Displaying featured artists as "feat. [Name]"

[Spymaster]

When I tag a featured artist, I generally do so as "[Track Artist] feat. [Featured Artist]" Asset UPnP properly divides these artists up and stores them separately. But when displaying those artist details in, for example, Hi-Fi Cast (for Android), they are presented more simply as [Track Artist]; [Featured Artist] - i.e. treated simply as multiple artists, divided by a semi-colon.

Is there a way for featured artists to be displayed specifically as such, with "feat. " preceding their names? If not, please could this feature be added?

[simbun]

Asset UPnP properly divides these artists up and stores them separately.

Asset isn't my primary server but I've never known it to do that, though I've only very recently switched to 'Artist 1 <collab> Artist 2'.

How are you tagging your music?

[Spymaster]

Asset isn't my primary server but I've never known it to do that, though I've only very recently switched to 'Artist 1 Artist 2'.

How are you tagging your music?

I'm tagging with dbPowerAmp for CD rips, and MediaMonkey for final tagging (and digital music tagging), prior to upload to my Synology NAS.

[simbun]

Sorry I meant what tags are you using.

As a test I had Asset index a selection of tracks that had feat./featuring/with/+ in the ARTIST tag and none were split; both the Artist index and the track listing displayed the unmodified tag values e.g. 'Elton John feat. George Michael'.

I've just started using the ARTISTS tag as provided by Picard:

ARTIST: Elton John feat. George Michael
ARTISTS: Elton John; George Michael

Though support is limited it's a more flexible approach.

[Spymaster]

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm using ARTIST for track artists and ALBUM ARTIST for album artists. When I enter the value "Joe Bloggs feat. Sally Smith" into either field, Asset is storing "Joe Bloggs" and Sally Smith" separately in its database, which I'm absolutely happy with. It's only when the data is displayed back that things are disappointing. Rather than "Joe Bloggs; Sally Smith" I want to see "Joe Bloggs feat. Sally Smith". It just isn't rendering that relationship.

[Spymaster]

I just noticed something really weird. If I download the album to my Samsung smartphone and play it from there, the artist "Joe Bloggs feat. Sally Smith" is displayed correctly. With "feat." included.

But if I play it directly from my NAS it is displayed as "Joe Bloggs; Sally Smith"

I'm using Hi-Fi Cast in both cases.

Do you know why the same artist details are displayed differently depending on whether played directly from my NAS or locally from my phone?

Added: something else I've discovered..

When I use Cambridge Audio's StreamMagic app, the track list displays the artists separated by a semi-colon but the "playing now" screen displays the "feat." correctly. This is especially bizarre because StreamMagic does hardly anything right when it comes to multiple artists.

So different apps are displaying this slightly differently under different circumstances. Is this defined at the server end or is it an app problem? My experience is that apps support will point the finger at Asset.

[Spoon]

feat. XYZ is detected in the title by Asset and removed and correctly set as a 2nd artist

[simbun]

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm using ARTIST for track artists and ALBUM ARTIST for album artists. When I enter the value "Joe Bloggs feat. Sally Smith" into either field, Asset is storing "Joe Bloggs" and Sally Smith" separately in its database, which I'm absolutely happy with. It's only when the data is displayed back that things are disappointing. Rather than "Joe Bloggs; Sally Smith" I want to see "Joe Bloggs feat. Sally Smith". It just isn't rendering that relationship.

I've reinstalled Asset and it now seems to be splitting on feat./featuring, though not on other collaboration tokens e.g. with/+/duet with/& (which is understandable).

The primary purpose of the split is so that your artist index isn't polluted with all the unique collaborations:

Artist 1
Artist 1 feat. Artist 2
Artist 1 feat. Artist 3
Artist 1 feat. Artist 4
Artist 1 feat. Artist 4

The consequence of this is that the collboration token is lost when viewing the track listing.

So different apps are displaying this slightly differently under different circumstances. Is this defined at the server end or is it an app problem? My experience is that apps support will point the finger at Asset.

When you're browsing local content in Hi-Fi Cast it's the app (or Android) that's reading the tags and building a browsing interface, unlike when you're using a control point (Hi-Fi Cast/StreamMagic) to browse Asset where only Asset has read the tags and sends metadata to the control point for display.

When I use Cambridge Audio's StreamMagic app, the track list displays the artists separated by a semi-colon but the "playing now" screen displays the "feat." correctly. This is especially bizarre because StreamMagic does hardly anything right when it comes to multiple artists.

The Now Playing screen should use the metadata provided by the server, but I think it's pulling it from the track being played, which in this case might be desired, but not if you've made any customisations through the 'User Rename List {Display / Tag mapping)'.

[Spymaster]

Thank you for explaining why my devices are displaying featured artists differently. That all makes sense.

So I have a cheeky question/request: While I totally understand why Asset separates the featured artist, and displays them back as a second artist, would it be possible for the collaboration token ("feat.") to be somehow identified and pulled back in to the artist field, when it sends metadata to the control point for display? Only because "feat." is slightly different to, for example, a duet. A duet might be "Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue" - both with equal roles. Whereas "feat." might be "Jerry Goldsmith feat. Branford Marsalis" where one is the composer/conductor and the other a featured soloist.

