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Support => Questions => Topic started by: Garci on March 07, 2025, 10:52:58 PM

Title: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Garci on March 07, 2025, 10:52:58 PM

I'm trying to create a virtual tag that changes albums with 2+ artists into "With [other artist]" for a nicer layout. Here are two very clear examples:

(https://i.imgur.com/gZmZhQH.png)

Under Tom Jobim, I'd like his main discography to be first, and then the other headers should be "With Elis Regina" and "With Frank Sinatra". When I go to Frank Sinatra's or Elis Regina's albums, they should have that album under "With Tom Jobim". Something similar should happen in Anthrax's case, except multiple times.

So far I've got the code to identify albums with multiple Artists down pat: $If($Contains(<Album Artist>,;),Multi,<Album Artist>). "Multi" is a placeholder for the actual code; however, I can't quite get it to just remove the currently filtered artist. It either removes the first one (in Anthrax's case, as each song has an individual artist credit) or both of them outright (in Tom Jobim's case, since the Artist is both Tom + guest on those). What I'm trying to figure out is how can I tell MusicBee "we're looking at this artist, so you should remove just that one and keep the rest"

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: hiccup on March 07, 2025, 11:14:56 PM

Welcome to the forum Garci

First of all (and last for today), how are you using 'album artist'?
Taking the Jobim/Regina album as an example, the 'Album Artist' should be 'Elis & Tom'.
You could then have an 'Album Artists' tag (a multi-value tag) that has both 'Antônio Carlos Jobim' and 'Elis Regina'.
The next challenge will be which artist you deem to be the primary artist.
(which in this particular case will be unclear and debatable)

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Pickles7853 on March 08, 2025, 01:33:12 AM

This cannot be done using tags.  Tags are a static entity.  There is no kind of tag which will update as you change artists in MusicBee's UI.  You would need something like this in order to determine which artist you are currently looking at so you could filter them out.

Custom tags allow you to define your own tag.  No help here.
Virtual tags will not help.  They simply let you display information from standard/ custom tags in non-standard ways by reformatting.
Virtual files will not work.  All the links would point to the same file.

Now cue files might work...
Original list of album songs (say 10): set them up as if they belonged to whoever was on track 1 (say Metalica).  Remove all the other artists from the tags.  So the album will only show up under Metalica.  Make a custom tag (SubArtists)? and set the tag to "With blah, blah, blah".  And set up the UI so it displays this tag where you want it.  Now you only have the the one album in MusicBee displaying correctly under this one artist...
Then you would need one cue file per other album to display (tagged as a compilation).  Each track pointing to the same 10 physical songs so they would play when clicked.

This would be a lot of work to set up correctly.
Not sure it is worth the effort as you could always just list all the artists...
Never hurts to see Metalica (or any other artist you like) more than once in the listing!

If you wanted to try this route I would recommend an easier sample set to work out the details first.  Maybe download two songs you do not like and see if you can get it working with just these two before committing to the real thing.

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Garci on March 08, 2025, 03:55:33 AM

Hey guys, thanks for the replies!

@hiccup the issue here is with artists who have equal billing; up until now, I'd kept them under a single artist, which I'd deemed to be the "main" artist for sorting purposes, but I wanted to see if I could do something a bit more thorough.

@Pickles, yeah, that sounds like a lot of work. My main issue was when artists share billing with another artist who is lower alphabetically. For example, when I choose Metallica as the album artist, I'll have the Big 4 album above all of them, because "Anthrax" has first billing there. I guess I could set all such albums to have the "last" artist first, that way it shows up at the end of everyone's discography, instead of being the first thing you see

I reckon this might just be a fruitless endeavor, if "filtered artist" isn't something you can use in a virtual tag then I guess the whole idea is moot. Would have been nice tho :) I'm gonna keep on tweaking this library to get it as good as can be

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Pickles7853 on March 08, 2025, 04:30:07 AM

It was not a bad idea.  It just cannot be done with tags.

