getmusicbee.com
General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: Felipefontes on September 24, 2011, 10:54:48 PM
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Each day I'm liking MusicBee more, it does all I need. But I still have some thing I would like, for example multiple album artists & publishers. Can this be done?
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You can split multiple artists by using ";" (without quotes). For publishers that is not possible, but I don't get how can one album have multiple publishers? Well... It can... but that would mean having multiple versions of the same album each having ONE but different publisher :-\
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Each day I'm liking MusicBee more, it does all I need. But I still have some thing I would like, for example multiple album artists & publishers. Can this be done?
i could do multiple publishers (although it doesnt make sense to me to do that), but with album artist, many of the functions in MB are built around it being a single artist for the album. You could assign multiple artists to the tracks
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There are times when an album is genuinely a collaboration between two artists (eg Diana & Marvin which is Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye).
In this case I would like the album to appear in both the Explorer list and Artwork Display for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye independently.
At the moment I have the Album Artist as Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye (which effectively creates a new Artist) and in this case I have to remember which Artist I consider to be the primary Artist (for this particular Album it's Diana Ross).
Although there is a nice search facility in MB it's surprising just how many people prefer to 'browse' my record collection using the Album Artwork view or Library Explorer (side) view.
Being able to have 2 Album Artists (or more) would be extremely useful.
As for multiple Publishers there are some occurences where this could be useful ...
For instance the album 'The Very Best of Sting & The Police' was released twice ...
Once in 1997 by A&M Records and then again in 1998 by Polygram (superb album btw)
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There are times when an album is genuinely a collaboration between two artists (eg Diana & Marvin which is Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye).
In this case I would like the album to appear in both the Explorer list and Artwork Display for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye independently.
At the moment I have the Album Artist as Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye (which effectively creates a new Artist) and in this case I have to remember which Artist I consider to be the primary Artist (for this particular Album it's Diana Ross).
Although there is a nice search facility in MB it's surprising just how many people prefer to 'browse' my record collection using the Album Artwork view or Library Explorer (side) view.
Being able to have 2 Album Artists (or more) would be extremely useful.
Why don't you use the Artist tag instead? The artist tag can be used to separate multiple artists. In track browser and I think in library explorer too if you have multiple artists they appear separately. It was requested before to have the artists appear separately in main panel as well but it has not been implemented (yet)
As for multiple Publishers there are some occurences where this could be useful ...
For instance the album 'The Very Best of Sting & The Police' was released twice ...
Once in 1997 by A&M Records and then again in 1998 by Polygram (superb album btw)
And your point is what, exactly? A huge number of albums is published more than once by different publishers. But owning the album published by, in your example, A&M Records does not effectively mean you also own the Polygram album. You can't just tag it with two Publishers tags because it is essentially a different album altogether. Different publisher many times means different mastering methods being used in the production and other times the versions of the songs are different in general (different recording, different song length etc)
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just regarding album artist - its too big a change to have multiple album artists as it affects many search/sorting/organisation functions and not something i am willing to do. You can set the each track with multiple artists
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@ma_t14
Wasn't trying to make a point, just illustrating (for people who may not be as enlightened as yourself) that it is posssible to have multiple publishers for the same album by the same artist ...
@Steven
Shame that you can't do anything for splitting the Album Artist (but can understand your reasons); it would have been a nice feature to have ...
Although splitting the Artist at the Track level works in the Track Browser view, unfortunately most people (in my experience) like to browse record collections by images (not lists) and the Album Artwork view (Grouped by Artist and sorted on Album Artist/Album) is a really nice view of anyones record collection ...
Ah well, can't have everything and MB is still an excellent piece of software ...
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@ma_t14
Wasn't trying to make a point, just illustrating (for people who may not be as enlightened as yourself) that it is posssible to have multiple publishers for the same album by the same artist ...
