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General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: Bee-liever on January 13, 2020, 08:31:58 AM
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In Sorting/Grouping we have the dialogue for how files are grouped into an album.
Could a similar interface be created to define unique Artists
(https://i.imgur.com/FMjQ5dQ.jpg)
This would fix problems of having to have special work-arounds for same-named artists
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+1
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What would this look like? A second tag to disambiguate them? How would it work for multiple artists?
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What would this look like? A second tag to disambiguate them? How would it work for multiple artists?
I don't know Steven's working behind the Album gouping, but that doesn't add anything to the <Album> tag, I am hoping it could behave in a similar way for <Artist> (it would probably have to link to <Album Artist> as well).
Maybe MB would place them in an enumerated group so that internally you get:
same name Artist (1)
same name Artist (2)
etc
But in panels, all you see is seperate entries for that Artist.
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Maybe a simpler solution would be to allow number suffixes to differentiate the Artists in Sort tab?
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or zero-width unicode chars at the end of artist tag?
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In Sorting/Grouping we have the dialogue for how files are grouped into an album.
Could a similar interface be created to define unique Artists
For most users I would think it is probably quite rare to have artists with the exact same name in their library?
And for those occasions and that purpose it's not very difficult to setup some custom tag.
Sure it will demand some effort, but wouldn't having a 'what defines an artist' option, and then setting that up and keeping it working well for your duplicate named artists, demand the same or maybe even more effort?
P.S.
It's kind off the opposite and yet somewhat similar:
I use something like this to group different artist names together under the same artist name.
So e.g. 'Robert Cray', 'Robert Cray Band', 'The Robert Cray Band' all become the same artist, or, 'Eno & Hyde', 'Eno • Hyde', 'Brian Eno and Karl Hyde' become the same artist, etc.
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I was thinking about whether it would be possible to use MusicBrainz ids which are already in the files for this, but keeping them in sync would be a huge pita unless there were a system similar to the custom sort feature to associate them.
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I use something like this to group different artist names together under the same artist name.
So e.g. 'Robert Cray', 'Robert Cray Band', 'The Robert Cray Band' all become the same artist, or, 'Eno & Hyde', 'Eno • Hyde', 'Brian Eno and Karl Hyde' become the same artist, etc.
I ran into this issue yesterday.
Could you expand on it a bit? How do you accomplish this?
For example, "Paul Butterfield" and "The Paul Butterfield Blues Band" and "The Butterfield Blues Band"
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Could you expand on it a bit? How do you accomplish this?
For example, "Paul Butterfield" and "The Paul Butterfield Blues Band" and "The Butterfield Blues Band"
First you create a custom tag and call it something like 'Album Artist alias'
Then you create a virtual tag: $IsNull(<Album Artist alias>,<Album Artist>,<Album Artist alias>)
Then for e.g. the Album Cover view, you set it to 'group by' this new virtual tag.
Then all Paul's assemblies will be grouped together.
Of course you'll have to populate the custom tag yourself for all the album tracks of these Paul variations, and decide on the artist name you want to use to cover all variations.
P.S.
I myself would also use multi value Album Artist tags here, so all tracks would get: Paul Butterfield; The Paul Butterfield Blues Band; The Butterfield Blues Band as album artist, so when you e.g. search or scroll through the column browser you'll find every occurrence and won't have to remember what you put under the custom tag exactly.
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First you create a custom tag and call it something like 'Album Artist alias'
Then you create a virtual tag: $IsNull(<Album Artist alias>,<Album Artist>,<Album Artist alias>)
Then for e.g. the Album Cover view, you set it to 'group by' this new virtual tag.
Then all Paul's assemblies will be grouped together.
Of course you'll have to populate the custom tag yourself for all the album tracks of these Paul variations, and decide on the artist name you want to use to cover all variations.
Very helpful.
I guess I've got a new MB project to start soon.
Thanks.
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I guess I've got a new MB project to start soon.
Thanks.
You're welcome, note that I just added a little remark to my previous post.
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I handle similar situations (Alison Krauss/Union Station, Bob Marley/The Wailers, Buddy Holly/The Crickets) with the custom sort tag, but that might not cut it for grouping purposes.
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You're welcome, note that I just added a little remark to my previous post.
Yup - got that.
I handle similar situations (Alison Krauss/Union Station, Bob Marley/The Wailers, Buddy Holly/The Crickets) with the custom sort tag, but that might not cut it for grouping purposes.
Looks like Im going to have to experiment to see how I want to deal with this. And how many other 'different but same' artists I have.
Thanks to both of you.
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I came up with a simpler solution (for me at least) using the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist fields. Since I like to have my artists sorted alphabetically by last name, I'm using those fields anyway. So, for example, Tom Petty and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are set as Artist, depending on the album, but I have the Album Artist for both set as "Tom Petty". And I have the Sort field for both set up as "Petty Tom". (I use two spaces rather than a comma so that, for example, "Carly Simon", "Paul Simon" and "Simon and Garfunkel" sort in that order.) I've also run into the two artists with the same name thing and sorted them as "Young Paul 1" (the guy from Mike + the Mechanics) and "Young Paul 2" (the guy who sang "Everytime You Go Away".)
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Everybody seems to have missed this part in the OP:
This would fix problems of having to have special work-arounds for same-named artists
I currently use similar (and in some cases exactly the same) methods for dealing with same-named Artists and Album Artists that have various iterations.