Quote

@Pickles, yeah, that sounds like a lot of work.

Cue files are just regular text files.  If you could get just one working correctly, you could copy it as many times as you needed and change a couple of tags to reflect the next band.  Most of the track information would remain the same.

Though it would likely show up multiple times in different views.  Like all artists.  I can see that being annoying; having to scroll through 15+ of the same album lol.  Maybe it's not a good idea after all.  Best to look for a solution which is good in all circumstances.  I'll keep thinking on it.

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: hiccup on March 08, 2025, 10:08:16 AM

I'm not sure I understand for 100% what you are aiming to do exactly, but as I suggested earlier, I am guessing it can be done if you use an additional <Album artists> tag.

Where <Album artist> is a single-value tag, and <Album Artists> is a multi-value tag.

e.g.
Album artist = Elis Regina & Tom Jobim
Album artists = Elis Regina; Antônio Carlos Jobim; Tom Jobim

If you then use a virtual tag something like this:

Album artists¨

Code

$IsNull(<Album artists>,<Album Artist>,<Album Artist>;<Album artists>)

you can have this:

(https://i.imgur.com/gxUBrUQ.png)

You could also create a virtual tag that will display something like: 'Elis Regina with Antônio Carlos Jobim', and have that displayed under the album cover..

Code

$If($Contains(<Album artists>,;)="T",$Split(<Album artists>,;,1)" with "$Split(<Album artists>,;,2),)

You can also define what sorting and/or grouping you want for these albums under Albums > Sort By and Group By
 

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Garci on March 08, 2025, 01:54:57 PM

@hiccup first of all, impeccable music taste :) I think you might be onto the right track, at least it got my synapses firing. I'm gonna try and poke around adding additional tags!

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: hiccup on March 08, 2025, 02:13:07 PM

Quote from: Garci on March 08, 2025, 01:54:57 PM

I think you might be onto the right track, at least it got my synapses firing. I'm gonna try and poke around adding additional tags!

Great.
Note that for the virtual tag that creates 'Artist 1 with Artist 2', it won't work very well for albums that have more than two album artists.

(https://i.imgur.com/ajixFpg.png)

You'll probably want to modify and extend that virtual tag to accommodate for such cases also.

---

edit, very off-topic:

Quote from: Garci on March 08, 2025, 01:54:57 PM

@hiccup first of all, impeccable music taste :)

Thanks, and back to you ;-)
Now that I have revealed (a part of) my music taste, do you have some suggestions for Uruguayan artists/albums?
(there seems to be a big void in my library regarding those)

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Garci on March 08, 2025, 08:13:58 PM

Quote from: hiccup on March 08, 2025, 02:13:07 PM

edit, very off-topic:

Quote from: Garci on March 08, 2025, 01:54:57 PM

@hiccup first of all, impeccable music taste :)

Thanks, and back to you ;-)
Now that I have revealed (a part of) my music taste, do you have some suggestions for Uruguayan artists/albums?
(there seems to be a big void in my library regarding those)

Oh for sure, there's a bunch of (IMHO) great music coming out of here, sadly not too much in recent times but it is what it is.

Rock, Punk, and Metal
The biggest rock bands to come out of Uruguay are almost definitely La Vela Puerca, No Te Va Gustar, Cuarteto de Nos, and La Trampa. The first two are the most mainstream style of rock here, with lots of trumpets and a catchier sound. You can't go wrong with De Bichos y Flores (LVP) and Este Fuerte Viento Que Sopla (NTVG). Cuarteto de Nos is more of a legendary band, though they had a big schism in the early 2010's when one of the founding members and main composers left the band. Their self-titled 2004 album is probably their best as a sampler, it's a bunch of older songs of theirs re-recorded and it's stellar. La Trampa, meanwhile, is a more traditional rock band, with a lot of local music influences injecting local rhythms and genres into rock music. Both Caida Libre and Laberinto are stellar.

