Various Artists compilations - album titles not displayed alphabetically?

So it’s a minor thing but it’s driving me nuts, so…

I have sorted my compilation albums to be grouped by Various Artists. For some reason though, the album titles are not displayed alphabetically, but in what appears quite a random order. I have quite a few so I haven’t so far tried to troubleshoot why this is, whether - for example - they are displayed by chronological order of release, or similar, I.e. if I have inadvertently left a library global setting on which would prompt this.

Anyhow, I have searched in the Knowledge Base but unless I have missed it, can’t see a pointer to help me out here. Essentially I would like to have volumes 1 - 7 of Diggin’ Deeper (Roots of Acid Jazz) next to each other instead of scattered to the four compilation winds. Actually, I will just check now to see if using this example I can troubleshoot this, but if anyone can help me meantime, I would be very grateful! :+1: :grinning:

That’s it! They are being displayed chronologically by year of release! Now to fix it.

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Hi @James_Lambie,

Yes, the secondary sort is by release date. This is the same as albums released by other artists as well. At this time there is no option to change this.

That’s a shame - compilation albums often come in series so it doesn’t seem that logical to not have them permanently displayed in title order.

Is there any point in making this a feature request or would it just not be doable?

Thanks.

If you just open the album browser all albums, including the VA albums, get displayed in the standard sorting scheme (1. Artist 2. Release Date). You can change the meaning of “Artist” in Settings|General by choosing a suitable default for Name for Compilation Sorting either Use Album Title or Use "Various Artists". With the Use Album Title option they get sorted alphabetically – but you’re no longer able to find them under V for Various Artists.
If you filter for Various Artists to just display Various Artists albums, with the Use Album Title option you’re done. If you want to keep the Use "Various Artists" option then you can change the sorting for the filtered view to Sort by Album Title. This is a one-time task for both cases if you now save the current view as a bookmark. You should be able to get a view of your “Various Artists” albums with your preferred sorting at any time by just opening the bookmark.

Thanks @BlackJack - I did manage to work that out, but I didn’t know about the bookmark thing so thanks for that :pray: :grinning: