Author Topic: Multiple Artist Splitter  (Read 4819 times)

MSWallack

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 14
I'm contemplating switching over to MusicBee (I really like most of what I see), but I want to be sure that I understand how several features work before taking the plunge. One thing that I like is the Multiple Artist Splitter, but there are two things about it that I don't understand:

1) The options that I'm given when I split an artist are Artist, Guest Artist, Performer, or Remixer. What about using roles like "featuring", "with", or "presents"? Is there a way to add additional roles?

2) When I split an artist, it seems that MusicBee automatically rewrites the tags in the actual file. Is there a way to disable that? I've taken a lot of time to set my tags just the way that I want them. MusicBee deleted the "(feat. Artist)" from the tag when I used the Multiple Artist Splitter. That is an undesirable feature, especially if I later use another application to review that particular file.

Any help or suggestions will be appreciated.

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
1) The options that I'm given when I split an artist are Artist, Guest Artist, Performer, or Remixer. What about using roles like "featuring", "with", or "presents"? Is there a way to add additional roles?

No, there's no way to add other categories.  But you can put whatever you want for the display artist.  That's sort of the point of the multiple artist splitter; to display the artists one way (X feat. Y) but have the actual artist tags encoded individually (X; Y) so that all tracks involving X and all tracks involving Y can be shown in places like the thumbnail browser.



Quote
2) When I split an artist, it seems that MusicBee automatically rewrites the tags in the actual file. Is there a way to disable that? I've taken a lot of time to set my tags just the way that I want them. MusicBee deleted the "(feat. Artist)" from the tag when I used the Multiple Artist Splitter. That is an undesirable feature, especially if I later use another application to review that particular file.

You could work around this by putting the exact artist value you want in the Artist tag (which will be read by other programs), and put the split values in Performer (which will not generally be read by other programs).  The only down side is that then the full artist value will appear in MusicBee in places where you might not want it.
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

MSWallack

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 14
I'm not sure that I follow completely. The track on which I experimented with had an artist tag like this:

Artist (feat. Someone)

I split this into Artist (as an Artist) and Someone (as a Guest Artist). But when I looked at the tag in another application, it showed the artist tag like this:

Artist

No mention of Someone in the tag anymore. So where did it go?

Also, is there a way to change the default delimiter of the semicolon? I'd much prefer an ampersand so that my tags can stay consistent across my applications.

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
I would suggest reading the wiki section on multiple artist spitter (it's on the tagging page) and also looking at your example track with the Tag Inspector.

Artist, Guest Artist, Performer, Remixer, and Display Artist are all written to different tag frames (name of the tag in the file). Artist is a standard frame used by almost all music software. Remixer is also a standard frame (ie, defined in ID3v2.x tag standards), but not always supported. Performer, Guest Artist, and Display Artist are non-standard frames that would only be picked up by other software if it is designed to read custom TXXX/ frames (for MP3, at least).

Edit: well, let me correct my first answer to say that you can in fact add any name of tag you want, up to the number of custom tags available in MusicBee. But those won't show up in the multiple artist splitter, they're just shown in the tag editor. And like Guest Artist and Performer, they probably won't be shown in other programs.

You can define the tags in the multiple artist splitter as custom tags, too (i.e., define TXXX/PERFORMER as one of your custom tags), but that causes weird programmatic issues sometimes
Last Edit: August 20, 2016, 06:07:27 AM by psychoadept
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

boroda

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4595
about multiple artists splitter character: its just a hardcoded character used by mb to auto generate displayed artist tag. this character is not stored anywhere in file except for in displayed artists string. you can manually change displayed artist to any value you want, i.e. you can use any delimiter in displayed artist.

Bee-liever

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3831
  • MB Version: 3.6.8849 P
I'm not sure that I follow completely. The track on which I experimented with had an artist tag like this:

Artist (feat. Someone)

I split this into Artist (as an Artist) and Someone (as a Guest Artist)

Using the splitter you could enter
Artist (feat. Someone)
as display artist, the split into
Artist (feat. Someone) - as artist
Artist - as artist
Someone - as guest artist

Most players read the first artist string and ignore the rest, so you'll still have Artist (feat. Someone) as your Artist in other applications, but also have the advantage of having MB listing the artist and guest artist separately.
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

MSWallack

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 14
Can I split the artists within the MusicBee database but tell the program not to make any changes to the tags in my music files?

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
Not within the Multiple Artist Splitter.  If you wanted to make a custom tag saved only to the database to use for split artist values, you could do that.  You'd have to use that tag in place of the usual Artist tag when you want split values.
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)