No offense intended :-\
I was just trying to explain why in practice having multiple publishers in one album is wrong and why there no "occurrences where this could be useful" (I was referring to this part in your post when I replied)
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You'd be surprised at the number of arguments I've had about which particular publisher/recording company an Artist did their best work with !!
Anyway while I'm here you may be able to answer this question for me (as your one of the most prolific contributors here).
Which latest release of MB (not the current one) enabled the playing of m4a/aac with the help of the base_aac plugin?
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The answer to your question is within this post ;)
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=4008.msg24738#msg24738
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I thought it was but I couldn't find anything ...
I got the feeling it was one of those that Steven did a fix for but posted the link in the thread concerned and it never made the update list because he fixed something else soon after and posted another update ...
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...
- new: bass_aac or quicktime no longer required for playback of aac files for windows 7 users (the aac decoder that comes with windows 7 is used). BASS_AAC.dll will still be used if its installed
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This is from the changelog of the latest release. It means all previous weekly releases require bass_aac no matter what os you have. But I don't understand why do you need this. If you have bass_aac included it will use it anyway no matter what...
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I do split multiple artists in the Artist tag, but I wanted the same for Album Artist. I have an album, for example, by Elis Regina and Tom Jobim, who were separate artists and only released this album together. So when I group by artist in artwork (which uses Album Artist tag), there's an artist just for Elis Regina and Tom Jobim.. But I understand it might be difficult to do this.
And about multiple publishers, it's because I like to put both publisher and label in this tag, for example, Sony Music, Epic Records, 550 music; or avex trax (a label/publisher in Japan) and rhythm zone (a label within avex trax).
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And about multiple publishers, it's because I like to put both publisher and label in this tag, for example, Sony Music, Epic Records, 550 music; or avex trax (a label/publisher in Japan) and rhythm zone (a label within avex trax).
You can use a custom tag and name it Label
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@ma_t14
I was keeping a register of updates since the last beta release (1.2.4218) and a description of what had been added.
This included whether it was simply an 'exe' change or included DLL's etc.
Just a 'fun' thing really :)
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Hi!
I understand this thread is nearly 10 years old, but I think it is still actual.
I'm a newbie here. I began to use Musicbee about half a year ago as a part of my many years search for the best audio catalogizer. At first it scared me with its "customize it everywhere" and I nearly forgot about it for a while, checking it from time to time in thoughts of how I can use all these customizations to get closer to what I want my media library look like.
And then I discovered that I can teach this program to work with such barely used by regular music lovers tag fields as "Label" (aka "Publisher") and even much rare "Catalog Number" (aka "Cat. #", "Label number", "Release #" etc.). As for me these fields matter not less than "Album" or "Album Artist" for organizing my media library. And I'll try to explain why multiple Labels could and pretty often do exist for certain releases (or albums).
First of all, what to consider an Album? Generally, this is a bunch of grooves on a vinyl, or tracks on CD, or even a folder with files which you buy online and download. All these things have some in common: they all united under same title, issued simultaneously by certain company (Label or Publisher), and almost always have a picture that is called cover art or whatever. But at real it is more complex and in the same time very simple.
Let's see it on an example of legendary Johnny Cash album "At Folsom Prison" (1968)
https://www.discogs.com/Johnny-Cash-At-Folsom-Prison/master/27795
It came out in 1968 on Columbia label (which was official Johnny Cash label at the time) with catalog number CS 9639. And the same time it came out all around the world, but on different labels (eg, CBS 63308 in England). Was it another album? No, it still was Johnny Cash - "At Folsom Prison" (1968), just different release. But the official and what everyone consider "original" release of the album is the Columbia (US) 1968 release:
https://www.discogs.com/Johnny-Cash-At-Folsom-Prison/release/1287354
But there are more complicated situations. Today Columbia is a part of Sony Music Entertainment, but still operates under its own name, it keeps releasing and rereleasing albums under Columbia name. And this album in my example was rereleased several times, for example in 1999:
https://www.discogs.com/Johnny-Cash-At-Folsom-Prison/release/6528294
And if you look at the "Label" section, you'll see there two publishers. The one is Columbia, the second is Legacy - the latter is also a part of Sony Music Entertainment. And this certain release is a part of its catalog like it is a part of Columbia catalog either.
