Displaying featured artists as "feat. [Name]"

[Spymaster]

It's your tags that are unusual. You're asking that Asset should interpret your non-standard ARTIST values. IMHO I don't see why Asset should do that. In general, if the server/player would fix user problems or other tag oddities it would make the code unnecessarily complex. In these cases it's much better that the user fixes the issues with the help of (advanced) tagging programs.

Tagging a featured artist as "Artist A feat. Artist B" is well within the Asset spec AFAIK. The guidance even says that "feat." can be used to separate artists. So what I'm doing isn't unusual. All I'm asking is that the "feat." is then written back into the data that Asset returns to a device or app for playback, e.g by reading it directly from the music file, when that same music file is presented to the player.

[simbun]

Isn't it possible to search for a string in a field/value? I'm not able to test this at the moment, but I would be surprised if searching is limited to exact values.

I didn't mean to imply that a search is limited to exact values. Your rename change places collaborations in the Artist tag, which I think means that a search for Elton John (using the album referenced in post #11 as an example) would return:
Elton John & Dua Lipa
Elton John, Young Thug & Nicki Minaj
Surfaces feat. Elton John
Elton John & Charlie Puth
Rina Sawayama & Elton John
Gorillaz feat. Elton John & 6LACK
Elton John & Years & Years
Miley Cyrus feat. WATT, Elton John, Yo‐Yo Ma, Robert Trujillo & Chad Smith
Elton John & SG Lewis
Elton John & Brandi Carlile
Jimmie Allen & Elton John
Lil Nas X feat. Elton John
Elton John & Eddie Vedder
Elton John & Stevie Wonder
Elton John & Stevie Nicks
Glen Campbell & Elton John
Elton John & Dua Lipa
...

Which isn't very useful.

I'm basing this off my knowledge of another solution, so it's possible Asset behaves differently.

[simbun]

It's not a MediaMonkey thing - it's simply the only way that works if you want to show the relationship status AND have it work for Asset.

By "show" I assume you mean in the StreamMagic app; but that's only because of a bug (it should display the metadata provided by the server).

in terms of how many would benefit, it might eliminate the issue of different players interpreting artists differently (e.g. many apps only read the first artist and ignore the rest) because the field from the file itself would always be constant and reliable.

Placing two artists ("Robbie Williams feat. Kylie Minogue") as the first value in a multi-valued tag ("Robbie Williams feat. Kylie Minogue" + "Tom Jones") will cause many more issues as the vast majority of servers/players will display the collaboration in the index/search.

There is a Wishlist forum so by all means make the request there, but the better solution is the two tag system.

[vilsen]

Tagging a featured artist as "Artist A feat. Artist B" is well within the Asset spec AFAIK. The guidance even says that "feat." can be used to separate artists. So what I'm doing isn't unusual.

Asset is nice and supports various non-standard tagging, e.g. yours and multi-disc albums tagged like "The Wall, Disc 1" without a discnumber. I would think that this is a service for users with libraries affected by (older) non-standard tagging, rather than recommendations or setting standards/specs.

By the way, where can I find that "guidance"? In the online help I can't even find how to to enable or disable this feature.

[vilsen]

I didn't mean to imply that a search is limited to exact values.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

Just a question, since I have to picture this in my head (I'm away from home and cannot test): Wouldn't the only difference in your Elton John example be a list containing either "Elton John & Stevie Nicks" or "Elton John; Stevie Nicks", since the multivalue artists would be listed anyway if not using the "rename list trick"? Or is there a concept of "contributing artists" which would leave out those?

I must admit that I probably don't fully understand what you're talking about, perhaps because I don't use the "contributing artist" concept you were talking about earlier. I may have ticked a setting for this in Asset, not sure. All my artists are treated equally by Asset I think. I think I would be satisfied with the search result in your example, maybe because I mostly browse.

[simbun]

Just a question, since I have to picture this in my head (I'm away from home and cannot test): Wouldn't the only difference in your Elton John example be a list containing either "Elton John & Stevie Nicks" or "Elton John; Stevie Nicks", since the multivalue artists would be listed anyway if not using the "rename list trick"?

I tried your tagging setup (Artist and DisplayName) and configuration settings but couldn't get the Artizt index to populate correctly. I tried a few variations (%artist%, [artist], [multitag]artist[]) but none produced a unique list of artists.

Regarding the search problem; using the album 'The Lockdown Session' as detailed in post #11, when the Artist tag is multi-valued a search for 'o' returns:
Elton John
Gorillaz
Robert Trukillo
Stevie Wonder
Yo-Yo Ma
Young Thug

However, because of your overrides the Artist tag now contains the collaboration (Elton John & Dupa Lipa), so a search for 'o' returns:
Elton John
Elton John & 6BLACK
Elton John & Brandi Calile
Elton John & Charlie Puth
Elton John & Dua Lipa
Elton John & Eddie Vedder
...

