When sorting by artist, use album date as secondary sorting criteria

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff]

Right now when BeatBox is set to sorting tracks by artist (which seems to be the default sorting mode), tracks with same artist are arranged by albums, and albums are listed in alphabetical order. The resulting album order is more or less random.

It'd make much more sense to sort albums by release date instead of alphabet. You can tell by the track where it should be in the artist's timeline but not to which album exactly it belongs, and album arrangement is much easier to navigate this way.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: beatbox 0.5+r669-0~precise1 [origin: LP-PPA-sgringwe-beatbox]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-26.41-generic 3.2.19
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-26-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: beatbox
Date: Fri Jul 6 23:58:59 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha amd64 (20120303)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/usr/bin/fish
SourcePackage: beatbox
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Victor Martinez (victored)]

This makes perfect sense to me. +1 for bringing up the idea!

Let's hear Scott's and Corentin's opinions.

[Scott Ringwelski (sgringwe)]

I'd be ok with a preference to change the way albums sort (in both list and album view), but the default option should remain as sorting by album name.

I would say that most users do not even know when most albums are released, but they do know the name, and so for the general case the optimal way of sorting albums is by album name.

[Oliver Hunt (oliver-huntuk)]

To me, at least in album art view, sorting by artist and then by album release date makes the most sense as a default. Failing that, sorting by artist and then by album name. I think there is always going to be disagreeal on this kind of thing, as everyone likes things their own way, so an option to change it would be good. Having said that, I don't understand how anyone could enjoy sorting by purely album name. You have to scroll through your vast library to find the other album by the same artist you wanted to listen to half the time.

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

Removing from beta milestone since this is marked as a feature request.

[Никола Вукосављевић (hauzer-d)]

A simple solution would be to add a "(Year) Album" column.