Exactly same way of categorization is used not only by Discogs, but also by another indisputable online music database MusicBrainz:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/09ef6117-9339-4bcf-b627-79a40d36255a - note two different publishers and same release number.
And there are plenty such albums and releases, some have 3 or even more publishers - usually these are labels that are famous divisions on their own in big music groups.
Popular audio tagging software such as Tag&Rename or TagScanner which I used to use for years save the label to "Publisher" field, and I think it would be great if we (OK, at least me))) could have an option to handle the multiple publishers.
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Have you acquainted yourself with custom tags?
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Yes, I use custom tags to get Catalog numbers. Musicbee don't handle it as a standart tag.
But I have no idea how custom tags can help me to split multiple Publishers like MB does with multiple Artists
(https://i.postimg.cc/RVQmDC5y/shot.png)
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But I have no idea how custom tags can help me to split multiple Publishers like MB does with multiple Artists
Create a custom tag Publishers ?
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Create a custom tag Publishers ?
Thank you, but that workaround is inacceptable. My media library includes 200000+ files and about 10000 albums. One thought that I have go through entire library and retag it gets me depressed. And the question is not how to do that, because I already know how. 10 years ago Steven said that it's no problem to implement handling of standard separator ";" in the "Publisher" field, he just didn't see the sense of that. But it is, and I tried to explain why it's critical for me and maybe useful for those music lovers who have several different releases of the albums. Some music managers handle multiple publishers, but they are not a half as flexible and useful as MB.
It handles multiple Artists, multiple Genres... So why not Publishers?
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Create a custom tag Publishers ?
Thank you, but that workaround is inacceptable.
Contrary to MusicBee having Album Artist as a multiple tag, for Publisher I don't forsee problems if it was multiple.
Maybe others do though?
For as far as my solution being 'inacceptable' for you, it can be setup in only a couple of minutes:
Create a Publishers custom tag, and then copy the Publisher tag values to the Publishers tag.
Only your harddisk will be busy, not you…
And as an added benefit, the name of the new tag will cover it's content better.
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Create a Publishers custom tag, and then copy the Publisher tag values to the Publishers tag.
And it would be just another useless tag that don't support multi values :) If you only knew how many hours I've spent in getting rid of completely nonsense tags (usually they start with iTunes_)
It seems that you don't understand exactly what I want handling multiple publishers for. That's my fault that I can't explain it clearly, but I'll try.
Forget about that Johnny Cash example.
Imagine that you have a plenty of albums with multiple genres, for example
Country;Rock & Roll (3)
Country;Ballad (3)
Ballad;Rock & Roll (3)
Ballad;Country (3)
Since MB handles multi genre tag, your Library Explorer will show you a tree with such branches:
Ballad (9)
Country (9)
Rock & Roll (6)
You agree, it's nice and tidy. And then imagine, what would be if MB didn't handle multi genre tag and your albums tagged by 3-5 genres in different combinations. It would be a total mess instead.
Exactly for these purposes I ask for multiple Publisher tag (call it publisher, label, imprint... whatever).
And back to the Johnny Cash Columbia/Legacy example.
I have a plenty albums in my library issued on Columbia;Legacy. There are some albums with Sony Mysic involved in addition to these two and thus the tag says "Columbia;Legacy;Sony Music" or "Sony Music;Columbia;Legacy".
Also, "Legacy Recordings" is often involved in reissuing of Elvis records, and then tag says "RCA;Legacy" or "Legacy;BMG" or something in various combinations.
And now imagine, what should I do when I want to explore my library for let's say Legacy releases. If MB could split multi publisher tag in the way it does to "Genre", it'd took a couple of mouseclicks. Now it reqiures a complex search through entire library. Or as workaround I should keep another program that I hate, but that can handle that certain tag in a way I need.
