Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

[rayw]

Greetings.

I'm new here and have been using dBpoweramp for all of a week. I'm trying to establish conventions for myself that I can use for both tagging and naming files but I'm not quite getting there. I'm having trouble with Album Artist and Compilations. I haven't found answers to my questions, but there may be other features or methods I haven't discovered yet. My planned folder and file naming is:

<Album Artist>\

(<Year>) <Album>\

<Album Artist> - (<Year>) <Album> - <Track> - <Artist> - <Title>

Typically, <Album Artist> would be the main performer, group, duet, etc. on the CD, of course.
For soundtrack compilations, <Album Artist> will be set to "_Soundtracks"
For other compilations, <Album Artist> will be set to "_Various Artists"
I think that should cover most music CDs.

I don't see the advantage to setting the <Compilation> tag, though. In Windows Media Player, the track list includes all track-based information and the rotating information at the top of the window includes the <Album Artist> except when I've intentionally left that field blank and the track <Artist> is included instead. In my vehicle, the track <Artist> is always displayed whether I fill or leave blank <Album Artist>, or set or reset <Compilation>. I thought I'd read that setting the Compilation tag would prevent numerous artist lists from being generated, but I see an artist entry in my vehicle's player for every artist on every song whether the tag is set or not.

I prefer to see the track <Artist> name(s) but I need to have <Album Artist> to get the desired folder and file names. I think what I'm looking for is a way to
1. Move the <Album Artist> to another field. (If I accidentally leave it blank, use something like "_Unknown".)
2. Reference that field in the file name.
3. Blank the original <Album Artist> so the players will display track <Artist> instead.

Is that possible?

Another problem I've encountered is with semicolons and slashes separating names in the <Artist> and <Composer> tags. Commas work much better. Is there a way to globally replace metadata characters before ripping?

In the past, I've exported tag data from MP3Tag, edited it, and reimported. I'd like to avoid that extra effort for each CD if possible.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[mville]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

1. What audio file format are you using?

2. For compilation CDs, I'd recommend you check the Compilation box before ripping, even if your player isn't using it. You may change your media player in the future.

3. Using Windows Media Player is problematic and is a definite no-no in my eyes. The reasons have been discussed on these forums many times before. That said, it does not mean you should not use WMP, but you need to be aware of the consequences for your tags/artwork.

4. In CDRipper, always use semi-colons in multi-value tags.

5. Instead of using Album Artist, you could try using Band and use [band] in your filenames. Try it on a single CD first, to see if this works (in your filenames and vehicle's player).

[garym]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

A couple of thoughts. Don't get confused about what a player shows you vs what you use when ripping or editing tags. For example, foobar2000, my windows PLAYER, *shows* commas separating multivalve tags (such as artist). But these commas were actually *entered* as ";" in dbpa and "\\" in mp3tag.

Re compilation tag, I always use comp tag = 1 in my rips for compilation CDs. Works in my foobar2000, works in LMS for my squeezeboxes, and works with sonos. I can recall threads in other forums that are 100s of posts long on debating the issue of whether one needs both album artist for every track or not and the need for (or not) for compilation tags.

if it doesn't cause problems, I'd recommend using COMPILATION = 1.

last, don't get confused about how your filenames and directories are named versus the metadata (tags). These are entirely independent.

[rayw]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

1. What audio file format are you using?

MP3

2. For compilation CDs, I'd recommend you check the Compilation box before ripping, even if your player isn't using it. You may change your media player in the future.

That is a good point.

3. Using Windows Media Player is problematic and is a definite no-no in my eyes. The reasons have been discussed on these forums many times before. That said, it does not mean you should not use WMP, but you need to be aware of the consequences for your tags/artwork.

I assume you are referring to WMP changing tags. I've seen that before but I think I've turned off all of the updating options. The reason I use it is that it's there and it does seem to play most files. I've used VLC in the past but it has trouble with some MP4 videos.

