MusicBrainz Picard q & a thread

[hiccup]

I would like some advice on the following:

When using Picard on an album, the Artist field gets populated by what is considered to be the album artist by MusicBrainz.

Now suppose you have an album by Harold Budd/Brian Eno.
After running that one through Picard, there is one Artist, which is populated with 'HaroldBudd/Brian Eno'.
But I would like to add both Harold Budd and Brian Eno as separate artists, so not only Harold Budd/Brian Eno will show up in the Artists: Artist column, but the two separate artists also.

You can do that by adding them using the tag editor.
Now indeed I have three entries for that album in the 'Artists: Artist' column:
Harold Budd/Brian Eno
Harold Budd
Brian Eno
That's nice and how I want it.

(and be sure to include 'Artist' to the 'preserve these tags' field so it stays that way after a subsequent Picard scan)

But it would be even nicer if Picard would automatically populate the Artist tag in this manner.
Does anybody have a solution or a script for that?

[psychoadept]

Have you tried the script I posted on the wiki for tagging multiple artists with Picatd?

[hiccup]

Have you tried the script I posted on the wiki for tagging multiple artists with Picatd?

Wow, that's fast.
Nope, will try.

[hiccup]

I tried it on one album (2600797a-f28f-4c23-bcb3-1dcbc14ad5a1), but for that one it doesn't do what I hoped it would do.
But that of course doesn't mean the script isn't good, it could well be that MusicBrainz doesn't provides the content that would be needed for this specific album?

[psychoadept]

I don't see why it wouldn't work for that. Can you show me the results you're getting?

[hiccup]

Oh wait, hold your horses. It looks like it does work.
At the second try I disabled all entries at 'preserve tags' and my other scripts, and now it seems to work.
So I'll have to figure out now how I can get them all working nicely together.

Thanks a lot!

PS,
Maybe it is wise to wait putting more effort into this after 2.0.3 is released?
Reverting some things in Picard that you presented being an issue could well be affecting this too?

[psychoadept]

I think you can safely hunt down the conflict. If you want to keep the combined artist value as well a the split artists, I can help you figure out how to tweak that, later.

[hiccup]

Fantastic.
Thanks again.

[hiccup]

Have you tried the script I posted on the wiki for tagging multiple artists with Picatd?

There is own thing that I would like differently.
From my example, without the script I would get 'Harold Budd/Brian Eno' as an Artist.
With the plugin I indeed get Harold Budd and Brian Eno as separate artists.
But I don't get 'Harold Budd/Brian Eno' as an artist anymore.
And I would like to have all three...

Is there a workaround for that?

[psychoadept]

Yes, that's what I was referring to above. You can append the split values instead of replacing the whole artist value. Take a look at the Picard scripting documentation of you want to work on it before I can get to it this evening

[hiccup]

Yes, that's what I was referring to above.

Ah, indeed you did. My brainz probably only registered the part of that post that was important to me at that moment.
I would appreciate it if you could present an adjusted script for that.
I am not very comfortable adjusting an existing script.
No hurries at all, whenever you have time and feel like it.

[psychoadept]

So, I think this is even less complicated than I anticipated. Try replacing $copy(artist,artists) with $copymerge(artist,artists) and see if that does the trick.

[hiccup]

So, I think this is even less complicated than I anticipated. Try replacing $copy(artist,artists) with $copymerge(artist,artists) and see if that does the trick.

Yes, that seems to be working great.
I had tried some other aproaches myself, but couldn't get them to work.
(overlooking the copymerge command completely)

So thanx again.
You must be having some use for it yourself too? Predecting that this could be desireable?
Perhaps add it to the script on wikia?


edit:
Running an album through Picard a second time will add artist entries to the 'display artist' tag.
That should normally be avoidable by adding display artist to the 'preserve tags' list, but as we know, that feature currently is broken...

edit2:
It see that 'preserve tags' does work for 'display artist', but you need to enter it as DISPLAYARTIST.
Is there a particular reason why you are using capitals in the script?

edit3:
I'm gonna test some more before adding more comments to this thread.
'preserving' seems to work for some albums, but not for some others? Weird. (but it could be an id3/vorbis thing)

[hiccup]

edit2:
It see that 'preserve tags' does work for 'display artist', but you need to enter it as DISPLAYARTIST.

Scratch that, that's not the case.

This is what seems to happen:
After a first run, for flac files Picard will show a populated 'display artist' (lower case!?) and leave it intact. (irrespective of it being present in the 'preserve' field).
But it will also add a second 'DISPLAY ARTIST' tag that will contain all artists.

For every next run it will do the same: present an empty 'DISPLAY ARTIST' and offer to populate it, and add artists to 'display artist'.

So it would probably be better to use lower case in the script?

'Preserve tags' doesn't seem to work at all for 'display artist'. But that will hopefully be fixed after 2.0.3.


(I have raised this in the Picard 2.x thread 'over there')

[psychoadept]

The script is definitely designed for mp3s so may need some tweaking for FLAC. If you don't want it to set Display Artist, though, you can just remove that part of the script.

Edit: I think I understand better now, just waking up, sorry. What happens if you don't do any preserve tags but just change the script to display artist instead of DISPLAY ARTIST (probably the same for guest artist).