Semicolon-Divided Artists -> Multiple Artist Tags upon conversion

[darlmgd]

Hello, one of my favorite things about MusicBee is its ability to handle semicolon-divided artist tags.  If I have the artist field as "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton" each one of these 3 artists is considered independently within the software despite that line being just one artist tag.  HOWEVER, when MusicBee converts tracks during syncs with portable devices, it automatically splits semicolon-divided artists into different artist tags (3 in this case).  This would be fine if every other player supported multiple artist tags like MB, but that's not the case.  I have MusicBee convert and sync to my Android phone.  When my phone sees these songs (across multiple apps I tried), the artist only shows up as "Pierce Fulton", the final artist tag.  Is there a setting to AVOID splitting artist tags when converting within MusicBee?  I also noticed this behavior when editing tags in MusicBee; the software takes the liberty of splitting artist tags even if you're only editing other fields.

How a song looks in MusicBee: http://i.imgur.com/lPWejNL.png
How a song looks on my phone: http://i.imgur.com/RP39h9W.png

[phred]

I don't know of a way to have MB drop the semicolon when syncing.  I think what you're trying to achieve would be a function of your Android player.  I use PowerAmp on my Android and I -think- it handles multiple artists.  I don't have access to my phone right now so I can't check.  You can grab a trial version on Google Play and test it.

[darlmgd]

I don't know of a way to have MB drop the semicolon when syncing.  I think what you're trying to achieve would be a function of your Android player.  I use PowerAmp on my Android and I -think- it handles multiple artists.  I don't have access to my phone right now so I can't check.  You can grab a trial version on Google Play and test it.

I'm not looking for MusicBee to drop the semicolon, I'm actually looking for it to not change anything.  It is currently changing the artist tag on its own.  I want it to carry over ARTIST: "artist1; artist2; artist3" but it is taking that tag and converting it into 3 separate artist fields.

I'll check out that app, thanks.  But ideally I can get MusicBee to stop fiddling with my artist tags.

EDIT: Tried PowerAmp and it doesn't support multiple artist tags.

[psychoadept]

I'm not looking for MusicBee to drop the semicolon, I'm actually looking for it to not change anything.  It is currently changing the artist tag on its own.  I want it to carry over ARTIST: "artist1; artist2; artist3" but it is taking that tag and converting it into 3 separate artist fields.

I'll check out that app, thanks.  But ideally I can get MusicBee to stop fiddling with my artist tags.

That's the way multiple artists are expected to behave.  It's really on the music apps to support multiple artists, not on MusicBee to stop providing correct tags.  There are some Android players that will read and display multiple artists, albeit without a divider (I can confirm Rocket Player and GMMP both do this).

[darlmgd]

I'm not looking for MusicBee to drop the semicolon, I'm actually looking for it to not change anything.  It is currently changing the artist tag on its own.  I want it to carry over ARTIST: "artist1; artist2; artist3" but it is taking that tag and converting it into 3 separate artist fields.

I'll check out that app, thanks.  But ideally I can get MusicBee to stop fiddling with my artist tags.

That's the way multiple artists are expected to behave.  It's really on the music apps to support multiple artists, not on MusicBee to stop providing correct tags.  There are some Android players that will read and display multiple artists, albeit without a divider (I can confirm Rocket Player and GMMP both do this).

How is it not on MusicBee to not alter the artist tag?  If my artist tag is "artist1; artist2" I would expect it to stay that way.  There's nothing 'incorrect' about it.  Rocket Player is actually the app I am using, and the app I screenshotted in my original topic post.  It doesn't handle multiple artist tags for me.  How is it doing it for you?

EDIT: Tried GMMP and it doesn't handle multiple artist tags either (screenshot one and two linked here).  Oddly, while Rocket Player selects only the final artist tag, GMMP selects only the first.  In any event, I'm not here to talk about apps and their shortcomings.  I wish all apps, software, and hardware supported multiple artist tags, but they don't.  So I'm just looking for MusicBee to not alter my artist tags when converting.

[Bee-liever]

MB is not changing the tag during syncing.  It is how the app for the portable device handles multiple artists.

GMMP selects only the first.

MB sends "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton" during sync, but GMMP reads to the first ";" and doesn't read any further.

Rocket Player selects only the final artist tag

MB sends "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton" during sync, but Rocket Player reads ";" as a queue to re-write the tag. Only the last tag is therefore shown.

[darlmgd]

MB is not changing the tag during syncing.  It is how the app for the portable device handles multiple artists.

GMMP selects only the first.

MB sends "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton" during sync, but GMMP reads to the first ";" and doesn't read any further.

Rocket Player selects only the final artist tag

MB sends "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton" during sync, but Rocket Player reads ";" as a queue to re-write the tag. Only the last tag is therefore shown.

MusicBee is indeed changing the tags.  It is not just syncing, I am having it convert during sync (in this case, everything -> mp4, although I've seen this phenomenon with FLAC and mp3, too).  I opened the input and output files in Mp3tag:

Input with one artist tag: http://i.imgur.com/aDR1hCH.png
Output with multiple artist tags: http://i.imgur.com/FERPFaS.png

[Bee-liever]

I opened the input and output files in Mp3tag:

If you open the files with Tag Inspector in MB you will see they are both written as
Artist
Artist
Artist

There are some Android players that will read and display multiple artists, albeit without a divider (I can confirm Rocket Player and GMMP both do this).

A solution would be to use "Above & Beyond - Alex Vargas - Pierce Fulton" as your Artist Sort-Order tag and turn on the sync option to "replace artist tag with sort-artist"

[psychoadept]

I'm not sure why the multiple artists aren't showing up for you in GMMP, but Bee-liever has a good workaround.