This request was only for same-named Artists eg.
The Angels - American girl group from the sixties
The Angels - Australian pub rock/ hard rock band
The Angels - South African vocal group from the 80's
etc
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Everybody seems to have missed this part in the OP:
This would fix problems of having to have special work-arounds for same-named artists
I don't think it was missed. It was commented on that it would probably not be realistic to expect that such a solution would be less complicated and easier to maintain compared to using a custom tag for the purpose.
Suppose it would be something like your mock-up:
Artist name, MusicBrainz artist id, and Country define an artist.
That would work if all tracks of your 'The Angels' example have all these tags populated exactly the same.
But realistically, there will be tracks that are not matched at MB and won't get an MB ID automatically.
Then MusicBee will split up that same artist as two different artists.
Now suppose one or more tracks don't have the Country tag populated. Or perhaps just written differently.
Now MusicBee will again split the same artist into different ones.
So using your three 'The Angels' artists as an example, you could now easily end up with MusicBee showing some 10 or more 'The Angels' artists.
It would be a lot of work to maintain and correct that.
And even for a unique artist in your library it would be a hassle. As soon as you have one of his tracks tagged with either a country or a MB ID, you will be forced to check all of that artist's tracks and make them all uniform.
So unless I am missing something in how you imagine this working, I don't believe it would be either useful, nor easier to use compared to just having a single custom tag, that you only have to maintain for your duplicate artist name artists.
But, in the future, with technology and databases progressing, this might perhaps be more realistic some day.
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Suppose it would be something like your mock-up:
Artist name, MusicBrainz artist id, and Country define an artist.
That would work if all tracks of your 'The Angels' example have all these tags populated exactly the same.
But realistically, there will be tracks that are not matched at MB and won't get an MB ID automatically.
Then MusicBee will split up that same artist as two different artists.
Now suppose one or more tracks don't have the Country tag populated. Or perhaps just written differently.
Now MusicBee will again split the same artist into different ones.
Have you never used the 'the following fields define an album:" interface?
The tags in the drop-downs are only tags that you have locally.
So, yes all the matching tags would be populated the same.
I'm not suggesting MusicBee is querying and populating the MusicBrainz ID tag itself.
Just like if you're using the Album grouping, you have to make sure your files are tagged correctly or you will end up with orphan files not grouped to the desired album.
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Have you never used the 'the following fields define an album:" interface?
Of course I have.
The tags in the drop-downs are only tags that you have locally.
So, yes all the matching tags would be populated the same.
I'm not suggesting MusicBee is querying and populating the MusicBrainz ID tag itself.
Your mock-up shows a MusicBrainz Artist Id. I am assuming that's on purpose? (it would be a likely candidate for this, so I would agree on using this)
That tag contains some seemingly random 32 character alphanumerical code, which you will not have entered manually, but you will somehow have retrieved it from MusicBrainz' database.
Not all songs for all artists are on MusicBrainz. So not all songs from an artist will automatically get that tag populated, so then MusicBee will see them as different artists.
So it will be a lot of manual work to fix that.
And to repeat myself, this goes for all your artists, not only for the ones that have identical named colleagues.
But even forgetting about possibly using MusicBrainz' artist id, if the content of even just one of these defining tags for only one of the artist's songs changes, you'll have to make sure all songs from that artist get rectified and matching.
So, instead of the single custom tag solution, where you only have to worry about the custom tag for only your same-named artists being in line, your proposal will affect your whole music library and all of it's files, and you'll now need to make sure they are all in order, and that they are kept in order.
Are you not worried about that?
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Your mock-up shows a MusicBrainz Artist Id. And I am assuming that's on purpose?
That is not a tag for which you have entered the content manually, but you will somehow have retrieved it from MusicBrainz' database.
Not all songs for all artists are on MusicBrainz. So not all songs from an artist will automatically get that tag populated, so then MusicBee will see them as different artists.
Of course the MusicBrainz Artist Id. was on purpose.
And that's what I'm talking about musicbrainz_artistid not musicbrainz_recordingid or musicbrainz_trackid.
In all the time I have used MusicBrainz Picard, I've only had one instance where an Artist wasn't in the database.
That was an obscure trance artist that only ever had one release, and I fixed that.
But even forgetting about possibly using MusicBrainz' artist id, if the content of even just one of these defining tags for only one of the artist's songs changes, you'll have to make sure all songs from that artist get rectified and matching.
Are you not worried about that?
No more than I am about maintaining all my other tags! :o
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In all the time I have used MusicBrainz Picard, I've only had one instance where an Artist wasn't in the database.
Then wouldn't just using MusicBrainz' Artist Id be enough to define and separate your same-named artists?
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Then wouldn't just using MusicBrainz' Artist Id be enough to define and separate your same-named artists?
But then they won't show as separate artists if I just use <Artist> in MusicBee.
That's the whole point of this thread.
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If I understand how this would work, it would not add any benefit in relation to things such as searching, filtering, playlists, or anything like that, correct?
So it's only purpose would be to get songs from different artists with an identical artist name sorted or grouped together and not get displayed mingled up?
Wouldn't you be able to achieve that by using a virtual tag that you could integrate in your sorting/grouping rules?
E.g. something like this:
Artist (V) = <Artist>{contrast: 0}<musicbrainz_artistid>
edit:
The contrast thingy is obviously so that that tag could also be used to be displayed nicely.