Punk and Metal
Seeing as we came back into democracy in the mid-80's, punk music became very popular as it was our way to speak back against the oppression that we'd endured for 12 years. Bands such as Buitres (Buena Suerte) and Trotsky Vengarán (Durmiendo Afuera) are great examples of this. Metal, on the other hand, is decidedly underground, we've never had a band such as Argentina's Hermética or Brazil's Sepultura that reached the mainstream. That being said, there's great bands around, such as Rey Toro (self-titled) and Chopper (Ruido Blanco)

Others
* Arguably not from Uruguay, but Carlos Gardel is an all time great and decidedly among the best tango artists of all time
* For traditional music, Alfredo Zitarrosa, the pioneer of milonga, is an absolute genius (Colección Histórica)
* Jaime Roos is arguably (and in my opinion) our greatest musician of all time, his influence is felt in every composer here. Can't go wrong with Brindis por Pierrot or Mediocampo
* Similarly, Ruben Rada was a key musician here even before the military dictatorship, being a member of Totem (Totem) and as a solo artist (Quien Va a Cantar)
* Bajofondo Tango Club mixes tango with electronic music (Mardulce), while Campo is kind of electro-pop (Campo), both bands have the same leader
* Exilio Psiquico is a weird mix of most everything, spearheaded by an Italian immigrant with Nick Cave aspirations (Musica Cheta)
* Los Fatales a cumbia band, very popular, what you'd hear at parties (Bicho Bicho)

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: hiccup on March 09, 2025, 06:42:07 PM

Quote from: Garci on March 08, 2025, 08:13:58 PM

Oh for sure, there's a bunch of (IMHO) great music coming out of here, sadly not too much in recent times but it is what it is.

Wow, that's an extensive write-up of recommendations.
Thanks!
It will take me some time to find them all, give it some serious listening, and then pick some cherries ;-)

One thing that I've learned (and I experience that also with some of your suggestions), is that rock and punk music from 'other' countries is more difficult to appreciate since they are often heavily influenced by social or political circumstances, and they don't often excel in more unique compositions or distinctive musicianship. You will have to have 'been there' to fully appreciate it. (someone like Chico Barque being an exception regarding the political aspect, but then again, that's not rock or punk)
So your rock and punk recommendations will probably not strike many chords with me.

But in some other suggestions I heard some Mexican influences (or maybe the Mexicans were influenced by Uruguayans ;-), some Ruben Blades, maybe some Paolo Conte, so I'm sure I will find some great music in your suggestions from artists that I never knew before.

edit
Sorry for derailing the topic a bit, but, the name MusicBee symbolises a bee sniffing music.
So I will use that as a defense.

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: Zak on March 13, 2025, 08:33:15 AM

Quote from: Garci on March 07, 2025, 10:52:58 PM

Under Tom Jobim, I'd like his main discography to be first, and then the other headers should be "With Elis Regina" and "With Frank Sinatra". When I go to Frank Sinatra's or Elis Regina's albums, they should have that album under "With Tom Jobim".

You won't be able to do this because there's no way for a virtual tag to know which artist you're currently looking at.

Almost three years ago I posted a wishlist request for this functionality, but it didn't gather any momentum.

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=36446.msg199731#msg199731

(And I probably didn't explain it very well)

Title: Re: Virtual Tag to remove the currently filtered artist
Post by: tjinc on March 13, 2025, 06:23:46 PM

Quote from: Zak on March 13, 2025, 08:33:15 AM

You won't be able to do this because there's no way for a virtual tag to know which artist you're currently looking at.
Almost three years ago I posted a wishlist request for this functionality, but it didn't gather any momentum.

This is an interesting idea which has crossed my mind a couple of times (Zak - I don't think I understood your wishlist post back then as this was all pretty new to me at that time).

Being able to compare <Selected Artist> (if there was such a thing) to <Album Artist> might also allow the creation of a 'Appears On' section in a Music tab (not restricted to Music Explorer tab) - but I might have to think that through some more.