I must admit that I probably don't fully understand what you're talking about, perhaps because I don't use the "contributing artist" concept you were talking about earlier.

The Contributing Artists index contains all track artists except the first of each track; for example, using the following tracks:

1     Cold Heart            Elton John; Dua Lipa
2     Always Love You       Elton John; Young Thug; Nicki Minaj
3     Learn To Fly          Surfaces; Elton John

The index would contain:
Dua Lipa
Young Thug
Nicki Minaj
Elton John
(in sorted order)

[simbun]

By the way, where can I find that "guidance"? In the online help I can't even find how to to enable or disable this feature.

I was a bit surprised by this functionality too. I don't believe it can be disabled, but all it does is treat ' feat. '/' featuring ' (maybe other variations) as a delimiter; for example:
Artist 1 feat. Artist 2, Artist 3
becomes:
Artist 1
Artist 2, Artist 3

If you store it as two values in a multi-value tag (as the OP does):
Artist 1 feat. Artist 2; Artist 3
becomes:
Artist 1
Artist 2
Artist 3
Though I certainly wouldn't recommend that approach!

[Spymaster]

It really does work. The string "Artist 1 feat. Artist 2 feat. Artist 3" does the same thing:

Artist 1
Artist 2
Artist 3

[vilsen]

Just got home and did some quick tests.

I get the search problem now, and the "contributing artist" concept - there's an item for it that I've never used if you browse Additional > Contributing Artists.

"Contributing artists with main artists" is ticked in my settings, and not possible to untick (re-ticks itself when you click ok). Same for you? Just an observation, I want it ticked anyway.

"Combine duplicate and similar artists" turns the feat. thing on/off. Seems to be a "multi-setting" then.

I tried your tagging setup (Artist and DisplayName) and configuration settings but couldn't get the Artizt index to populate correctly. I tried a few variations (%artist%, [artist], [multitag]artist[]) but none produced a unique list of artists.

preformat:=artizt:=%artist%

works over here.

preformat:=artist:=[IFVALUE]displayartist,[tag]displayartist[],[multitag]artist[][]

doesn't work as I thought because while the [multitag]artist[] part reads multiples from the files, they are written as singles to the index.

But the "rename list trick" is flawed anyway if you don't like the search results.

[simbun]

preformat:=artizt:=%artist%

works over here.

Really? The following screenshots are from the use of: %artist%, [artist] (only lists the first/main artist) and [multitag]artist[]. An index should present the list of unique values within that tag.

But the "rename list trick" is flawed anyway if you don't like the search results.

The solution was for Spymaster, I already use 2 solutions (one primarily for home and one away) that handle this scenario (using 2 tags), I don't need another ;-)

[vilsen]

Really?

Yes. It looks good in Asset Control. The browse tree for Artizt, displayed as Artist, looks the same as without the trick. Perhaps your cp does something odd?

The indexing & browsing of Artizt seem fine to me. Searching is another thing, if it relies on the true Artist, which is altered by the trick. And it could differ between control points.

The solution was for Spymaster

Yes I know. I don't use it, you don't need it, Spymaster don't like it. But the exercise is fun ;-)

I just wish I had more time to test and respond quicker, but work gets in the way.

[simbun]

Yes. It looks good in Asset Control. The browse tree for Artizt, displayed as Artist, looks the same as without the trick. Perhaps your cp does something odd?

Ah, I know what it is! To avoid any ambiguity I didn't rename the Artizt index, but without 'Artizt' in MediaDatabaseFieldsv7a.txt the index remained empty, so I added 'Artizt,TEXT' (something I'd used before to work around another issue) and it must have been this that triggered the concatentation as 'Artizt' on its own worked fine

Yes I know. I don't use it, you don't need it, Spymaster don't like it. But the exercise is fun ;-)

Sometimes I think I spend more time fiddlying that I do listening!

[vilsen]

as 'Artizt' on its own worked fine

Yes, I think you shouldn't use the TEXT variant for most custom tags.

Just curious, did this also make your search results acceptable?

[Spymaster]

There's gotta be an easier way of sorting this, surely? It's such a common form of artist annotation...!

[simbun]

There's gotta be an easier way of sorting this, surely? It's such a common form of artist annotation...!

It may be a common form of annotation, but very few servers support it.

If you're prepared to create a new tag to hold the collaboration (should be quite easy) then you can either ask illustrate to develop the solution in Asset, or move to another server; I think those are your only options.