, where you can specify the tag to be searched, selecting "Artist" actually addresses the Album Artist tag as well as Artist and gives a rational result. 

I don't know how the "new search method" you mention came about or when it came in, but the coding missed out on the logic used in the S1 app and ended up being a retrograde step in this specific respect. I would guess it should be a pretty trivial thing to fix. 

Otherwise I find S2 pretty good once a bit of familiarity/muscle memory is built up apart, of course from the hoary old Android Album Art issue. You've got all those placeholders; there must have been an intention to use them from the early design stages, so when's it going to happen?

Cheers,

John

Hi @jreddaway 

Although I’m personally affected by it, I don’t know why Album Art is currently not working on Android devices (it shows on iOS devices normally), but we definitely plan to have this fixed at some point in the future. 

As it does not affect anyone’s ability to actually find or play the music, I have to assume that it is seen as a comparatively low priority issue.

As for an estimate for when Album Art will be back, that I cannot give you. My assumption would be this year, however - I hope this helps.

Thanks, @Corry P , I have to agree that it's a comparatively low priority issue but it would be nice to see it sorted by the end of the year. 

I don't think I'll start holding my breath quite yet though. 

 

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