[schmidj]

The problem with doing what you want is that most library search software will not list the tracks with the featured artists listed as you want together with the same artists when there is no featured artist. So for instance, to the search engine the entry " Bob Dylan" is a different artist than "Bob Dylan feat. Joan Baez" or "Joan Baez feat. Bob Dylan" That's why most tagging allows for multiple artists one way or another and recommends that you don't identify a featured artist.

In any event, the "featured artist" in my mind never belongs in the title field, it is an artist, not part of the title.

One way you might accomplish this is to list both the main artist(s) and featured artist(s) as multiple entries in the artist field and then create a custom field "Featured_Artist" or something similar and put the featured artist there as well as in the main artist field. Whether you can find a player that will be flexible enough to let you display the contents of the "Featured_Artist" is problematical.

[simbun]

So I have a cheeky question/request: While I totally understand why Asset separates the featured artist, and displays them back as a second artist, would it be possible for the collaboration token ("feat.") to be somehow identified and pulled back in to the artist field, when it sends metadata to the control point for display?

Whilst I don't think it would be that much work to rebuild the artist field (or retain it) for display in track listings, it remains a flawed option, so I think time would be better spent targetting the Picard solution (Artist and Artists tags).

If we use Elton John's 'The Lockdown Sessions' release as an example, the current Contributing Artist index (which should contain all artists but the main/first) is built from Artist tags that contain the string feat./featuring (or all but the first if multi-value), giving us:


Given we can't split on ampersands or commas (quite common in artist names) we're left with the remainder of the artist string, which isn't very helpful.

Likewise the Artist index is polluted with all the collaborations:

From this index it's not possible to see all the tracks associated with Elton John, because we'd need to select all the index values containing Elton John.

If we instead use a multi-value tag to store the artists and another to store the string containing the collaboration tokens we're able to transform our data accurately.

The Picard standard uses the Artist tag to hold the string including collaboration tokens, and the Artists tag to hold the multi-value artists:

Track	Title	Artist	Artists
1	Cold Heart	Elton John & Dua Lipa	Elton John; Dua Lipa
2	Always Love You	Elton John, Young Thug & Nicki Minaj	Elton John; Young Thug; Nicki Minaj
3	Learn To Fly	Surfaces feat. Elton John	Surfaces; Elton John
4	After All	Elton John & Charlie Puth	Elton John; Charlie Puth
5	Chosen Family	Rina Sawayama & Elton John	Rina Sawayama; Elton John
6	The Pink Phantom	Gorillaz feat. Elton John & 6LACK	Gorillaz; Elton John; 6LACK
7	It's A Sin	Elton John & Years & Years	Elton John; Years & Years
8	Nothing Else Matters	Miley Cyrus feat. WATT, Elton John, Yo‐Yo Ma, Robert Trujillo & Chad Smith	Miley Cyrus; WATT; Elton John; Yo‐Yo Ma; Robert Trujillo; Chad Smith
9	Orbit	Elton John & SG Lewis	Elton John; SG Lewis
10	Simple Things	Elton John & Brandi Carlile	Elton John; Brandi Carlile
11	Beauty In The Bones	Jimmie Allen & Elton John	Jimmie Allen; Elton John
12	One Of Me	Lil Nas X feat. Elton John	Lil Nas X; Elton John
13	E-Ticket	Elton John & Eddie Vedder	Elton John; Eddie Vedder
14	Finish Line	Elton John & Stevie Wonder	Elton John; Stevie Wonder
15	Stolen Car	Elton John & Stevie Nicks	Elton John; Stevie Nicks
16	I'm Not Gonna Miss You	Glen Campbell & Elton John	Glen Campbell; Elton John
17	Cold Heart	Elton John & Dua Lipa	Elton John; Dua Lipa

The Artists tag is used to build the indexes (with logic referencing the Artist tag to build the Contributing Artist index) and the Artist tag is used when displaying tracks:

[Spymaster]

Ooh I like that a lot - that looks like a perfect solution to me! Is that approach being actively developed by Asset?

This would also, presumably, standardise the way that apps/devices display multiple artists, because they'd just read the "Artist" tag as a single string, complete with collaboration tokens?

Would the end user be presented with dual tags to complete for every track, effectively? How would this work with something like MediaMonkey that only has one "Album Artist(s)" and one "Artist(s)" field? To find a compromise between relationship token and database integrity, an input in MediaMonkey currently looks something like "Gorillaz feat. Elton John; 6LACK"

[simbun]

Ooh I like that a lot - that looks like a perfect solution to me! Is that approach being actively developed by Asset?

I don't believe so; I was just building on your request.

Would the end user be presented with dual tags to complete for every track, effectively? Does both "Artist" and "Artists" exist in software like MediaMonkey?

Yes both tags (Artist and Artists) would be required. I'm afraid I don't know anything about MediaMonkey, but they're available in foobar2000 via a MusicBrainz plugin and obviously Picard. (the official MusicBrainz tagger).

[Spymaster]

I don't believe so; I was just building on your request.


Yes both tags (Artist and Artists) would be required. I'm afraid I don't know anything about MediaMonkey, but they're available in foobar2000 via a MusicBrainz plugin and obviously Picard. (the official MusicBrainz tagger).

Ah, in that case, I doubt this will be happening any time soon, despite how great it would be - though I shudder at the amount of tedious re-tagging that would be required for a collection of over 300,000 tracks, a large pencentage of which consist of multiple artists.