sorting library by artist

When I sort my library by artist, I don't really get the results I'd like. There are two hitches: the "The" problem and the subsort by album problem. For the former I'd like to see for example "The Beatles" sorted as "Beatles," or "10,000 Maniacs" sorted as "Ten Thousand Maniacs" (but displayed as "The Beatles" and "10,000 Maniacs").

For the latter, I'd like to have a chronological secondary sort on the artists albums (or disc 1 of a three-disc set listed before disc 2, etc.).

Unless I'm missing something (entirely possible!), it seems that a fairly simple solution for both problems would be to create an "Artist Sort" field in the Albums table. The contents of this field would be used to determine the sort order for the records when any Artist sort is requested. The -displayed- value would still be whatever is in the Artist field.

Any existing database could be converted (or new entries added) by simply populating the empty "Artist Sort" field with the value of the "Artist" field. For disinterested users the change would be transparent, but for anal freaks like me it would be life-altering.