Checks: Sort Order Fields¶

The checks album-sort, album-artist-sort and artist-sort check the sort order fields albumsort, albumartistsort and artistsort. Each of these fields is the sort order for a corresponding field: album for albumsort, albumartist for albumartistsort and artist for artistsort. These checks apply the presence policy and check that the value is correct.

Common Behavior¶

The sort value for each track is generated from the value of the corresponding field on that track. A leading article is moved to the end: "The Beatles" becomes "Beatles, The". If a track has several values for the source field, they are concatenated (with " / ") to make the sort value.

A sort value can't be generated for a track without a source value, so the sort field must not be present on that track; if it is, it is removed. Any other value is considered incorrect, and there is no option to keep an alternative value - if you want to keep a manual sort value, ignore this check for the album.

The presence policy is applied as follows:

• "always": all tracks should have the generated value. If the generated value can't be made for every track (because a track has no source value), the policy can't be satisfied, so the issue is reported without an automatic fix.
• "consistent": the field should be on all tracks (each set to the generated value) or on none. A fix is offered only if the value needs to be set (e.g. the source value has a leading article) or if the value is set incorrectly or on some tracks but not others. When the generated value can't be made for every track, the only automatic fix is to remove the field from all tracks.
• "never": the field is removed from any track it is present on.

Automatic fix: set the generated value on all tracks, or remove the field from all tracks - never set it on only some tracks.

album-sort¶

The source field is album, which the album check ensures has a single value on all tracks, so the generated sort value is the same on all tracks of an album.

album-artist-sort¶

The source field is albumartist, which the album-artist check ensures has a single value on all tracks, so the generated sort value is the same on all tracks of an album. The sort value is generated from albumartist, not from artist.

artist-sort¶

The source field is artist. Unlike the album fields, the artist value may differ on each track (e.g. a guest artist), in which case the sort value may differ on each track as well.