4. In CDRipper, always use semi-colons in multi-value tags.

It looks like dBpoweramp and others only use what is to the left of the first semi-colon. Here's an example of what I mean:

[IMG][/IMG]

Two names were in the metadata and the filename is set to include the Artist tag, but only the first name was included in the filename. In my experimenting, I changed the semicolon to a comma in the tag data and the file was named correctly. I'd rather leave the semi-colons unchanged but I'd also like to see all of the artists in the filename, if possible. Is there a programmable way to do that?

5. Instead of using Album Artist, you could try using Band and use [band] in your filenames. Try it on a single CD first, to see if this works (in your filenames and vehicle's player).

That was excellent advice! At least it worked on The Commitments soundtrack. I left the Album Artist blank, typed "_Soundtracks" into the Band tag and changed the file naming string to refer to the Band tag rather than the Album Artist tag. The files and folders were created as I wanted and WMP and the player in my truck show track Artists instead of _Soundtracks. Thank you for that idea.

[rayw]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

A couple of thoughts. Don't get confused about what a player shows you vs what you use when ripping or editing tags. For example, foobar2000, my windows PLAYER, *shows* commas separating multivalve tags (such as artist). But these commas were actually *entered* as ";" in dbpa and "" in mp3tag.

I agree that it doesn't matter what separators are used as long as the data is displayed completely. My concern with using semi-colons is that only the name before the first semi-colon in the Artist and Composer tags is displayed in WMP where I'd prefer to see all Artists for each track. And dBpoweramp only uses the first Artist name in the filename. That's a problem to me. OTOH, all of the names are shown as desired on the truck's player which is probably the most important for me. I have found that if I change the semi-colons to commas, everyone (dBpoweramp, Explorer, WMP, MP3Tag and my truck player) is happy. The file name includes ALL artists and ALL artists are displayed by the players. But it's a lot of work to manually look for and change every semi-colon in each tag on each track of every CD.

Re compilation tag, I always use comp tag = 1 in my rips for compilation CDs. Works in my foobar2000, works in LMS for my squeezeboxes, and works with sonos.

if it doesn't cause problems, I'd recommend using COMPILATION = 1.

I don't have a problem with doing so. It might help in some other player at some time. I just haven't seen the advantage to using it so far. Is it true, though, that the benefit of Compilation = 1 is that it limits the number of artists listed?

[garym]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

I agree that it doesn't matter what separators are used as long as the data is displayed completely. My concern with using semi-colons is that only the name before the first semi-colon in the Artist and Composer tags is displayed in WMP where I'd prefer to see all Artists for each track. And dBpoweramp only uses the first Artist name in the filename. That's a problem to me. OTOH, all of the names are shown as desired on the truck's player which is probably the most important for me. I have found that if I change the semi-colons to commas, everyone (dBpoweramp, Explorer, WMP, MP3Tag and my truck player) is happy. The file name includes ALL artists and ALL artists are displayed by the players. But it's a lot of work to manually look for and change every semi-colon in each tag on each track of every CD.

But this is likely because you're no longer creating multiple value tags but instead a tag that has all the values listed as a single value (and only searchable as such). So I might have multivalues as:

Bob Dylan; The Band
(and this album would show up under Bob Dylan and separately as The Band.) But if I use commas the artist would be "Bob Dylan, The Band" and that entire thing would be a separate listing as an artist.
p.s. for me, if I want the naming of the file location (as opposed to the metadata tags), I use an ALBUMARTIST tag as well and set dynamic naming to create a folder using ALBUMARTIST name rather than the multitag artist name. (e.g., for the above, I'd have AA = Bob Dylan). The string I use is:

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

I don't have a problem with doing so. It might help in some other player at some time. I just haven't seen the advantage to using it so far. Is it true, though, that the benefit of Compilation = 1 is that it limits the number of artists listed?

Depends on the player/software you're using. But yes, in *my* players/servers, I can set it to list compilations separately (so that when I look at menu of artists, I see only about 2000 artists rather than 12,000 if all the artists, including one-off artists that are only on one song of one compilation album show up).