[Edit: one thing occurred to me that might make a difference, though I'm not sure why. I'm using Id3v2.4 tags. Are you using 2.4 or 2.3?]


For reference of anyone else coming across this post, here is a track with multiple artists in MB:





And here is the same track in Rocket Player and GMMP, respectively (synced by MusicBee):

http://i.imgur.com/cW8JL3Zl.png

http://i.imgur.com/lP7mBvPl.png

[darlmgd]

If you open the files with Tag Inspector in MB you will see they are both written as
Artist
Artist
Artist

No - see the original file HERE and the converted file HERE in tag inspector.  MusicBee is splitting the tag on its own.  I guess this is the best way I should have illustrated this issue in the first place.

A solution would be to use "Above & Beyond - Alex Vargas - Pierce Fulton" as your Artist Sort-Order tag and turn on the sync option to "replace artist tag with sort-artist"

That's an interesting workaround, thanks.  But I'd rather not re-tag all my songs for this, even if it can be done in batch.  I'd rather get MusicBee to stop splitting the tag.  But, it's worth consideration as a workaround if this isn't fixed, thanks.

I'm not sure why the multiple artists aren't showing up for you in GMMP, but Bee-liever has a good workaround.

[Edit: one thing occurred to me that might make a difference, though I'm not sure why. I'm using Id3v2.4 tags. Are you using 2.4 or 2.3?]

In this case, MP4 tags actually.  But I've seen this issue arise for both mp3 and FLAC as well.

For reference of anyone else coming across this post, here is a track with multiple artists in MB:





And here is the same track in Rocket Player and GMMP, respectively (synced by MusicBee):

http://i.imgur.com/cW8JL3Zl.png

http://i.imgur.com/lP7mBvPl.png

Weird.  I have no idea why it works for you but not for me.  In any event, that's an issue I can take up with the creators of the apps.  The reason why I'm posting on here is that I am hoping there could be an option or a default where MusicBee doesn't mess with the artist tag during conversion.  No idea how realistic that is, but it's worth a shot.  I'm really surprised nobody else has come across this.  I also notice it while tagging files.  If I use Mp3tag to tag an artist in "artist1; artist2" format, and then later change a non-artist tag within MusicBee (such as song title, album, etc.), MusicBee splits the artist tag on its own even if I didn't touch the artist tag.  I realize it wants to use its own Multi-artist feature, but too many other platforms don't support multiple artists for me to want to use it.

[Bee-liever]

If I use Mp3tag to tag an artist in "artist1; artist2" format

And there is the root of the problem.

Mp3tag does not recognise the ';' as an item separator.  It uses '//'.
So when you save those multiple artists ""Above & Beyond"; "Alex Vargas"; "Pierce Fulton"", Mp3tag is really only saving one artist - "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton".

Because MB sees ';' as a multiple item splitter, it correctly shows them in the library as different artists (as you want) and correctly fixes the tag to show this when syncing or re-saving the tags.

[darlmgd]

If I use Mp3tag to tag an artist in "artist1; artist2" format

And there is the root of the problem.

Mp3tag does not recognise the ';' as an item separator.  It uses '//'.
So when you save those multiple artists ""Above & Beyond"; "Alex Vargas"; "Pierce Fulton"", Mp3tag is really only saving one artist - "Above & Beyond; Alex Vargas; Pierce Fulton".

Correct.  And that's my intention.  For maximum compatibility.

Because MB sees ';' as a multiple item splitter, it correctly shows them in the library as different artists (as you want) and correctly fixes the tag to show this when syncing or re-saving the tags.

I guess here is where we disagree.  I don't think there is anything 'incorrect' about me having my artists in one tag, separated by semicolons.  MusicBee recognizes that as separate artists like I like, and every other platform ever can at least display all the artists together, even if it doesn't understand those are 3 different artists.  I don't think there's anything 'correct' about MusicBee splitting the tags on its own, and I wish it didn't do it.  I would love for MusicBee to just retain artist tags as what they are, rather than assume it can go ahead and change them.  I recognize I might be alone in this opinion, but I feel like I can't possibly be the only person who syncs to a device that doesn't support multiple artist tags.

[MeeMeeMee]

I didn't know musicbee doesn't support this feature. It's a bit unfortunate.
I can recommend other tools that can accomplish what you're looking for: dBpoweramp. I use it for converting my FLAC music albums to MP3 for usage on the go. One if its (many) tools does exactly that, on the fly, when converting: file:///C:/Program%20Files/dBpoweramp/Help/Codec/DSP/help.htm#ID_Tag_Processing
I vaguely remember that MediaMonkey has some specific features for handling of mulitlple artists, such as control of what the separator would be (default is semicolon), but maybe it was only in the gold edition? I'm not sure.

[MotleyG]

Necroing an old post, but I was looking for exactly this as well.

With several devices in both iOS and Android world, as well as streaming at home, I unfortunately have to deal with the lowest common denominator. So while I too have been using the semicolon as a separator and had no issues with any other programs leaving it "as-is" without splitting, MusicBee automatically does this.

The only work around I have found is to not make any edits to the tag in MusicBee, and instead only use Mp3tag. This seems to keep the single tag intact. So while this means I can't make changes in MB, at least there is a potential to keep things as they are.

Perhaps a future consideration can be to have a check box in the editor window that either splits a tag with a semicolon, or leaves the fields as they are without splitting?

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Perhaps a future consideration can be to have a check box in the editor window that either splits a tag with a semicolon, or leaves the fields as they are without splitting?

Please review this post.