Compilation Tagging

[Cassp0nk]

Ok I've searched a lot on here but I'm still struggling to get the results I want.

I've seen this post from Spoon saying :

For compilations the correct handling:

Album Artist is left as ""
Each track gets the unqiue artist name
The track title should not contain the artist name
Compilation Flag is set in the ID Tag

Now this seems to the default behavior with the release I downloaded last week.

However in my sonos I see all that artists in my artist list which is not what I want at all. The directory hierarchy when ripping works correctly though in that the albums with Various Artists go into a Various Artists folder.

Despite this, in sonos I am spammed to death with all the individual artists in my compilation albums.

Looking at a Ministry of Sound compilation in the ripper I see the following:

Artist <Various Artists> (this is in top area)
Artists : each of the individual track arttists (this is in the track listing)
Compilation = true.

In sonos I have group using album artist ticked as well.

What am I doing wrong? I am ripping to flac + mp3 using the multiencoder. SONOS is looking at the flac but pointing at the mp3s I get the same result.

[Spoon]

Re: Compilation Tagging

There might be an option to not list such artist with the normal ones, but for most people the listing of compilation artists (or even featured artists) separately is what they would want.

[Cassp0nk]

Re: Compilation Tagging

I really can't be the only one wanting this given Sonos and windows media player have specific support for the feature! If you have albums of dance music they are littered with one off and collaberations that aren't worth an individual entry.

From the sonos help:

Compilation albums
If your music collection contains compilations and soundtracks, you may want to group these songs together in your music library instead of viewing them by individual artist. This means that any artists that appear solely on compilations will not appear in your Artists list. There are two ways you can group compilations within Sonos:

Group using AlbumArtists

Windows Media Player, as well as some other players, use the Album Artist category to group compilations and soundtrack albums (the Album Artist is the person, group or composer the album would be filed under in a store.)

You can organize your Sonos music library to use the AlbumArtist compilation view.

Using the Sonos Controller for Mac or PC

1.
Select File >Preferences.



2.
From the Library tab, select Group using AlbumArtists.



3.
If you would like to see the individual artists displayed in a Contributing Artist view, check the Show Contributing Artists in the Music Library checkbox. If this box is not checked, the Contributing Artists view will not display.



Using the Sonos Controller 200

1.
From the Music Menu, touch Settings>Music Library Management> Compilation Albums.



2.
Select Use AlbumArtists.

So I'm not sure but it seems to me that albumartist should be populated as Various Artists on all these compilations to make it work?

When DBPowerAmp says <Various Artists> in album artist does this actually mean the field is blank?

[Cassp0nk]

Re: Compilation Tagging

<duplicate post>

[Cassp0nk]

Re: Compilation Tagging

I'm still struggling a bit here.

Have worked out that to get the result I (and many others!) want, it is necessary to set the %albumartist% field on the flac files to containg "Various". They are then grouped correctly in Sonos.

Is there a way to apply a rule that will set this field to "Various" if the perfect meta comes back as blank for %albumartist% and compilation=1?



2 hours later....


Ok it seems the dbpoweramp tagging strategy works perfectly for mp3s in itunes.

- all albums with compilation=1 go into compilations group. If a non compilation album has per track artist info and album artist set, then it is classified under album artist.

PERFECT. This means my kanye west CD with lots of contributing artist info on each track still goes into iTunes as Kanye West.

Unfortunately Sonos even in itunes mode makes a hash of this and will take artist in preference to albumartist in the absence of a compilation tag. So now I get a seperate entry for each kanye west collaboration on the CD. Useless...


I'm not that fussed about MP3s in sonos and think this is there issue to fix. I just want them right in itunes for portable music players.



Sonos is even more useless at FLAC as it ignores the compilation flag and depends entirely on album artist to be populated to group music. Again Sonos is being useless and only fix is to have the rule where compilation=1 and album artist ="" then album artist ="Various"

[Cassp0nk]

Re: Compilation Tagging

Have created a thread on sonos forum about the sonos problems but I really don't see how to submit the suggestion properly and get it read. Such a simple fix and then sonos would work properly...

Spoon do you have any lines of communication with them if you agree with my analysis below?

http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?p=84070*blooper*post84070

The sonos support for compilations doesn't appear to conform properly with itunes when using their mode for MP3s in the settings.

What itunes does is group if compilation field is set, and then favour album artist over TPE2 (band) in the artist list. Sonos however will ignore TPE2 (band) in this situation and only use %artist% (i.e. song artist) so we get the following:

Compilation Album
%Compilation%=1
%TPE2%=album artist
%artist%=song artists

This works in itunes and Sonos as albums appear under compilations group in both apps.

Album with multiple track artists but 1 album artist
%Compilation%=0
%TPE2%=album artist
%artist%=song artists

In itunes this is classified under album artist with enriched per track artist info available when you drill down.

However in sonos we have a mess as they put all the seperate song artists in the artist list. i.e. this is not itunes compatible at all.

This is pretty common for instance if you ahve a 2pac album and the tracks have various colaborations on it.

I believe they should match itunes fully if offering an itunes compilation option. Setting %compilation%=1 is not the correct way to fix this with my tagging as then 2Pac albums etc then go into compilations group which is wrong. Its very common to have albums with colaborations on certain tracks and itunes supports this absolutely perfectly. I see no reason why sonos can't do the same.




Now we have even more problems with flac support in that the compilation flag is ignored. If this was taken into account in the same way that itunes does (and had the fix described above) then it would be so much easier for us, your users, to tag things properly. Especially as this is the default output scheme for DBPowerAmp.

So in summary for itunes support to work properly and for life in general to be easy with tagging the following must be done:

- Acknowledge compilation tag in flag.
- Always prioritise album artist over artist in the artist list if in itunes compatibility mode (for flac and mp3).

Simple as that. Itunes compatilbility is a killer feature for so many of us with ipods and sonos's and this half implemented support is rubbish and such an easy fix. Probably 2 lines of code!

[Spoon]

Re: Compilation Tagging

For non compilation there should be no compilation tag, not even compilation=0

When dBpoweramp shows <Various Artists> then no album artist is written, you can change it to Various or Various Artists manually if you wish.

[garym]

Re: Compilation Tagging

Don't have a SONOS (use Squeezeboxes), but here's a thought. I notice that there are really TWO compilation tags being used in various software programs. In dbpa, the compilation tag is equivalent to the field ITUNESCOMPILATION (this is an mp3tag reference %itunescompilation%). Itunes uses this just fine and certain other software does as well. But for example, Foobar2000 does not recognize this as a compilation tag. In my case, I use mp3tag (and an "action") to automatically copy the content of ITUNESCOMPILATION to the field %compilation%. In this way I have a compilation tag recognized by everything I use (in my squeezecenter, I tell it to group compilations separately, and they all show up under compilations rather than under artist....and this is true even if album artist is blank).

[Cassp0nk]

Re: Compilation Tagging

Yeah seems like I will be able to make an mp3tag rule for this.

Irritating that no one is willing to work with each other though.