Amarok is really good at handling CDs that contain multiple artists. It puts the entire album under "Various Artists", but I believe each song is also available under the individual artist. I have a number of soundtracks and other various-artist CDs ripped as MP3s. If I use the "Organize" feature, it will split the album up and put each song into a directory named for that artist.

Is there any way to tag a CD as being a multiple artist compilation? For right now I've been manually copying those types of discs into my collection, but it would be nice to be able to automatically handle them. Any ideas?

In the "organize files" dialog you can change this behavior. Change the "Filename Format" part (see the preview below) to whatever you want.

marcel wrote:In the "organize files" dialog you can change this behavior. Change the "Filename Format" part (see the preview below) to whatever you want.

That works if I want to manually change it each time I import a CD that contains multiple artists, and then change it back again afterwards. The only way to make it work is to replace the {%artist/} item with Various Artists/ or something similar. It would be nice if there were a way to tag something as being part of a compilation so that it should be placed in that directory instead of by artist.

Perhaps have another %artist tag that is %artist_or_various or something like that, and have an extra checkbox or textbox to tell it "this item is a compilation" so that it will replace it on the import. Does that make any sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense, I'm with you!

There is already such a %variable: %albumartist is "Various Artists" for albums marked as compilation.

Martin Aumueller wrote:There is already such a %variable: %albumartist is "Various Artists" for albums marked as compilation.

Great! How do you mark an album as a compilation?

Also - is there a way to have two different filename format strings, one for compilations one for normal music?

My structure at the moment is:
Normal: /mp3/%artist/%album/%artist - %album - %track - %title.mp3
Compilations: /mp3/Various Artists/%album/%album - %track - %artist - %title.mp3
Singles: /mp3/%artist/%artist - %title.mp3

Basically, it is just to preserve album order in file listings (for the ID3 tag unaware applications). Perhaps I'm being picky, but the CD deck in my car reads mp3s from a disc in alphabetical order by folders, so it's nice to keep the order for albums.

For marking an album as a compilation use the right-click menu in the collection browser.

Sorry, but with Amarok you won't be able to store several custom format strings, you will have to re-enter them each time.

Martin Aumueller wrote:For marking an album as a compilation use the right-click menu in the collection browser.

Is "Show under Various Artists" the option I'm looking for?

yep