Support for Artist Sort Tags #1779

x9foo · 2025-07-08T09:01:07Z

Overview

This PR adds support for sorting a collection by sort names often included as special tags in song files. This allows, for example, to see "The Beatles" sorted as "Beatles, The".

Strawberry already has some support for filtering articles from names before sorting, but this has limitations like no support for languages other than English. A more reliable way is to use provided data since the rules for correct sort names can be quite complex. If you tag your files with MusicBrainz, for example, then sort information is stored in tags "artist sort" and "album artist sort".

Technically, the PR implements support for vorbis tags ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT, and id3v2 tags TSOP and TSO2 (see e.g. https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping-table/ or https://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/downloads/MusicBrainz_Picard_Tag_Map.html ).

While motivated mainly by my own needs, this PR also addresses requests in the following forum posts:

User Visible Changes

Collection

The Settings|Collection page now has a combo box for choosing the sort behavior. Previous versions of strawberry had a checkbox "Skip leading articles ("the", "a", "an") when sorting artist names". This has been removed, but the underlying behavior is still available as one of the combobox options.

There are four settings available:

Option 1 (Sort and show artist name as is) uses the artist name as is. It is equivalent to the unchecked state of the "Skip leading articles..." checkbox in previous versions of strawberry. Here is an example of the result:

Option 2 (Skip articles "The, A, An" and show "The Beatles") is the default and the same as the checkbox "Skip leading articles..." in earlier versions. Note that this option does not correctly handle non-English names as can be seen by the entry for "Die Ärzte".

Options 1 and 2 provide full backwards compatibility. They can be used, for example, if your collection does not have sort tags, you do not want to use them, or you are just happy with the current behavior.

Option 3 and 4 provide the new functionality by using sort tags. Option 3 (Use sort tag "Beatles, The" and show "The Beatles") uses the sort tag for sorting internally, but shows the artist name.

Option 4 (Use sort tag "Beatles, The" and show "Beatles, The") uses the sort tag internally and also for display.

Playlists

Two new columns Artist Sort and Album Artist Sort can be enabled in the context menu of playlists:

Smart Playlists

Smart playlists can use search terms with Artist Sort and Album Artist Sort fields.

Both new fields can then be used for sorting the results as well.

Edit Track Information

The Edit Track Information dialog allows to edit the two new fields for supported file formats (e.g. flac and mp3). Changes are written back to the song files and the collection database is updated as well.

Context View

The custom text settings for the context view can now make use of the new fields. The popup menu in the Settings|Context page has additional entries for that:

Here is an example setting using the artistsort field.

Migrating Existing Collections

When the new version of strawberry detects an older collection database on startup, it offers to rescan the collection.

This should be confirmed in order to read information for the new tags from song files.

Implementation Details

The steps necessary to implement this were:

Add new fields artistsort and albumartistsort to database schema
Increment database schema from 20 to 21
Add migration script for database upgrade
Add new fields artistsort and albumartistsort to Song class
Read/write vorbis and id3v2 tags in Tagreader and set/get corresponding Song fields
Implement new sort options in CollectionModel
Extend settings ui
Extend playlist view
Extend smart playlist ui
Extend edit track dialog
Trigger dialog offering collection rescan on startup
Add unit tests

Limitations

Tested only on Fedora 42
Tested only with flac and mp3 files
Unit tests are very limited in scope, most tests where done manually

Tests

I have run the following manual tests with a flac and mp3 collection of about 1,000 albums / 16,000 songs:

Verify schema migration is triggered on start up, and adds / reads new fields
Verify all four options for sorting the collection work
Verify empty sort fields do not crash strawberry
Verify playlist columns can be switched on, can be used to sort, and can be edited
Verify edit track information dialog allows to edit new fields
Verify smart playlist allows to use new fields for selection and sorting

Sorry, that this PR got a bit long. Initially, when I started to work on this, I thought it might be a rather small change. Then I learned how many places in strawberry actually are affected, although, I think most changes were rather straightforward. Let me know if there is anything else to do or if you find any issues with my changes. I will try to fix them.

The previous "skip articles" checkbox setting moves to one of the combobox items so that the current behavior is still supported.

A full rescan is need to utilize the new fields artistsort and albumartistsort.

jonaski

Thanks, this looks great.

Could you also add "TITLESORT" and "ALBUMSORT" at the same time?
And optionally "COMPOSERSORT" and "PERFORMERSORT".

