I group by album artist in the left pane. For albums by various artists, I notice that Amarok will also show artists in the left pane. Is there a way to get it to show artists when they differ between tracks for other albums?

For example, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released an album called Double Fantasy. I've got this tagged as Album Artist = "John Lennon & Yoko Ono". However, each track is correctly tagged with the actual person that performed it. Mostly it alternates between the two. Sometimes I feel like creating a playlist with only the John Lennon tracks, but I cannot see which are his from the left pane.

Another use-case example. I have an album by "Foo", except for one track that is "Foo (featuring Bar)". I can't remember the name of this track. How can I find this in the left pane?

(N.B. that both of these examples are why I have to group by album artist generally.)

Also, is there a way generally to customise what is shown in the left pane. e.g. I'd like to show last-played in there too.

As long as you filter by album artist this will not work, you will have to filter by artist.

And no, you can't use the "last played" as a fixed search level, the existing are clearly defined. You can of course make such complex filters in the Dynamic Playlists.

Ok thanks. I see there is a bug filed for this already, too.