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Create a Publishers custom tag, and then copy the Publisher tag values to the Publishers tag.
And it would be just another useless tag that don't support multi values :)
It seems that you don't understand exactly what I want handling multiple publishers for.
And it seems you haven't even tried my suggestion.
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Why are you so certain? I did on a test album. It even worked out after full rescan. But I said that this workaround is inacceptable. And it is not only because that it would take a lot of time. It would affect every file in the library, even those that shouldn't be treated in any way.
And btw, this is a "Wishlist" section, not "How to?" one. I appreciate your participation nevertheless. Thanks.
I just ask for a basic function. It is essential. It shouldn't demand such workaround efforts of user. At least, this function may be switched off by default in settings and those who REALLY need it and understand it and aware of misuse of it (if there is even possible to misuse such an unpopular tag) - could tick it and get what they want.
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Why are you so certain? I did on a test album. It even worked out after full rescan. But I said that this workaround is inacceptable. And it is not only because that it would take a lot of time. It would affect every file in the library, even those that shouldn't be treated in any way.
And btw, this is a "Wishlist" section, not "How to?" one. I appreciate your participation nevertheless. Thanks.
I just ask for a basic function. It is essential. It shouldn't demand such workaround efforts of user. At least, this function may be switched off by default in settings and those who REALLY need it and understand it and aware of misuse of it (if there is even possible to misuse such an unpopular tag) - could tick it and get what they want.
One post earlier just said my solution wouldn't work.
And that I didn't understand.
Now you admit that it does work.
So I did understand?
You said the solution was unacceptable because of the amount of files in your library.
I explained it would take you only 1 or 2 minutes to setup.
MusicBee and your harddisk will do the rest.
And you will have a tag named <Publishers> (note the plural?)
I am done trying to help here.
There is only one thing I can agree on with you: this is a wishlist thread.
Good luck.
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Translation problems. English is not my native. I still hope Steven reads this section and can find some time to say "yes" or "no" or "maybe"
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Translation problems. English is not my native.
It ain't mine either.
But "you don't seem to understand" and "your solution won't work" hardly seems problematic or ambiguous in translation.
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I don't want any whinging. By the way your hint about custom tag was pretty useful for a temporary solution WITHOUT retagging, although it slowed down performance and still is a workaround for a basic function
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If no valid arguments against making it a multi-value tag come up I have no reasons to oppose the request.
How do you experience this performance slow down exactly?
Both 'known' and 'custom' tags will have to be read from the file.
I can't imagine how they would perform differently.
(there might be a difference if you have the custom tag set to 'save to MusicBee library', but then I am guessing it would be even faster)
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It's as simple as a pie. I implemented a virtual tag "Publishers" and further operate it as a standard. It seems working in my test library (yes, I'm still testing MB before I decide to acquire it to handle my entire library), it is about 30000 tracks. I noticed slight freezing while switching Library explorer to custom "Publishers" view. There's no such freezes when I switch to any standard Library Explorer view. Maybe it is because the tag is virtual and MB should calculate comething each time I switch to this certain custom mode. And I'm afraid that there could be some troubles handling by entire 200000+ and ever growing library
(https://i.postimg.cc/jS7Y5Q37/Screenshot-4.png)(https://i.postimg.cc/nc5tpw2x/Screenshot-5.png)
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10 years ago Steven said that it's no problem to implement handling of standard separator ";" in the "Publisher" field
Steven implemented this some time ago.
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I also notice your using ";"
not "; " (notice the space!)
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What the problem could be with the space? ";" works perfectly in Genre - without a space.
I just tested it with space - it still don't work for me
(https://i.postimg.cc/bJxpCHfn/Screenshot-7.png)
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Does seem to be some inconsistencies in the handling for Publisher
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Then I guess it requires a fix