Author Topic: (Picard) Fill Album & Artist tags with all actual and stylised artists names.  (Read 5251 times)

hiccup

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(Information on how to achieve something like this is probably already to be found in the Picard thread in the 'Beyond MusicBee' board, but that's not a very comfortable thread to find tips and tricks.
So I thought to create a 'howto' for this here.
)


The prerequisites and assumptions for the following are:
You already use, and have basic understanding of MusicBrainz' Picard tagger, know how to find and install a plugin for it, and know how to add a script.


------------------------

Creating the 'Album Artists' tag:


Suppose you have an album that has more then one 'album artist'.

Possibly these names are written in some stylised form.
e.g.:  Eno • Hyde         (instead of Brian Eno and Karl Hyde)
or:     Rufus & Chaka   (instead of Rufus and Chaka Khan)

Then (depending a bit on how you have set things up already) in the column browser you will only see these single entries for these Album Artists:




For these examples you won't see or be able to find Paul Bley, Brian Eno or Chaka Khan.

If you are like me, you would like to have this instead:




The <Album Artists> column here shows the original album artist names, and additionally it will show the actual names of all artists credited for that album.
(no don't worry, not all artists credited on that album)


You can achieve this by using Picard, the 'Additional Artists Variables' plugin by rdswift, a Picard script, and a custom tag for MusicBee:

- In Picard, install and activate the 'Additional Artists Variables' plugin by rdswift (google is your friend...)
- add this script in Picard:

Code
$set(albumartists,$get(_artists_album_all_std_multi))
$copymerge(albumartists,_artists_album_all_cred)

- In MusicBee create a custom tag like this:




And then just add the new 'Album Artists' tag to the Column Browser.

That is pretty much it.
Next, if you run a release through Picard, your new 'Album Artists' custom tag will be populated with both the original album artist name, the—possibly—stylised name, and the other credited artists for that album.

The original 'Album Artist' tag is not touched by this, and will remain as you had it set up originally.


---
Be aware that this new 'Album Artists' tag will only show the albums that have been run through Picard.
If your library also contains albums that you have not yet run through Picard, you could use this virtual tag for the Column Browser:
$IsNull(<Album Artists>,<Album Artist>,<Album Artists>)
This will display both your processed as well as your yet unprocessed albums.
---


If you find any flaws or negative effects, or have suggestions for improvement, please report them here?


Note:
As always: try this out on test files first to see if this works for you.
Especially be very careful if you are not skilled and experienced with Picard.
Only one wrong or unintended setting there can do serious 'damage' to your carefully tagged files.
[/u]
Last Edit: October 16, 2019, 07:46:14 PM by hiccup

hiccup

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This can not only be done for Album Artists, but also for Artists:


Creating the 'Artists [credited]' tag:


So instead of only seeing the single artist name as MusicBee will display them under 'Artists: Artist' (as shown in the left column in this screenshot), you will be able to see all credited artists for the concerning tracks:




The 'how to' procedures and prerequisites are about the same as described in the start post above, only the Picard script and the custom tag for MusicBee are different:


Add this script to Picard:

Code
$set(artists_cred,$get(_artists_track_all_std_multi))
$copymerge(artists_cred,_artists_track_all_cred_multi)
$copymerge(artists_cred,artist)

Add this custom tag to MusicBee:




And then just add the new 'Artists [credited]' tag to the Column Browser.

Next, if you run a release through Picard, your new 'Artists [credited]' custom tag will be populated with all the credited artists.
The original 'Artist' tag is not touched by this, and will remain as you had it set up originally.


---
Be aware that this new 'Artists [credited]' tag will only show the artists for the tracks and albums that have been run through Picard.
If your library also contains albums and tracks that you have not yet run through Picard, you could use this virtual tag for the Column Browser:
$IsNull(<Artists [credited]>,<Artists: Artist>,<Artists [credited]>)
This will display all credited artists for both your processed as well as for your yet unprocessed albums and tracks.
---


(be prepared to probably discover lots of music in your library that you didn't even know you had...)
Last Edit: October 16, 2019, 07:44:44 PM by hiccup