[rayw]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

1. What audio file format are you using?

2. For compilation CDs, I'd recommend you check the Compilation box before ripping, even if your player isn't using it. You may change your media player in the future.

3. Using Windows Media Player is problematic and is a definite no-no in my eyes. The reasons have been discussed on these forums many times before. That said, it does not mean you should not use WMP, but you need to be aware of the consequences for your tags/artwork.

4. In CDRipper, always use semi-colons in multi-value tags.

5. Instead of using Album Artist, you could try using Band and use [band] in your filenames. Try it on a single CD first, to see if this works (in your filenames and vehicle's player).

mville, I don't know what happened to my response to you. After I posted it yesterday, I got a message saying it needed to be approved by an admin but that doesn't appear to have happened yet so I'll try again:

I am ripping to MP3s.

I have not yet seen the advantage to using Compilation = 1, I can do so if it may help me out in the future. The sole purpose of using that tag is to restrict the number of artists shown in the player, right?

Regarding Media Player, I'm assuming you are referring to the automatic download and replacement of metadata. I believe I've turned off all of that so it just plays without creating a library and so on. The only reason I use it is that it's there and it seems to work well for most files. I've tried using VLC Player but makes garbage of MP4s.

Your recommendation to use Band instead of Album Artist helped a lot. If I use Band to build the folder/filenames and leave Album Artist blank, my players (WMP and my truck) display the individual track artists as I like and I get consistent folders and files. The problem persists, though, that when I have semi-colons in the Artist or Composer tags, WMP only shows the first name in those fields up to the colon.

Is there a problem with ALWAYS using a blank Album Artist and ALWAYS typing the equivalent to an album artist (e.g., "_Soundtracks" or "Various Artists") into Band?

[rayw]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

I hope this better illustrates what I mean about the multiple names in the Artist tag yet only the first name making it into the filename.

[garym]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

Yes, the filename will only use the first artist name in your tag. If you want the file name to be something different you could put what you want to be there in ALBUM ARTIST and use ALBUM ARTIST for making the filename/directory name rather than ARTIST. For example, if you made ALBUM ARTIST = Angeline Ball & Maria Doyle, that would show up as the filename if you used ALBUM ARTIST in naming string. See my example above that deals automatically with compilations and uses Album Artist in naming (but only if it exists...otherwise uses Artist).

[mville]

Re: Album Artist and Compilation tag questions

The problem persists, though, that when I have semi-colons in the Artist or Composer tags, WMP only shows the first name in those fields up to the colon.

Yes because Artist, Composer (and a few other tags) are multi-value tags. dBpoweramp separates each value with the semi-colon and often players only display the first multi-value tag.

If you have Artist as follows:
Queen; David Bowie
then Artist contains 2 multi-values

If you have Artist as follows:
Queen, David Bowie OR Queen and David Bowie
then Artist contains 1 single value only. This will always appear in your player as artist, but comes with it's own issues as garym has already mentioned.

Is there a problem with ALWAYS using a blank Album Artist and ALWAYS typing the equivalent to an album artist (e.g., "_Soundtracks" or "Various Artists") into Band?

I don't think so, but it would all depend on media server/player software and whether it recognizes/uses the Band tag. I suggested using this tag because dBpoweramp supports it but is rarely used by media server/player software.

Personally, I use Band to contain a Parent Album Artist value, used to help organise my album artist folders on the hard disk. For example, I own 57 Brian Eno related CDs, and for these CDs there are 16 different Album Artists. I want all these Albums to appear under my Brian Eno folder rather than 16 different folders. So, for my Brian Eno and Robert Fripp CDs, I populate Album Artist with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp and I populate Band with Brian Eno (actually, I use the sort version which would be Eno, Brian) and I reference Band in my Naming string. This developed for me many, many years ago when multi-value tags were poorly supported and even non-existent and so I have remained using it for ease of access and it keeps the number of Album Artists folders down to a minimum.