This is normal and was discussed a couple of times.
An album can have multiple artists leading to even less predictable results.
The sort is called Display artist for a reason.
If your album have 2 artist “The AAA” and 'The BBB" with a display artist of “The BBB and the AAA”. Then while you would expect them to be sorted near BBB they would be sorted near AAA with the text visible being “The BBB and the AAA” that’s a mess and so consistency with what is displayed makes more sense.
But my suggestion is not about “Artists” and “Album Artists”.
It is a simple quirk, that you make the sorting forget about the word “The” in the The Beatles in order to make it appear under “B” instead of “T”.
I believe the tag “album artist” is there is because “artist” would cause confusion with multiple artists on one album.
So; if you have done your tagging correctly the sorting should be quite straight forward. At least that what it is in players like MusicBee, PowerAmp, Volumio and rAudio.
I must admit I do not really grasp what the definition of “Display artist” is. I will try to search.
Otherwise I do like the product. It is very fast in synchronising over LAN and play well using VPN for mobile connection.
Of course you can tag you music any way you want. But if you Google <"definition tag “album artist”> you will find that for consistency the “Album artist” should be narrowly defined and that it was “invented” to take care of situations with compilations and more.
I know ChatGPT answers should taken with a grain of salt but here is the answer for:
In MP3 tagging, why is there a tag for “Artist” and for “Album artist”
The distinction between “Artist” and “Album Artist” tags in MP3 tagging is primarily to provide clarity and organization when dealing with music files, especially in compilations or collaborative works. Here’s why both tags exist:
Artist (Track Artist):
Refers to the performer or creator of a specific track.
Commonly used for individual contributors to a song, such as featured artists or collaborations.
Example: In a track titled “Song A” by Artist X feat. Artist Y, the “Artist” tag might be Artist X feat. Artist Y.
Album Artist:
Refers to the main artist(s) associated with the entire album, rather than a specific track.
Provides consistency for albums with multiple contributing artists, like compilations or soundtracks.
Example: In a compilation album titled Greatest Hits 2025, the “Album Artist” might be listed as Various Artists, even if individual tracks have different “Artist” entries.
Why It Matters
Playback Organization: Many music players use the “Album Artist” tag to group tracks within an album, preventing them from being split when tracks have different “Artist” tags.
Metadata Consistency: Helps avoid clutter and confusion in libraries with mixed or diverse contributors on albums.
User Experience: Enhances the ability to sort and navigate music libraries efficiently, especially in large collections.
By maintaining both tags, users can enjoy detailed attribution for individual tracks while preserving coherent album groupings.
Hey look there’s an s between parenthesis here, I wonder what could be it’s meaning
I perfectly understand what is what and how it works thanks.
A simple example here, 2 album artists, tons of track artists …
So again, the issue is not about track artists vs album artists, it’s about having 1 or them versus many of them … And Symfonium fully support having many of them for BOTH.
Though The Beatles got 4 main artists they are still an entity and as such you do not put “John, Paul, George, Ringo” in “Album artists”, but you put “The Beatles”.
That is how it is supposed to be done. You can choose to do it differently but then you loose the consistency that it was meant to bring.
I also got similar examples; B.B. King, Eric Clapton are individual artists but the made an album together but the “album artist” for that I call “Eric Clapton & B.B. King” in order to keep the consistency. If you want more flexibility you should create an extra tag headline for whatever you want to do.
The thing is that you loose consistency and transparency with your approach and you cannot do what I initially asked in this thread.
Anyway, it is not a deal breaker for me. The app seems to excel in many other areas so I will keep using it with joy. Especially how fast it scans and build a DB for my collection of 30.000 tracks on an old phone like my Galaxy S10e over SMB/LAN is nothing short of amazing!!! Thank You!!!
BB King & Eric Clapton are not fake artists in any way. They made an album to gether and as such the are the “Album Artist(s)”.
As far as meta data goes with MP3 tagging the “artist” tag is for describing and the “Album artist” tag is for keeping consistency in sorting. That is also what the ChatGPT article is all about.
It is also what other players use.
The album will still “belong” to both artists if you use “artist” in your filter criteria.
Anyway, as I said before, it is not a deal breaker for me. But I do not get why it would be hard to add an option under Library/Albums that sorted for Album artist/Year and then an option exclude “The” when it’s at the beginning of the Album artist name. People can just choose not to use that option.
