Multiple Artists, Genres ETC

[IdrisRoberts]

Is there a definitive metadata structure when you want to add multiples?

This is a straightforward example and everything is displayed correctly.
Artist. Elvis Presley
Title. Hound Dog
Artist Sort. Presley, Elvis
Year. 1958
Genre. 50's

This is where things go amiss in this example.
Artist. Paul Simon; Art Garfunkel
Title. Sounds Of Silence
Artist Sort. Simon, Paul; Garfunkel, Art
Year. 1969
Genre. 60's; Film Soundtrack

I am trying to tag my music in such a way as if a particular song has multiple genres a search would bring a result in each location.
A Song could be artist1; Artist2; 60's; Instrumental; Christmas for example and that song would show up in all of the separate categories.

My music is all in Flac format. I Use a combination of Mp3TAG and perfect tunes to edit the metadata. I use AssetUpnp on my server. My control app is Jplay on ipad.
Which symbol between the multiple items should be used?

I have tried Artist//Artist Artist; Artist Artist;(No Space)Artist between the multiple items but results have been hit or miss.
Is there a structure for naming multiple items?

Thanks for any help.

[Spoon]

It is normally down to the player if it displays correctly.

For dbpoweramp the multi-seperator is the same for all tag types '; ' internally dBpoweramp corrects it for the tag type.

[simbun]

This is where things go amiss in this example.
Artist. Paul Simon; Art Garfunkel
Artist Sort. Simon, Paul; Garfunkel, Art
Genre. 60's; Film Soundtrack

FLAC stores each value as a separate field:
ARTIST: Paul Simon
ARTIST: Art Garfunkel
ARTISTSORT: Simon, Paul
ARTISTSORT: Garfunkel, Art
GENRE: 60's
GENRE: Film Soundtrack

You can check for yourself with:

hexdump -C --length 1024 01.01.flac

My music is all in Flac format. I Use a combination of Mp3TAG and perfect tunes to edit the metadata.

All dbpoweramp products use ; in their UI to delimit values, whereas Mp3tag uses \\

[miggs]

I have found more programs recognise , than ;.

I still don't understand why there isn't a universal standard. Very annoying.

[Dat Ei]

Hey miggs,

first off try to understand that there is a difference between the way the (multiple) values are stored in the files and the way they are presented in the UI. In dBpa the '; ' is the delimiter used in the UI, that shows that the multiple values are or will be stored in separated multiple values. From my point of view delimiter '; ' for the UI is a better choice than ',' because the ',' is a very common character for values like 'Album Artist Sort' (i.e. 'Beatles, The'). In case of a delimiter ',' the software would interpret 'Beatles, The' as two values ('Beatles' and 'The'). And there are standards for the different music codecs if and how values and multiple values have to be stored in the files.

A completely different story is how your player software or your database system (to manage your music files) will handle and represent mulitple values. As long as your player software or database system can read and interpret multiple values, it is up to those softwares how they represent those multiple values. For representation it can concatinate the values by ',' or ' - ' or or '\\' or whatever.


Dat Ei

[simbun]

I have found more programs recognise , than ;.

How would a tagger/server even begin to unpick:
ARTIST:Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, Earth, Wind & Fire

I still don't understand why there isn't a universal standard. Very annoying.

There is absolutely only one way to store multi-value tags in FLAC, it's just that taggers have chosen to use different delimiters for DISPLAY purposes.

[IdrisRoberts]

Thanks for all the replies.
in my instance I have found (Using Mp3TAG) if I use // between all multi artists, genres etc, I have achieved the end result I was after.
Artists, Genres etc are showing in their correct place. Great for searching through my substantial collection.
just needs a rigorous regime for editing the metadata correct in the first instance.. Perfect Tunes comes into its own for checking through.

[simbun]

Thanks for all the replies.
in my instance I have found (Using Mp3TAG) if I use // between all multi artists, genres etc, I have achieved the end result I was after.

How have you verified that because // doesn't actually store them as multiple values.



Whilst embedding the string '//' in the tag might work with some players/servers it's not the FLAC standard so won't be well supported.

[garym]

Mp3tag uses \\ (NOT //)

and i can confirm it creates multiple values in FLAC files, just like using “;” in dbpa.

[IdrisRoberts]

Whoops, apologies you are correct it is \\
I use Assetupnp which is on my Synology NAS. My control app is jplay on iPad and my renderer is an Eversolo A8 streamer. Music is in flac format.
I use mp3Tag on a windows 11 computer to carry out initial metadata editing, I use perfect tunes to check it is correct and displayed as I prefer.
I have asset configured to use sort by artist by it’s sort value (Presley, Elvis) which when played displays correctly (Elvis Presley)
if the song has two or more artists, when played will show both separated by ; same applies for multiple artists. All appear correct.
for compilation albums, album artist is left blank, compilation tag (mp3Tag) is set as 1 and again, everything displays correct to my preferences. I have multi genre tags separated by \\ and the same search possibilities as with artist.
so for example if I want to find a instrumental track by two artists from the 60’s that is also a film theme, because of the way I have the metadata structured that way, I can search in any category. I find in my collection and my preference it just works.