# Sorting Artists Names, Ignoring Articles "The"

**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/sorting-artists-names-ignoring-articles-the/16582
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [February 7, 2015, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/sorting-artists-names-ignoring-articles-the/16582 "2015-02-07T13:47:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Sosha](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Sosha](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sosha)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2015, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/sorting-artists-names-ignoring-articles-the/16582/1 "2015-02-07T13:47:50Z")

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I've read through the threads trying to find where you discuss sorting and I came across a couple of threads about completely removing the word "The" at the beginning of an artists band name and putting a coma and adding it to the end. i.e. The Beatles / Beatles, The

But I don't want to do that, I just want it to sort alphabetically and ignore the leading word "The" when I am making a compilation album.

As an example I have a 200 track album that has 200 different artists and some of those artists have the word "The" at the beginning of their name. I want sort it by artist alphabetically the assign track numbers so they are in order by artist name. It's a pretty standard rule to ignore articles like "The" isn't it? So I am thinking there must be a way to do this without rearranging their names? Thanks for any help.

Currently Artist Column Reads:  
Bask  
Down  
Greenleaf  
Mos Generator  
Soundgarden  
The Blackwater Fever  
The Fur  
The Lone Crows  
The Oath  
Vega  
Wo Fat

I would like it to be like this:  
Bask  
The Blackwater Fever  
Down  
The Fur  
Greenleaf  
The Lone Crows  
Mos Generator  
Soundgarden  
The Oath  
Vega  
WoFat

Thanks for your help! 🙂

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### Author: ![ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/ohrenkino/32/4843_2.png) [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2015, 3:16pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/sorting-artists-names-ignoring-articles-the/16582/2 "2015-02-07T15:16:38Z")

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For this purpose, the field ARTISTSORT has been invented. Fill this field with a name you like, with or without "the" and some programs will use that field.

Also, You can modify the sorting behaviour in MP3tag which does not effect any field in the tag.  
For the column definition and enter at "sort by":  
$regexp(%artist%,'^The ',)

Please note the in the case of the Beatles the artist names on the albums is not consistent. Sometimes they use an article, sometimes they don't.

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### Author: ![Sosha](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Sosha](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sosha)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2015, 4:14am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/sorting-artists-names-ignoring-articles-the/16582/3 "2015-02-08T04:14:11Z")

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> [@ohrenkino](#):
>
> Also, You can modify the sorting behaviour in MP3tag which does not effect any field in the tag.  
> For the column definition and enter at "sort by":  
> $regexp(%artist%,'^The ',)

^ That is exactly what I was looking for. I haven't been using this that long and haven't really realized its potential yet. This is great! Thanks! 😃