And if you could do me the favor of adding "bpm" (REAL), "mood" (TEXT) and "initial_key" (TEXT) to the same schema update. I can do the work and add support for those tags. But that way we don't have to do multiple schema updates before the next version. Once this get's merged some users will already be using it.

jonaski · 2025-07-09T20:49:28Z

data/schema/schema-21.sql

+
+DROP INDEX IF EXISTS idx_albumartistsort;
+
+ALTER TABLE songs ADD COLUMN artistsort TEXT;


Please use %allsongstables to reduce the number of entries, and that will also update the device song tables.
See

strawberry/src/core/database.cpp

Line 415 in a47531d

if (command.contains(QLatin1String(kMagicAllSongsTables))) {

You also need to add the columns to device-schema.sql https://github.com/strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry/blob/master/data/schema/device-schema.sql identical to songs, otherwise devices will fail.

jonaski · 2025-07-09T21:12:30Z

src/constants/collectionsettings.h

@@ -50,6 +50,13 @@ constexpr char kOverwriteRating[] = "overwrite_rating";
 constexpr char kDeleteFiles[] = "delete_files";
 constexpr char kLastPath[] = "last_path";

+enum class SortShowArtists {
+  AsIs = 1,
+  SortSkipArticleShowArtist = 2,


Suggested change

SortSkipArticleShowArtist = 2,

SkipArticles = 2,

jonaski · 2025-07-09T21:14:27Z

src/constants/collectionsettings.h

@@ -50,6 +50,13 @@ constexpr char kOverwriteRating[] = "overwrite_rating";
 constexpr char kDeleteFiles[] = "delete_files";
 constexpr char kLastPath[] = "last_path";

+enum class SortShowArtists {


I suggest different names so we can use the same enum for all sort tags:
SortBehaviour

jonaski · 2025-07-09T21:16:54Z

src/constants/collectionsettings.h

+enum class SortShowArtists {
+  AsIs = 1,
+  SortSkipArticleShowArtist = 2,
+  SortByTagShowArtist = 3,


This name was a bit confusing to me, also don't limit the enum to artist.

Suggested change

SortByTagShowArtist = 3,

UseSortTagForSort = 3,

jonaski · 2025-07-09T21:17:27Z

src/constants/collectionsettings.h

+  AsIs = 1,
+  SortSkipArticleShowArtist = 2,
+  SortByTagShowArtist = 3,
+  SortByTagShowTag = 4


Suggested change

SortByTagShowTag = 4

UseSortTagForDisplayAndSort = 4

x9foo · 2025-07-10T11:31:55Z

Thanks for reviewing. I agree with all your comments. Handling the other sort tags as well certainly makes sense (I just hope that the ui doesn't get too messy).

What's the best way forward now? Since the scope changes quite a bit I propose the following:

I create a new PR "Database Schema Version 21" that only includes my sort tag additions as well as your proposed bpm, mood, initial_key additions. UPDATE: Change prepared
I create a new PR "Support for Sort Tags" where I basically replay and extend my changes from this PR and integrate your comments
We leave this PR as reference for now and close it when the other two are done

That way we could get the db changes early into master and you can work on bpm, mood, initial_key without depending on me (I won't be able to work on the sort tags next week). What do you think?

Upgrade from schema version 20 to 21. This includes: - six fields for sort tags - new fields bpm, mood, initial_key See strawberrymusicplayer#1779 (review)

jonaski · 2025-07-10T21:10:34Z

You don't need to create a new PR, but you can add the schema update first if you want.

Upgrade from schema version 20 to 21. This includes: - six fields for sort tags - new fields bpm, mood, initial_key See strawberrymusicplayer#1779 (review)

Upgrade from schema version 20 to 21. This includes: - six fields for sort tags - new fields bpm, mood, initial_key See #1779 (review)

Mark added 9 commits July 7, 2025 18:13

Artist sort: Add sort fields to db schema

16819e3

Artist sort: Extend Song class and read vorbis and id3v2 tags from files

7aa0fd9

Artist sort: Add new ui options and sorting in collection model

cb67fab

The previous "skip articles" checkbox setting moves to one of the combobox items so that the current behavior is still supported.

Artist sort: Add sort columns to playlists

7e18871

Artist sort: Allow editing new sort tags

cd26c6c

Artist sort: Support new tags in context view

d45aa8a

Artist sort: Use sort tags in CDDASongLoader

7b8853b

Artist sort: Propose collection rescan on upgrade

97f9273

A full rescan is need to utilize the new fields artistsort and albumartistsort.

Artist sort: Search and sort new fields in smart playlists

cb2d271

x9foo marked this pull request as ready for review July 8, 2025 09:13

jonaski requested changes Jul 9, 2025

View reviewed changes

x9foo mentioned this pull request Jul 11, 2025

Database Schema Version 21 #1781

Merged

jonaski pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Jul 12, 2025

Database: Add *sort fields, bpm, mood, initial_key

2ddacf2

Upgrade from schema version 20 to 21. This includes: - six fields for sort tags - new fields bpm, mood, initial_key See #1779 (review)

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x9foo commented Jul 10, 2025 •

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		DROP INDEX IF EXISTS idx_albumartistsort;

		ALTER TABLE songs ADD COLUMN artistsort TEXT;

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Support for Artist Sort Tags #1779

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Overview

User Visible Changes

Collection

Playlists

Smart Playlists

Edit Track Information

Context View

Migrating Existing Collections

Implementation Details

Limitations

Tests

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