That’s the point; as I said: I don’t want to retag.
Since bands mostly tend to prefix with stuff like ‘the’, it is plausible to have firefly take that into account while indexing.
Then you do not need to modify tags which is great if you consider most people just want to ‘just listen to the music’ and ‘just use the soundbridge/firefly software’.
When I’ve ripped an album, I press the ‘check cddb/freedb’ button and without exception: the bandname is prefixed with “the”, and why not? “The Cure” never called themselves “Cure, The”. The latter is just an administrative trick for putting the band in a logical position in a catalogue.
So… why not offer that service to the end-user?
As I think of it…. “the ” is the mostly used prefix in english bands, so adding a custom field is even better! (Eg. In stead of “The” in dutch we say “De” of “Het”, in Germany they say “Der/Die/Das”, in France it is “Le/La”, Italy ‘il’ etc etc….. I think this is just Plain Good Functionality.
IHMO it is the other way around to expect from non-techies (read: the average user) to re-tag of otherwise explicitely have to modify stuff in order to have it work as expected.
They (the average user) should acually be targeted at to make good software, like Firefly, a success. Without them one can write software, but it will stay at the ‘in-crowd’ since it needs too much hassle to work as expected. So… think of it. Think of your 60+yr old dad who is given a Soundbridge, and you set up firefly. Then he starts ripping/downloading stuff and put it in a directory, like you taught him to do. Finally he presses the ‘scan’ button and sits and waits. Then your phone rings… “Hey son, why do all bands appear under “T”? What? I need to do WHAT first? Use a regular WHAT?? I just want to find my friggin’ albums there where I expect them! Then the soundbridge is to blame, then the software industy, then communists and finally the soundbridge just looks nice on the cupboard and the music server keeps the room warm!
.. and that all for not adding the suggested functionality… O man..! 😉